Greg's time on breakfast

[Jono]

MANY of the BBC’s highest-paid presenters have set up service companies that help them to pay less tax and will enable them to escape the full impact of Labour’s 50% levy on the rich.

Long-serving stars including Jeremy Paxman, Fiona Bruce and James Naughtie have set themselves up as freelance contractors rather than staffers.

The device enables the BBC and its presenters to lower their tax bills legally, leaving the rest of the country to shoulder a larger burden.

A Sunday Times investigation has found more than 20 BBC presenters who are classed as freelance for tax purposes and have set up service companies to channel their earnings.

They include Emily Maitlis and Gavin Esler, the Newsnight hosts, and Sophie Raworth, the One O’clock News reader, as well as Sarah Montague, presenter of Radio 4’s Today programme, and Jeremy Vine, the Radio 2 host.

The corporation has also kept hundreds of other presenters off its books by putting them on freelance deals. They include John Humphrys, who has presented the Today programme since 1987.

Since then many of the corporation’s best known names have founded these companies.Naughtie founded Pagoda Works in late 2007. He was followed by Newsnight’s Gavin Esler, with Eat the Peach; Maitlis calls her company Mouse Inc, while Bruce, who reads the Ten O’Clock News and presents the Antiques Roadshow, has Paradox Productions.

Fearne Cotton and Chris Moyles, the Radio 1 DJs, have similar companies. So, too, do Declan Curry, a business presenter, and Adrian Chiles, presenter of The One Show. Paxman founded Out in the Dark in May this year.

By designating a presenter as freelance rather than staff, the BBC saves the cost of paying National Insurance, levied at 12.8% of salary. An individual paid through a service company pays corporation tax of as little as 21%, with a further dividend tax on any other money they take out.

The tax payable by a star such as Paxman, earning £1m, would be £627,000 from April if he were on staff, compared with £520,100 corporation tax and dividend tax if he used a service company and paid out the entire fee as a dividend.

Richard Murphy, an accountant who campaigns against tax avoidance, said a presenter using a service company could also defer tax and make use of large expenses allowances.

Senior BBC presenters said the corporation had spelt out the financial advantages of being classed as freelance — and warned presenters of the price of joining the staff.

http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/tv_and_radio/article6860238.ece

[E*F*4L]

i don't blame them !

would you want to give more than half your wages to Alistair Darling so he can squander it on stupid idea's ?

if i was earning more than £100,000 a year i wouldn't want to pay £50,000 in tax, i would rather leave the UK & work somewhere else, & if you were on that sort of money you clearly know what you are doing & wouldn't find it to hard to get another job in your line somewhere else.

also you have to laugh at the MP's who's wage falls just below the threshold of the new tax, their expensive don't fall into it though so they can still cream it off the top.

[fathomer90]

What stupid ideas does Darling squander them on?

[DarkAngelMJH]

I don't blame them either, I'd do the same thing.

[Guest inxces4308]

This has to be a joke?

This is one of the most common things to do.

It doesn't just help tax wise, there are tons of other things to get from setting up a company and 'offering' your services to another company.. EG. They can work for other companies than just the BBC!

And....Who would blame them for wanting to pay less tax? Thats what we all want to do.

[augusta92]

There are 2 main issues

the first is that although many people want to pay less tax, very few people legally are able to do so without some kind of bending of the rules..paid for by an expensive accountant...so only the richest and most well paid can take advantage of this.

the second is that a lot of the poorer sections of society desperately need the monies raised by taxes to afford the basics, especially the old, young and those with mental or physical needs.

In my opinion it isnt fair if the richest section of society, who often earn their money for fairly easy jobs like presenting! dont pay their fair share to society via taxes. (its not like they are soldiers risking their lives for their country or nurses working long shifts trying to cope with the emotional trama of the terminally ill etc)

[Robbie Keane]

Just because we can't, doesn't meant we wouldn't. If I had a way to pay less taxes, I'd take it in a heartbeat. Plus, being freelance does have its downsides (no sick pay, tougher contract negotiations).

But eh, if it's legal then who really gives a fuck?

[matt_32510]

I know people who have done this and I don't blame them. This goes on the real world everyday.

[Chops]

Disgusting. The thing that makes this worse is presenters like Vine who then pretend to care and understand on his programme, the hardship suffered by the hardworking majority at the moment. They should pass a law making this kind of practice illegal. If these BBC stars and others like them paid in their fair share of taxes, ours would also be lower.

[Robbie Keane]

I doubt that.

[DarkAngelMJH]

What a stupid view Chops. As if ours would be lower if they paid more taxes, more likely that they would find another way to increase them.

[Chops]

hardly stupid just basic maths - if the government needs to raise say, 1 billion pounds, they can raise that by rich people paying higher taxes (50p to the pound), unless they tax dodge in which case its left to you and me to pick up the bill

[E*F*4L]

Disgusting. The thing that makes this worse is presenters like Vine who then pretend to care and understand on his programme, the hardship suffered by the hardworking majority at the moment. They should pass a law making this kind of practice illegal. If these BBC stars and others like them paid in their fair share of taxes, ours would also be lower.

so our taxes would be lower if Wossy, Moyles & vine paid more tax ?

ok then,

our taxes would also be lower if;

MP's didn't us our money to pay consultants to find ways to make their tax contributions lower,

money wasn't spent on PlayStation 3's for prisoners,

wasted on cctv cameras that don't cut crime,

given to the EU to subsidize farmers so we don't import from other countries & then throw produce away because it isn't the right size or shape,

bailing out banks that don't need to be bailed out,

paying for managers in hospitals (they were never needed before),

paying for a doubling in the civil service since Labour got in power even though the population hasn't doubled (just creating more job's for the boy's) thus creating Soviet town's in Labour heartlands,

gold plated pension's for the civil service when the rest of the working population have to pay for their own pension,

un-elected & useless quangos,

giving money to immigrants who have just entered the country illegally & housing them in nice secure units which they then destroy & then gets replaced & repaired,

i could go on !

put yourself in their (people paying 50% of their pay in tax) place, if you were in a job that where you were paid £200,000 a year would you be happy to just take home £100,000 ?

the reason these loopholes are in the law is because they are put in there by the people who make the laws so they can exploit them themselves.

one billion pounds is nothing, one of them new aircraft carriers we are supposed to be building cost's double that, the price of the war in Iraq has cost the United States more than one trillion dollars (five hundred billion pounds),

the so called financial wizkid Mr Gorden Brown cost the UK tax payer a billion pounds & more when he announced he was to sell of our reserves of gold sending the price of gold into free fall & then selling it for even less,

taxation without representation.

[Mike]

My dad does exactly the same thing, not in media though. Fair play to them all.

[DarkAngelMJH]

Basically sack the government and put some 'normal' as in no people like Brown in charge. I bet we could run the country better.

[Jugalug]

Basically sack the government and put some 'normal' as in no people like Brown in charge. I bet we could run the country better.

Who's we, and how are you deciding between him and us? We elected him.

[E*F*4L]

Who's we, and how are you deciding between him and us? We elected him.

i didn't vote for him, nobody voted for Brown !

[Jugalug]

i didn't vote for him, nobody voted for Brown !

No, but nobody voted for Blair. They voted for Labour. You elect the party, not the PM. And it was made pretty darn clear that Blair would not do a full term and that Brown was the likely successor.

[DarkAngelMJH]

We was just a general term for people.

[E*F*4L]

that Brown was the likely successor.

like a dictatorship

[Jugalug]

like a dictatorship

Do you know what a dictatorship is?

The powers of the PM are limited, especially by his opposition. Plus you have the chance to vote him out come election time.

Hitler had a very different experience.

[E*F*4L]

The powers of the PM are limited,

you can say that again :hahaha:

[Jugalug]

you can say that again :hahaha:

Well, I'm glad I bothered taking time to reply when you come back with eloquent stuff like that.

Seriously, though, grow up, and stop having such ill thought out one liners.

[sinister]

like a dictatorship

Yes a dictatorship like we had under heir thatcher. Everyone seems to think things are so bad under the current lot, but I remember things being far far bleaker under reichs chancellor thatcher*.

*not including the minority of parasites who get us into this mess from the city of London.

[Kelly]

This thread is hilarious to me, and I'm not sure why.

:hahaha: