Last year Mo Farah was calling on the chancellor to crack down on tax avoidance. Now he want to be a tax exile.
Alongside Jessica Ennis, Mo Farah is one of the most recognisable British athletes. Since he swept all before him at the 2012 London Olympics, he has won practically everything, and is the current 10,000 metres World and Olympic champion and 5,000 metres Olympic, World and European champion.
His popularity has been enhanced in no small part by his reputation as an all round nice guy.
I don’t know Mr Farah personally, therefore it would be odd to say that I ‘liked’ him. I certainly admire his achievements, though; and he went up in my estimation on a personal level early last year, when he called on chancellor George Osborne to clampdown on tax dodgers. As London loves Business reported:
“Robbie Williams and Mo Farah have called on George Osborne to clamp down on tax dodging firms.
“The stars have thrown their weight behind the ‘Enough Food for Everyone IF campaign’ that beckons global firms to pay their taxes in the world’s poorest countries.”
How disappointing, then, to read this week that Farah, one of the wealthiest track athletes in the world, has applied to become a tax exile in Portland, Oregon. According to the magazine Runner’s World:
“Mo Farah, who won Olympic 5000- and 10,000-meter titles in front of hometown crowds at the 2012 London Games, has applied to be a tax exile from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
“Farah now lists Portland, Oregon as his main place of residence; it’s where he’s been part of the Oregon Project, coached by Alberto Salazar, since 2011. He also spends part of each winter training in Kenya.”
Farah already spends time in Oregon as part of the Oregon Project, a programme aimed at developing the best distance runners in the world, and has now reportedly submitted a non-residency application to HMRC.
An extraordinary move for someone who claims to be all about “making the country proud”. According to the Daily Record, Farah is expected to make as much as £10 million in the next few years.
The hypocrisy of the super-rich is nothing new of course. What’s so disappointing is that Mo Farah, who only 10 months ago was standing on a soapbox calling on the chancellor to tackle tax dodging, now appears to be trying to minimise his own tax bill – at the expense of the rest of the UK’s taxpayers. It is, after all, tax which pays for things like the NHS; and all of us who lose out when services are starved of money.
If you are desperate to reduce your own tax bill, perhaps don’t moralise about other people’s tax affairs, even if you are an Olympic champion.
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35 Responses to “Mo Farah: from lefty hero to tax exile in 10 short months”
robertcp
It does not help debate to refer to people as idiots. The fact that it costs a lot of money to compete means that it is even more important for elite sport to be professional. Amateur sports were often dominated by athletes from Communist countries who did nothing but train even if they were not on steroids.
The snobbishness I was referring to also concerned cricket where there was a division between professional (usually state school) and amateur (usually private school) until the early 1960s. Rugby split into two codes because working class men wanted to be paid expenses but this was rejected by mainly private school amateurs. Rugby union is still a very middle class sport in most countries even after being professional for almost twenty years.
Jason Smith
Welcome to the Internet you get insulted.
Boston_scoundrel
And you were doing so well until your slightly silly rant about “the left” (whatever that means) championing mediocrity
Mark Law
The real issue about the London 2012 Olympic Games is not this.
MF is moving to get himself the best training facilities and is paying taxes in Oregon as the tax residency rules require. If he and his family are consuming public services there, then local Oregon folks would be annoyed if he didn’t contribute (imagine it the other way around!).
The REAL issue is the way a LABOUR Govt structured the project with PUBLIC money to enrich a few private individuals and create a vanity legacy project for a few politicians.
The LABOUR Govt created LOCOG – a PRIVATE company. LOCOG “worked closely” (HA!) with the PUBLICALLY-funded Olympic Delivery Authority (ODA), responsible for construction of venues and infrastructure. Taxpayer GUARANTEED.
They APPOINTED the usual cronies onto the “Board” (*look up*) and paid them £6-figure salaries.
Tory “Lord” Coe made £8m est. out of the deal. THAT’S the scandal.
Even the CEO conceded that the sporting legacy had faile
Lee Hyde
Not to mention the taxpayer owned and funded athletics venues AND the absurdly expensive and taxpayer funded London 2012 Olympics at which Farah made his name from which earns (in as much as commercial endorsements can be ‘earned’) a sizable chunk of his income.
I don’t begrudge Mr. Farah any of the taxpayer funded services that we take for granted (e.g. libraries, education, the NHS, etc…), regardless of weather he or his father were asylum seekers, legitimate economic migrants or native born. I don’t even begrudge him the numerous specialist services (outside of the star-stuck jingoism, how many Britons are true athletics fans? How many are Athletes?!) that helped to mold him into the cash cow athlete he is today (note: his twin brother wasn’t so lucky). However, it does seem that of the athletes and artists who most loudly bemoan cuts to arts and sports funding, many resort rather too readily to off-shoring in order to avoid paying for them. Maybe they’d prefer fewer independent movies, fewerfree art galleries and museums and fees charged at all local authority athletics tracks? Their actions seem to suggest so, even if their endless moaning doesn’t!
Of course, in Mr Farah’s case, it does seem to be the case that he’s genuinely changed residence/quit the UK. Even so, dual taxation rules should prevent any onerous tax liabilities (i.e. he won’t be double taxed) and it is a shame that he (or his accountant) should begrudge the nation that give him his start and invested in his career, even the meagre crumbs (if any) that would escape the US taxman. I guess that the next Mo Farah will need to get a Sunday job in SportsDirect and/or run bare footed.