Shameless BBC stars still dodge their tax
10 women set to sue BBC over pay
THE BBC pay row deepened last night after it admitted some of its richest stars use a potential tax dodge.
The high-profile presenters have their salaries routed through personal service companies so they can avoid income tax.
The corporation refused to say which individuals benefit from the cosy deals, which it supposedly banned five years ago.
BBC chiefs have been under siege since obeying a Government order to name their staff who earn more than the Prime Minister’s £150,000 salary.
The figures showed up a huge gender pay gap and ten female presenters are reportedly considering suing for discrimination.
The top earners were Chris Evans with up to £2.25million last year and Gary Lineker with up to £1.8million.
Labour MP Margaret Hodge said the corporation should come clean about which staff were paid ‘off the books’.
She added: ‘For the BBC not to have dealt with the issue of personal service companies – which are only a vehicle to avoid tax – is inexcusable.’
It also emerged yesterday that:
More than 100 BBC managers are on a second ‘rich list’ of staff on £150,000 or more;
As with the broadcasting stars, two thirds are men;
Panicked bosses scrambled to stop Newsnight’s Emily Maitlis leaving;
Radio 4’s John Humphrys said he took a pay cut just before the bombshell list was released;
Top earners could be spared exposure by switching to the BBC’s commercial arm.
A public outcry greeted a report in 2012 that found the corporation was paying more than 124 stars via personal service companies.
Used by freelance and casual staff, it allows workers to be taxed as a company rather than an individual.
That attracts corporation tax of around 20 per cent instead of income tax of up to 45 per cent. Beneficiaries also avoid national insurance and can receive a slice of any dividends tax-free.
The system was established for flexible workers such as plumbers and childminders.
But critics say it is now widely exploited by highly paid professionals.
BBC bosses pledged to move stars on to its books as fulltime employees. But yesterday the corporation confirmed that some are still being paid through personal firms, including presenters who were on Wednesday’s list.
The Mail has discovered that Evans, Jeremy Vine and Claudia Winkleman have personal companies.
Also among the top BBC earners who have private firms are Alan Shearer, Alex Jones, Huw Edwards, Steve Wright, Simon Mayo, Nicky Campbell, Nick Grimshaw, Vanessa Feltz and Radio Ulster presenter Stephen Nolan.
There is no way of knowing if they are paid by the BBC through them.
The corporation is refusing to say and the presenters either did not comment or did not respond when approached by the Mail.
Vine, who earns up to £749,999 a year, owns a firm named Secondhand Daylight, which reported in accounts having more than £500,000 ‘at bank and in hand’.
Another company, Jelly Vine Productions, is owned 51 per cent by Vine, 30 per cent by his wife Rachel and 19 per cent by daughter Martha, who is only 13. Shareholders’ funds are listed as having been £897,000 in 2014.
Match of the Day host Lineker’s firm All Jazz was put into liquidation in 2014.
He received just over £1million from the closure of the firm, which he established for ‘production activities’.
There is no suggestion that any of these firms was used to avoid paying all tax due.
Tory MP Philip Davies said: ‘It is totally and utterly unacceptable for the BBC to be colluding with presenters to help them avoid paying tax. If they are full-time employees they should not be paid through companies.
‘The BBC should reveal the names of the people being paid in this way.’
More than a third of the BBC’s highest earners could disappear from the list next year. Strictly Come Dancing, The One Show, EastEnders, Casualty and Holby City will be produced by BBC Studios, which is a commercial entity so will not have to publish figures.
‘A vehicle to avoid tax’
MORE than 100 BBC managers are on a second ‘rich list’ of staff at the broadcaster who earn more than the Prime Minister.
While the list of best-paid stars drew most attention yesterday, the BBC was also forced to reveal the extent of its largesse to executives who work behind the scenes.
The Corporation said that 106 staff and a dozen contractors each received more than £150,000 last year, led by director general Tony Hall on £450,000.
And that did not even include BBC Worldwide chief Tim Davie, who is on £682,000. He was exempt because BBC Worldwide is a commercial entity.
The rich list helped to push the BBC’s wage bill above the £1billion mark and plunge the Corporation firmly into the red. It overspent by £129million last year, despite a £127million boost to its income.
But the sky-high salaries and overspending were not the only controversies relating to the second rich list .
In a revelation that will spark further anger over the BBC’s gender pay gap, fewer than a third of those on the 106strong roll of top-paid staff were women.
Deputy director Anne Bulford, director of BBC content Charlotte Moore, and HR director Valerie Hughes-D’Aeth stand out as three of the biggest-earners, on £435,000, £325,000 and £310,000 a year.
However, most of the other top-paid executives are little-known men each raking in six-figure sums.
Stuart Page, director of product and systems, Bruce Malcolm, Scotland’s head of service development, and Richard Cooper, controller of digital distribution, collected up to £200,000 each.
Other big earners included James Purnell, the former Labour Cabinet secretary turned director of radio and education, on £295,000 a year, and Bob Shennan, another director of radio, close behind on £271,000.
Ian Haythornthwaite, a director of finance who has such a tight grip on the detail he once claimed a £3.90 tram fare on expenses, received £241,000.
It is a depressingly similar picture to the one painted by the rich list of top talent, which revealed that many wellknown women earn less than £150,000 while men that viewers had hardly heard of raked in hundreds of thousands.
Nearly half (48 per cent) of BBC staff are women but they only outnumber men on the lowest rungs of the ladder. Men outnumber women two to one on the top management ‘grades’.
Even with this gender pay gap, the BBC boasted that its workforce is ‘more inclusive than its ever been’. It also tried to insist that it is saving money.
Lord Hall highlighted the BBC’s ‘record on efficiency’ on Wednesday, claiming that the corporation had made £172million in ‘efficiency savings’ across the year.
‘We are over-delivering against savings,’ he said.
The BBC annual report in front of him disclosed that the Corporation had overspent by £129.1million after it hired 28 extra staff – bringing its headcount to 19,254 – and lavished cash sending more than 450 workers to the Rio Olympics.
Anne Bulford, the deputy director general, admitted that the number of staff had risen but insisted that the ‘underlying’ headcount had fallen.
She said the BBC axed more than 500 jobs last year to save money, but that it then recruited even more than it had got rid of because of various new projects. It went on a hiring spree as it expanded the World Service into different countries, tried to bring out-sourced jobs in-house, funded apprenticeships and bolstered its technology unit.
She also insisted that the overspend did not count as an overspend because it was ‘planned’.
‘The BBC operates to break even over time and in different years…last year we recorded a surplus, this year we recorded a deficit of £129million. That’s planned. And the reasons for that is 2016/17 [sic] was a very big sports year.
‘We had both the euros and the wonderful Olympics from Rio.’
‘More inclusive than it’s ever been’