Mone husband linked to tax scheme that caused suicides

THE husband of Baroness Mone, the former Conservative peer, has been linked to promoters of tax avoidance schemes which left workers facing crippling bills, with some taking their lives.

Doug Barrowman is connected to the firm AML Tax, which sold tax-saving schemes to self-employed workers in the 2010s. HMRC, which said the firm is part of Mr Barrowman’s Isle of Manbased Knox Group, has previously referred to it as “Doug Barrowman’s tax avoidance firm”.

Another company of Mr Barrowman’s, PPE Medpro, is being investigated by the National Crime Agency after it was awarded more than £200million worth of government contracts during Covid.

In November, Lady Mone admitted she lied about her involvement in the company. Mr Barrowman and Lady Mone have denied criminal wrongdoing. AML Tax’s schemes paid contractors via loans to avoid income tax and National Insurance. In 2017, the tax authority cracked down on these schemes, levying a “loan charge” against the contractors and demanding all disputed taxes be repaid.

HMRC has since pursued 60,000 contractors for tax liabilities worth sometimes hundreds of thousands. There have so far been 10 suicides in connection to the loan charge.

In a call for evidence in 2022, the Loan Charge & Taxpayer all-party parliamentary group found that AML was responsible for 189 of the 1,006 schemes reported to it. AML Tax was fined £150,000 in March 2022 for failing to provide HMRC with information required as part of a tax investigation.

Mr Barrowman and Knox Group did not respond to a request for comment.

Lawyers for Knox Group told the BBC it denied “any and all allegations of dishonesty, misconduct and wrongdoing”.