Best Of

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/05/nigel-farage-uses-private-company-to-pay-less-tax-on-gb-news-earnings

£2k/hour to appear on GB News seems more like an undisclosed political donation than a genuine appearance fee. Just another example of how rich rightwing fanatics like GB News owner Marshall are distorting the political conversation.

Nigel Farage had a programme on GB News long before his re-entry into the political fray. You just can't bear the fact that someone who you bitterly oppose is doing well.

If you're not worried about the man who could be PM in four years taking oodles of cash (that he's fuelling through a tax avoidance corporate vehicle) from a shadowy billionaire who is also buying up vast swathes of the UK media landscape, then you should be.

The Guardian article is (deliberately?) misleading - if you funnel your income into a ltd company like this then you pay 25% corporation tax, but then you have to pay dividend taxes on top - 8.75% if you’re a lower rate income tax payer & a painful 33.75% if you’re higher rate.

So a higher rate taxpayer pays ~50% on their marginal income paying themselves this way. A lower rate one pays 31.5%. If you compare with the total tax take for a salaried employee you’ll find the figures are roughly comparable - an employee earning £50k pays 30% of their total cost of employment in taxes (income tax + NI + employers NI) and the marginal rate for a high income earner is 40-45% plus 15% employers NI on top.

Dividend taxes used to be much lower & it was a huge tax advantage to structure your income through a ltd company. These days, after administration costs you’re probably slightly worse off, but you do get the advantage of being able to structure your income in whatever way you choose, including the ability to spread lumpy income across multiple tax years which can make it worth the effort for some people.

If you play fast & loose with the corporate credit card you can push some of that income through as expenses of course, but you’re asking for trouble if HMRC ever comes knocking.

That's not quite right either - Corp tax is only 25% for companies making a profit over £250k. It's 19% up to £50k then a sliding scale between the too.

So if you get £50k income or less channeled through a ltd, it's 27.75%. You get the first £12.7k as as tax free PAYE, although there is still employers NI on it.

It's also very tax efficient to dump the money into a pension from a ltd, but obviously you can only get the money back out again once you are old enough to retire.

All of this is of course full of perverse incentives - e.g. if you have a business that makes zero profit some years and £100k others, it's very much in your interest to cook to books so it makes £50k every year instead.

I have a business which on paper has substantial retained earnings - my accountant told me to take dividends out so my earnings total £50k every year (even if the cash to do so doesn't exist and therefore the dividend just becomes a directors loan to the business) partly on the basis that if the taxation regime changes it will almost certainly only get worse, and mostly because you pay far less tax by taking £50k each year than £0 for two years and £150k the next.

Honestly, if your income is very lumpy and regularly falls well below the higher rate threshold I don’t personally have a problem with people using a ltd company to smooth it out. Consider an author who takes an advance for a book which might have to last them multiple years - why shouldn’t they take that as PAYE in two successive years? Is that egregious tax avoidance? I don’t believe so personally.

There are special rules for authors that allow them to spread out their income without using a limited company: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/averaging-for-creators-of-literary-or-artistic-works-hs234-self-assessment-helpsheet/hs234-averaging-for-creators-of-literary-or-artistic-works-2023

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/05/nigel-farage-uses-private-company-to-pay-less-tax-on-gb-news-earnings

£2k/hour to appear on GB News seems more like an undisclosed political donation than a genuine appearance fee. Just another example of how rich rightwing fanatics like GB News owner Marshall are distorting the political conversation.

Nigel Farage had a programme on GB News long before his re-entry into the political fray. You just can't bear the fact that someone who you bitterly oppose is doing well.

If you're not worried about the man who could be PM in four years taking oodles of cash (that he's fuelling through a tax avoidance corporate vehicle) from a shadowy billionaire who is also buying up vast swathes of the UK media landscape, then you should be.

The Guardian article is (deliberately?) misleading - if you funnel your income into a ltd company like this then you pay 25% corporation tax, but then you have to pay dividend taxes on top - 8.75% if you’re a lower rate income tax payer & a painful 33.75% if you’re higher rate.

So a higher rate taxpayer pays ~50% on their marginal income paying themselves this way. A lower rate one pays 31.5%. If you compare with the total tax take for a salaried employee you’ll find the figures are roughly comparable - an employee earning £50k pays 30% of their total cost of employment in taxes (income tax + NI + employers NI) and the marginal rate for a high income earner is 40-45% plus 15% employers NI on top.

Dividend taxes used to be much lower & it was a huge tax advantage to structure your income through a ltd company. These days, after administration costs you’re probably slightly worse off, but you do get the advantage of being able to structure your income in whatever way you choose, including the ability to spread lumpy income across multiple tax years which can make it worth the effort for some people.

If you play fast & loose with the corporate credit card you can push some of that income through as expenses of course, but you’re asking for trouble if HMRC ever comes knocking.

That's not quite right either - Corp tax is only 25% for companies making a profit over £250k. It's 19% up to £50k then a sliding scale between the too.

So if you get £50k income or less channeled through a ltd, it's 27.75%. You get the first £12.7k as as tax free PAYE, although there is still employers NI on it.

It's also very tax efficient to dump the money into a pension from a ltd, but obviously you can only get the money back out again once you are old enough to retire.

All of this is of course full of perverse incentives - e.g. if you have a business that makes zero profit some years and £100k others, it's very much in your interest to cook to books so it makes £50k every year instead.

I have a business which on paper has substantial retained earnings - my accountant told me to take dividends out so my earnings total £50k every year (even if the cash to do so doesn't exist and therefore the dividend just becomes a directors loan to the business) partly on the basis that if the taxation regime changes it will almost certainly only get worse, and mostly because you pay far less tax by taking £50k each year than £0 for two years and £150k the next.

Honestly, if your income is very lumpy and regularly falls well below the higher rate threshold I don’t personally have a problem with people using a ltd company to smooth it out. Consider an author who takes an advance for a book which might have to last them multiple years - why shouldn’t they take that as PAYE in two successive years? Is that egregious tax avoidance? I don’t believe so personally.

Doesn't HMRC already make that provision in the income tax system for journalists/authors/performers with lumpy income?

Yes it does.

One left field idea would be to treat all corporations with sales under £1m as transparent for tax purposes, with the profits being taxed as income tax and NI on the shareholders.

Very common in other countries, either by election (in the US) or law (take French SCI property companies).

Would wipe out the distortions, massively reduce tax administration, and raise a handy amount of money.

It would also be hugely unpopular.

You can take the boy out of Manchester but you can't take Manchester out of the boy....

Nick Robinson takes Richard Tice apart (about 8.05)

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/live/bbc_radio_fourfm

Tice has quite often been OK in interviews, by using the tactic of answering the question, at least up to a point. This morning on R4 Today he was terrible and reverted to very obviously evading dealing with them. His diversions away from the questions were clumsy and illtempered; Robinson was using a somewhat unfair quick fire gotcha approach, but OTOH that's how it goes, and top politicians who want to run the country have to deal with it.

It was interesting comparing the interview with Danny Alexander who was being questioned on Rayner with Tice who was being questioned on Farage. It was chalk and cheese. DA was so adept you almost wanted to applaud. Tice by contrast was destroyed. Helped as you suggest by Robinson who was in a different class to the Alexander interviewer

Tice was destroyed and yet he and Reform are winning the popular vote

Reform voters don’t listen

Fixed it for you.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/05/nigel-farage-uses-private-company-to-pay-less-tax-on-gb-news-earnings

£2k/hour to appear on GB News seems more like an undisclosed political donation than a genuine appearance fee. Just another example of how rich rightwing fanatics like GB News owner Marshall are distorting the political conversation.

Nigel Farage had a programme on GB News long before his re-entry into the political fray. You just can't bear the fact that someone who you bitterly oppose is doing well.

If you're not worried about the man who could be PM in four years taking oodles of cash (that he's fuelling through a tax avoidance corporate vehicle) from a shadowy billionaire who is also buying up vast swathes of the UK media landscape, then you should be.

The Guardian article is (deliberately?) misleading - if you funnel your income into a ltd company like this then you pay 25% corporation tax, but then you have to pay dividend taxes on top - 8.75% if you’re a lower rate income tax payer & a painful 33.75% if you’re higher rate.

So a higher rate taxpayer pays ~50% on their marginal income paying themselves this way. A lower rate one pays 31.5%. If you compare with the total tax take for a salaried employee you’ll find the figures are roughly comparable - an employee earning £50k pays 30% of their total cost of employment in taxes (income tax + NI + employers NI) and the marginal rate for a high income earner is 40-45% plus 15% employers NI on top.

Dividend taxes used to be much lower & it was a huge tax advantage to structure your income through a ltd company. These days, after administration costs you’re probably slightly worse off, but you do get the advantage of being able to structure your income in whatever way you choose, including the ability to spread lumpy income across multiple tax years which can make it worth the effort for some people.

If you play fast & loose with the corporate credit card you can push some of that income through as expenses of course, but you’re asking for trouble if HMRC ever comes knocking.

That's not quite right either - Corp tax is only 25% for companies making a profit over £250k. It's 19% up to £50k then a sliding scale between the too.

So if you get £50k income or less channeled through a ltd, it's 27.75%. You get the first £12.7k as as tax free PAYE, although there is still employers NI on it.

It's also very tax efficient to dump the money into a pension from a ltd, but obviously you can only get the money back out again once you are old enough to retire.

All of this is of course full of perverse incentives - e.g. if you have a business that makes zero profit some years and £100k others, it's very much in your interest to cook to books so it makes £50k every year instead.

I have a business which on paper has substantial retained earnings - my accountant told me to take dividends out so my earnings total £50k every year (even if the cash to do so doesn't exist and therefore the dividend just becomes a directors loan to the business) partly on the basis that if the taxation regime changes it will almost certainly only get worse, and mostly because you pay far less tax by taking £50k each year than £0 for two years and £150k the next.

Honestly, if your income is very lumpy and regularly falls well below the higher rate threshold I don’t personally have a problem with people using a ltd company to smooth it out. Consider an author who takes an advance for a book which might have to last them multiple years - why shouldn’t they take that as PAYE in two successive years? Is that egregious tax avoidance? I don’t believe so personally.

Doesn't HMRC already make that provision in the income tax system for journalists/authors/performers with lumpy income?

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/05/nigel-farage-uses-private-company-to-pay-less-tax-on-gb-news-earnings

£2k/hour to appear on GB News seems more like an undisclosed political donation than a genuine appearance fee. Just another example of how rich rightwing fanatics like GB News owner Marshall are distorting the political conversation.

Nigel Farage had a programme on GB News long before his re-entry into the political fray. You just can't bear the fact that someone who you bitterly oppose is doing well.

If you're not worried about the man who could be PM in four years taking oodles of cash (that he's fuelling through a tax avoidance corporate vehicle) from a shadowy billionaire who is also buying up vast swathes of the UK media landscape, then you should be.

The Guardian article is (deliberately?) misleading - if you funnel your income into a ltd company like this then you pay 25% corporation tax, but then you have to pay dividend taxes on top - 8.75% if you’re a lower rate income tax payer & a painful 33.75% if you’re higher rate.

So a higher rate taxpayer pays ~50% on their marginal income paying themselves this way. A lower rate one pays 31.5%. If you compare with the total tax take for a salaried employee you’ll find the figures are roughly comparable - an employee earning £50k pays 30% of their total cost of employment in taxes (income tax + NI + employers NI) and the marginal rate for a high income earner is 40-45% plus 15% employers NI on top.

Dividend taxes used to be much lower & it was a huge tax advantage to structure your income through a ltd company. These days, after administration costs you’re probably slightly worse off, but you do get the advantage of being able to structure your income in whatever way you choose, including the ability to spread lumpy income across multiple tax years which can make it worth the effort for some people.

If you play fast & loose with the corporate credit card you can push some of that income through as expenses of course, but you’re asking for trouble if HMRC ever comes knocking.

That's not quite right either - Corp tax is only 25% for companies making a profit over £250k. It's 19% up to £50k then a sliding scale between the too.

So if you get £50k income or less channeled through a ltd, it's 27.75%. You get the first £12.7k as as tax free PAYE, although there is still employers NI on it.

It's also very tax efficient to dump the money into a pension from a ltd, but obviously you can only get the money back out again once you are old enough to retire.

All of this is of course full of perverse incentives - e.g. if you have a business that makes zero profit some years and £100k others, it's very much in your interest to cook to books so it makes £50k every year instead.

I have a business which on paper has substantial retained earnings - my accountant told me to take dividends out so my earnings total £50k every year (even if the cash to do so doesn't exist and therefore the dividend just becomes a directors loan to the business) partly on the basis that if the taxation regime changes it will almost certainly only get worse, and mostly because you pay far less tax by taking £50k each year than £0 for two years and £150k the next.

Honestly, if your income is very lumpy and regularly falls well below the higher rate threshold I don’t personally have a problem with people using a ltd company to smooth it out. Consider an author who takes an advance for a book which might have to last them multiple years - why shouldn’t they take that as PAYE in two successive years? Is that egregious tax avoidance? I don’t believe so personally.

Doesn't HMRC already make that provision in the income tax system for journalists/authors/performers with lumpy income?

There is, yes. I haven't looked at it in detail to judge how well it works.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/averaging-for-creators-of-literary-or-artistic-works-hs234-self-assessment-helpsheet/hs234-averaging-for-creators-of-literary-or-artistic-works-2025

FPT overall population density is not a great metric for measuring how much room there is in a country. People in Scotland live in closer proximity to each other than people in England, despite a much lower population density.

The Netherlands actually has very high number of people living in houses rather than flats, though unlike England they are more likely to be terraced rather than detached. There is plenty of room to go around if only we didn't build these land inefficient detached houses - my tenement was built directly onto farmland in the 19th century and houses 20 people on a footprint that is now taken up by one divorced dad or a widow.

Not everyone wants to live cheek by jowl with people above and below them , we are not chickens. Any self respecting person would aspire to being detached from the great unwashed.

I'd love to have a big mansion on Barnton Avenue and a small castle in the Highlands too - but that's not going to be possible for 5.6 million people.

You can hardly call the New Town's apartments or Morningside tenements slums. Indeed, countries like Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland all have higher standards of living than we do, and a much higher proportion of people living in flats.

I grew up in Denmark, in the nicest hom,e I've ever had - 5 rooms on two floors on the top of a 8-story block with two full-time porters, nestled between a village and a town with a railway station offering fast access to the centrte (https://www.boligsiden.dk/postnummer/2800/vej/lehwaldsvej/tilsalg/ejerlejlighed). The British passion for separate houses at any price has always puzzled me, even though it's now my home, and coupled with agonising over urban sprawl it just seems strange.

When I lived in Geneva my partner wanted a house outside the city so I never got to live in the centre but I was always envious of my friends who lived in apartments in Geneva.

They were all good sized either beautiful period places with high ceilings and big floor space or large modern (60s onwards). All very soundproof. All had balconies or terraces where you could place a table and chairs for several to eat and enjoy the outside world, blocks weren’t huge high developments but blocks of 8 to ten flats with usually a big of garden around, parking underneath and often shops or cafes/restaurants on the ground floor.

Areas like Champel just outside the centre were full of these and highly sought after. I haven’t been to enough of the UK to compare the availability of these sort of residential blocks - maybe they are there and it’s just a different mental attitude that makes them less desireable in the UK. Possibly back to our Anglo-Saxon individualism.

Those sorts of blocks are common across Europe, and when they work out they become little communities; when they don't, beset with neighbour issues.

Some UK housing associations have replicated the model and you do find modern blocks of six or eight social housing flats quite commonly - but they aren't designed very well, rarely pay much attention to putting them in a decent environment (and they're usually in off-road estates rather than on the street) and it only takes a few problem social housing tenants for them to become less attractive places to live. And any councillor knows that social housing flats built relatively recently soon seem to generate tons of casework in terms of snags and repairs, often quite fundamental ones, about which housing associations vary in their willingness and speed to clear up.

What is less common here is blocks like that built for private sale.

Re your last sentence I guess it’s a chicken and egg situation where if you build for private sale, people see others living there without problem tenants and having a nice lifestyle, walking out the door and the town/city are “there” but having a property nicer than a Barret House.

However Until people see others living well there then there is a risk in building them so nobody gets to see others living that lifestyle etc.

Mansion blocks - even ones with lovely balconies - are not really suitable for families. Nowhere to play outside, having to lug prams and loads of shopping up stairs - unless there is a decent lift -etc.,. I grew up in a 4th floor flat in Naples - a beautiful flat with large rooms and high ceilings, the neighbours couldn't be heard and so on. But as a child it meant a very indoor life - and I loved it when I could be outside in a garden in England and on my relatives' farm in Ireland. Gardens are a real necessity for families. @NickPalmer does not have children and, I'm sure he will forgive me for saying this, scarcely knows what a plant is. Wanting some space is perfectly understandable.

What we do not do well in this country is build the sort of solid beautiful mansion blocks common in some parts of London and very common in the Continent., which would be suitable for those without families, older people, single people etc.,. A lot of flats are poorly built, insulated, cramped etc - plus leasehold and useless managing agents - make them a bit of a nightmare.

The other thing is that not everywhere is blessed with the number of parks, coast, off-road cycle infrastructure in the same way that Edinburgh is.

There was a discussion yesterday about the relevance of what Labour politicians said about Tory misdemeanours in opposition to behaviour of Labour in govt. Many said it was irrelevant, but I think it is actually the most important thing

Your man in the street wouldn’t normally be that bothered by somebody avoiding stamp duty in the way Rayner has because, let’s face it, we’d all do it if we could. The crime in the eyes of voters is the chasm between the morally superior, pious tone adopted in the last parliament by ‘Mr Rules & Integrity’ and the realisation that they’re all at it. It has been shown for what it always was - a hammily acted pretence designed to fool voters. That’s where the anger comes from

Maybe it has changed, but I had the impression that in Britain most people choose to obey the rules, that this is one reason why we're such curtain-twitchers anxious to ensure that everyone else is also following the rules, and that this is something that sets us apart from countries like Greece, which struggle to collect taxes, because in those countries people take it for granted that following the rules is optional.

But Rayner probably thought she was following the rules; she was trying to dodge tax legally by changing the names on other properties. The snag is that, as well as the plan not working, she has been full on for years about Tories using schemes/plans/ruses to not pay the same amount of tax as ‘working people’, and now it looks like she’s at it

I don't mean following the rules in a legalistic sense, but in the spirit of them, in a common-sense understanding. This is why most people are so annoyed by tax avoidance, and the tax evasion vs avoidance distinction doesn't convince most people (compared to people on here).

If that was what Starmer and Co meant by ‘rules’ he would have resigned over currygate, Lord Alli and the voice coach.

I'm not making an argument about the politicians, but about wider society. I'm picking up on your statement that, "Your man in the street wouldn’t normally be that bothered by somebody avoiding stamp duty in the way Rayner has because, let’s face it, we’d all do it if we could."

The essence of the Britain that knows how to queue is precisely a self-regulated orderliness that involves people not doing things just because they can.

Despite the attempts by a lot of very sinister bodies to boost Reform, I'm not sure the bandwagon is going to do more than cancel out any Tory recovery. While Banks and others are out there fund raising for Reform and Dorries and others give fealty to Nigel, it all feels a bit fake somehow.

Silicon Valley shows that if you put enough money behind an enterprise and keep throwing it in, you can create a self-sustaining bandwagon that carries you all the way to world domination. So I’d not be so relaxed.

The 21st century is the era of oligarchy, with corrupt business leaders hand in glove with corrupt politicians to squeeze ever more out of the ordinary folk.

Reform is a con trick to raise culture wars issues to the fore so that the oligarchs can continue to fleece us. It is why Faragism, Trumpism and Putinism all look so alike.

The last twenty years of Labour & Tory government have transformed the country beyond recognition via mass immigration that was in no manifesto, had young boys and girls told they were in the wrong body and given puberty blockers with no pushback from mainstream politicians, not to mention the unmentionable, and people still think that any reaction to it is part of some shadowy evil plan pushed by big corporations rather than perfectly natural & understandable behaviour from people who’ve been let down and ignored by politicians who took them for granted.

Come on Sam, you are more intelligent than that.

The British people did vote for both New Labour and Johnson, as well as Brexit.

All were explicit about the importance of immigration to Britain, indeed Brexit was pushed in places like Leicester and Birmingham as a way to level the playing field and make it easier for Commonwealth migrants to replace EU ones.

Similarly the Cameron and May governments were explicit about liberalism attitudes to gays and Transgender folk. Self ID was proposed under a Conservative government.

You may well have voted differently, or for these parties for other issues but they certainly were voted for by the British public.

I didn’t say they weren’t voted for by the British public, not sure where you got that from. My point is the policies that changed the country irrevocably ran opposite to the pledges in their manifesto’s. I wholeheartedly disagree that any party was elected this century on a promise to increase immigration, and the idea that Brexit was voted for to do so is lunacy

I don't think the changes were against their manifestos, and both parties were re-elected having raised immigration. While you get very agitated over the issue, when people come to voting they often prioritise other issues over immigration, such as adequate NHS staffing etc.

Certainly some people voted for Brexit in order to increase migration from the sub-continent. Both Johnson and aperitif Patel included, and this was specifically targeted at minority ethnic groups. In my own department several of our British-Filipino staff voted Brexit so that it would be easier for them to bring in family members.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/feb/15/brexit-lies-curry-vote-leave-restaurant-industry?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

I am sure your motivation to vote for Brexit was different, but that is very much the problem with how we vote in elections and referendum. People vote the same way, but with very different motivations. It looks like the Brum curry chefs and my Filipino colleagues were correct and you were not about the effect of Brexit on migration.

FPT overall population density is not a great metric for measuring how much room there is in a country. People in Scotland live in closer proximity to each other than people in England, despite a much lower population density.

The Netherlands actually has very high number of people living in houses rather than flats, though unlike England they are more likely to be terraced rather than detached. There is plenty of room to go around if only we didn't build these land inefficient detached houses - my tenement was built directly onto farmland in the 19th century and houses 20 people on a footprint that is now taken up by one divorced dad or a widow.

Not everyone wants to live cheek by jowl with people above and below them , we are not chickens. Any self respecting person would aspire to being detached from the great unwashed.

I'd love to have a big mansion on Barnton Avenue and a small castle in the Highlands too - but that's not going to be possible for 5.6 million people.

You can hardly call the New Town's apartments or Morningside tenements slums. Indeed, countries like Sweden, Denmark, Germany, Switzerland all have higher standards of living than we do, and a much higher proportion of people living in flats.

So you are pushing palatial apartments for the rich and rabbit hutches for the masses. Very few decent high rise / blocks of flats built in UK in last 70 years at least that would persuade people to be desperate to aspire to one.

Not at all. I'm as unhappy as you that there are so few high quality, medium density flats available in the UK.

The real rabbit hutches are the tiny Barratt detached houses with no storage, a plastic lawn, miles away from any public services or stuff to do. They are actually smaller than a nice Scandinavian-style apartment with a coffee shop below and a tram taking you into town.