Lord Sugar’s £58m answer to questions over tax avoidance
‘Apprentice’ star shows off huge payment to rebuff claims made by Labour fans after he criticised Corbyn
LORD SUGAR yesterday disclosed that he had made one of Britain’s largest ever personal tax payments, in a rebuke to Labour supporters who had accused him of tax avoidance.
The billionaire tweeted a picture of a cheque for more than £58million to HM Revenue & Customs.
“To the people who have responded to my advice not to vote for Corbyn saying I want to avoid paying tax .... I paid this personally in January,” he wrote.
The particularly large payment came as a result of a large dividend Lord Sugar had paid to himself from Amshold, his holding company. A spokesman admitted that the timing was intended to “take advantage before the tax rates went up” earlier this year.
Lord Sugar sits as an independent peer, having resigned from Labour in 2015 after becoming disillusioned with its “negative business policies” and “anti-enterprise concepts”. The peer, previously one of Labour’s biggest donors, had come under fire from supporters of Jeremy Corbyn during the election campaign after advising followers on Twitter to abandon Labour.
In an interview last month he suggested that he would be voting for the Conservatives. In one post on Twitter Lord Sugar described Mr Corbyn as “clueless”, adding that he could not be a “serious prime minister”.
Other users accused the peer of opposing Mr Corbyn simply because of his plans to significantly increase tax bills for higher earners.
One asked: “Scared of paying more are we?” The famously combative businessman, who started his career selling electrical goods from the back of a van, replied: “More what you idiot???
“I paid over £50m personally. If tax too high we go away and shut down firms and p----- like you will be out of work.” Yesterday he tweeted: “If you admire or trust me. An east end boy done good by honest graft. For the good of the UK I sincerely advise NOT to vote for Corbyn.”
The 70-year-old tycoon and star of the BBC’S The Apprentice rose to fame in the Seventies on the back of his Amstrad computer firm, but his business interests now mainly lie in commercial property. The picture later tweeted by Lord Sugar showed a cheque made out to HMRC from a personal account, for £58,646,028.44. It was dated Jan 25.
A spokesman for the peer said the bill was for dividends Lord Sugar had taken home in the last financial year.
Accounts filed with Companies House show that Amshold, which is solely owned by Lord Sugar, paid out £181 million in total over the 12 months to the end of June 2016.
Lord Sugar, who was made a Labour peer in 2009, warned previously: “Corbyn’s lot view the Alan Sugars of this world as some kind of demons”, adding: “Their view is like communism.”