The Labour Party has called for an investigation into Reform UK’s deputy leader Richard Tice following reports he has avoided hundreds of thousands in tax.
Over the weekend, the Sunday Times reported that Rice had “avoided nearly £600,000 in corporation tax” through his property company, Quidnet Reit Ltd.
Now, Labour’s party chair Anna Turley has written to His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs asking that they investigate Tice’s tax affairs.
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Turley said the Sunday Times article presented a “deeply troubling case which needs to be investigated with the utmost urgency”.
In her letter to HMRC on Sunday, Turley wrote that “several important questions remained unanswered,” including whether Tice “and companies linked to him have paid all the tax they owe”.
In a statement to the Times, Tice said he had complied with all relevant rules and that Quidnet was “a UK company paying UK tax in accordance with UK laws”.
Whilst tax evasion is a criminal offence, tax avoidance is not.
The Sunday Times reported that Tice had avoided paying corporation tax on the company’s “multimillion-pound profits for most of 2018 to 2021.”
The company did this by earning “rare legal status” for it as a real estate investment trust (Reit), which gives firms a grace period in which they are exempt from corporation tax, according to the publication.
The status means a portion of the company’s earnings is instead issued to shareholders who are taxed individually.
Tice is then said to have channelled these dividends into structures including an offshore trust and “a string of dormant businesses”, which “reduced his exposure to tax”.
The Times claimed Quidnet “did not pass the technical tests for Reit status at the time and never did”, having instead gained the status through a “legal quirk.”
In response to the Sunday Times’ investigation, the Boston and Skegness MP said: “Voters should be reassured to have a successful businessman who knows how to make money for shareholders running a business, trade and energy department, making money and growth for taxpayers.
“If the country had had this before maybe we would not be in the current dire economic pickle.”
He added that it was “not unusual for property companies to seek Reit status”, nor was there anything “complex or unusual about a UK company having a range of shareholders, some of whom are directors”.