England Players Involved in Tax Avoidance

England international players may not have what it takes to do well in major tournaments but they are pretty successful when it comes to tax avoidance.

As the morality or immorality debate over tax avoidance rages on following last week’s revelation that comedian Jimmy Carr has sheltered over £3 million from HMRC through the K2 tax avoidance scheme, the Mail on Sunday reported that a number of the English Euro 2012 squad, including its manager, are also partial to a bit of tax avoidance.

Wayne Rooney invested money in film partnerships assembled by Ingenious Media and also Waverton Property LLP, an investment in a Birmingham data centre. The latter scheme was also favoured by Manchester United and City stars, Danny Welbeck and Joe Hart.

Ingenious Media film plans also attracted England captain Steven Gerrard, Scott Parker and Joleon Lescott. BBC Match of the Day presenter, Gary Lineker was also amongst the number of investors in several of the investment and advisory groups' schemes.

The two English full backs, Ashley Cole and Glen Johnson put money into plans offered by Future Films, a financing group that has had its schemes challenged by HMRC. The Revenue however lost their action to deny tax reliefs in the schemes that both players were involved in. Rather than the scheme being one of tax avoidance however, it deferred tax, so said a spokesman on behalf of Cole and Johnson.

Even the national team’s manager, Roy Hodgson, put money into the Harcourt Capital Scheme that purchased a data centre in the North East as part of the plan so as to utilise enterprise zone tax reliefs.

The film investment schemes are all legal and make use of available tax reliefs and there is no suggestion that HMRC have been misled. Investors in the schemes buy rights to a film, which is then leased back to the studio for a number of years. This generates a loss in the first year which can be offset by the investor. Losses however were often greater than the total sums of monies invested, enabling the players to obtain tax refunds in excess of their stake.

Ingenious Media claim that they are 'not in the business of tax avoidance' and that all their activities are 'bona fide commercial ventures, as evidenced by the film profits we have generated for investors.'

Harcourt Capital, promoter of the Waverton investment, maintain that the scheme gives rise to genuine commercial risk, giving validity  to the sizeable tax reliefs that allow participators to get a return on their money at a very early stage.  

It will be interesting to see whether or not the apparent public distaste of those involved in tax avoidance extends to the exponents of our national game.