Don’t blame Jeremy Vine for BBC’s tax dodge

PERFECTLY legally, Radio 2 presenter Jeremy Vine funnels his earnings through a company, amusingly called Jelly Vine Productions, says our media and technology editor, Katherine Rushton. Vine’s ten year-old daughter, Martha, is a JVP shareholder, she adds. Meaning that JVP profits are taxed at between 23 and 24 per cent, instead of 40 per cent. Jeremy has 51 per cent, wife Rachel 30 per cent and Martha 19 per cent. All above board, not suspect in any shape or form, on the straight and narrow. But Vine seems to work only for the BBC, if we don’t count the speeches, books and other celebrity work he acquires as a result of his BBC prominence. So why isn’t he subject to the more onerous PAYE, like most of us, which would mean paying 40 per cent-plus in tax? Katherine Rushton explains it arises from ‘the BBC practice of paying some presenters off its books, using money from the millions of pounds [£3 billion-plus, actually] it earns in licence fee-payers’ money’. Naturally, the BBC won’t comment. Its existence depends on a legally enforced licence fee. So it looks bad to be seen to facilitate tax avoidance. Nor do I scold Jeremy Vine, far less his blameless daughter, Martha. I am sure he — and others wholly dependent on the BBC — would comply with PAYE if obliged by the Corporation to do so. Only thing is, this would mean the BBC admitting it was wrong to agree to this practice in the first place. The BBC’s under-the-counter tax avoiding is similar to its tolerance of Jimmy Savile’s rampant sexual abuse. Facing up to it would have involved confessing to the wrongdoing. Meaning heads would roll. Or, deputy heads.