Millionaire business leader bankrolled Reform UK while owing HMRC
Reform UK deputy leader Richard Tice has avoided or failed to pay almost £800,000 in tax, according to an investigation by The Sunday Times newspaper.
Tice failed to pay almost £100,000 in corporation tax by an investment company he owns “which made large donations to Reform UK”, The Sunday Times revealed in its latest expose.
It reported Tice ran four ‘shell’ companies which did not pay any tax on its profits between 2020 and 2022 while the parent company of these ‘dormant’ businesses transferred £1,113,000 to Reform over the same period.
Tice, a multimillionaire and Reform’s leading financial backer until last year, owns a property investment company called Quidnet and is the party’s spokesperson on business and trade.
The newspaper reported on April 19 that it “has been investigating the complex and unusual structure of [Tice’s] company and its tax affairs” for weeks and noted: “The total tax Tice’s companies are known to have avoided through onshore and offshore entities, or failed to pay, now amounts to almost £800,000.”
Tice has dismissed his failure to pay tax as due to a “technicality”.
When confronted with The Sunday Times’ latest report, Tice issued a statement on social media saying he would be “happy to put things right . . . if my numbers need rechecking”.
The newspaper conducted its investigation alongside Tax Policy Associates, a not-for-profit organisation of tax experts, accountants, lawyers and former tax inspectors.
It described the withholding of tax by Tice’s companies as “unlawful” and accused Tice of signing company accounts which “wrongly claimed” £98,000 in tax exemptions.
Tax Policy Associates’ founder Dan Neidle told The Sunday Times that what Tice and his companies had done, and which the Reform deputy leader described as a “technicality”, involved breach of “a basic rule, not a grey area, and one widely understood”.
The investigation suggests that at least some of the money Tice provided to bankroll Farage and what became Reform UK from 2019 through to 2024 – initially as loans but subsequently converted to ‘gifts’ – should instead have been paid in tax.
Farage has pledged to cut tax rates on business and the wealthy and to slash spending on welfare and health if he wins a general election.