Nigel Farage is certainly a millionaire, but, despite his bluster, he’s far from being a Patriotic Millionaire.
As we know, he holds at least 9 jobs in addition to the one you’d think he should be focusing on full time – being the elected representative of the people of Clacton.
This makes this ‘man of the people’ very rich. But rather than pay the income tax that would otherwise due on his more-than-£2000-an-hour job spreading lies, hatred and division on broadcaster GB News, he opts to have his salary paid to a company – the extremely cringey named ‘Thorn In The Side Ltd’ company.
Why? Because it means he doesn’t have to pay anything as like as much as tax as if you and I would if our standard jobs paid anything like as well as his does.
Nigel Farage is using a private company to reduce his tax bill on his GB News media appearances and other outside employment in a television star-style arrangement that has in recent years become frowned on by major broadcasters.
The Reform UK leader diverts money from his prime-time TV show into his company, which means that he paid only 25% corporation tax on profits, instead of 40% income tax, and could offset some expenses.
Of course he is as hypocritical as ever on the subject.
The Clacton MP, who is also paid a £94,000-a-year MP’s salary, has in the past criticised people who try to avoid tax as the “common enemy” and has previously come under fire for setting up a trust fund in an offshore tax haven.
To be clear, what he is doing is somehow legal – but for someone who claims to love his country, going out of his way to deprive the state of the funding it so desperately needs isn’t a great look.
The use of personal service companies is not illegal, but it has been criticised across the political spectrum as a way to reduce tax bills. Farage has declined to publish his tax returns for 2023/24.
Several broadcasters including the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 have cracked down on the practice in recent years. HMRC has repeatedly tightened the rules around off-payroll working (IR35) to stop this kind of tax avoidance.
This is far from the only time he’s been accused of dodging the tax due of course.
Famously, the person who spends so much time jetting across the globe badmouthing Britain that his constituents never see him, claimed that he in fact spent so much time in Clacton that he bought a house. Owning property is not the same thing as doing your job. Nonetheless:
The Reform UK leader said he had “exchanged contracts” to buy the house in Essex last November, saying it should deal with criticism that he does not spend enough time in the constituency.
But did he? No. Not according the records.
…the detached property in an upmarket part of Clacton-on-Sea was actually solely bought by Laure Ferrari, his partner of some years
Assuming he wasn’t simply lying about the whole thing and did in fact at the end of the day buy that house, why would it be recorded only under his partner’s name?
It’s another tax dodge.
The stamp duty due to be paid to exchequer is substantially higher if it’s not the only house you own. And Farage already has a house. In fact several houses.
Farage already has a property worth about £1m in the village of Downe in Kent, as well as two houses in Lydd-on Sea in the same county, which are owned through his company, Thorn in the Side. He also has property in Tandridge in Surrey.
So by pretending the house was bought by his partner as her only house, he managed to avoid yet another bundle of tax that the rest of us would be expected to pay to the state.
Farage claimed last year to have “bought a house” in his constituency, but the property is actually owned in the name of his partner, meaning he legally avoided higher-rate stamp duty on the purchase of an additional home – given that he already owns other properties.