Will he now resign?
Reform UK’s Deputy Leader Richard Tice is facing calls to be sacked after his property company failed to pay a £91,000 tax bill to HMRC.
Tice has insisted that his company has done nothing wrong.
The Times has revealed that Quidnet REIT Ltd, the property investment company Tice founded, failed to pay tens of thousands of pounds in tax on dividends that were paid to him and his offshore trust.
The paper reports that Quidnet ‘did not pay a required 20 per cent levy on the dividends, known as a “withholding tax”, before channelling profits to Tice and his trust registered in Jersey.”
Tice tried to claim that the failure to pay the correct amount of tax was just a ‘technicality’ and that he had paid the right amount of tax on all dividends received. However, irrespective of the amount of tax Tice paid, the company is still legally obliged to pay the correct amount of tax.
Dan Neidle of Tax Policy Associates told the Times: “The rules are fairly simple and understood by everyone in the property world. Failure to pay the tax looks careless. We don’t get to choose who pays tax and when we pay tax, and the law required that the company paid the tax when the dividends were paid.”
As a result of the company failing to pay the correct amount of tax, Tice received at least £91,000 in excess payments.
Readers ought to be reminded that when Labour’s Angela Rayner failed to pay stamp duty on the purchase of a second home, Tice said she would resign if she had “any moral decency”.
Will he now do the right thing and resign as Reform’s deputy?
Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward
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