The multimillionaire husband of the embattled Conservative peer Michelle Mone is linked to a series of tax avoidance companies that may have assisted their clients in submitting misleading claims to HM Revenue and Customs, documents suggest.
Files and emails relating to the activities of companies connected to Douglas Barrowman were obtained by the thinktank Tax Policy Associates, and have been seen by the Guardian and BBC Newsnight. Experts say the material raises questions about whether the companies in question – and those connected to them – should be investigated for any role they played in providing misleading information to HMRC about tax affairs.
Barrowman, who shares a home on the Isle of Man with Mone, has been battling to restore his reputation after the couple became embroiled in a scandal over the profits made from £200m in contracts to supply personal protective equipment (PPE) to the NHS during the Covid pandemic. Mone, who has taken leave of absence from the Lords but remains a Conservative peer, admitted last month she and Barrowman had lied to journalists about their involvement with a company called PPE Medpro, which is under investigation by the National Crime Agency. Mone and Barrowman both deny any wrongdoing.
In the 2016 budget, the government announced it would clamp down on a scheme being promoted by companies including Barrowman-connected businesses, which was marketed to self-employed contractors as a way to slash their tax bills. The new documents suggest contractors who had used the “disguised remuneration” scheme were advised by Barrowman-connected firms in 2019 to contact another company, Vanquish Options, which appears to have also had multiple links to the businessman.
Clients were then provided with letters, signed by directors of the tax avoidance companies, to send to HMRC. Experts say these appear to present a misleading picture of the financial affairs of Vanquish clients, and the tax office should investigate whether any offence has been committed.
Lawyers for Barrowman and his firm Knox Group said: “Our client does not propose to rehearse its legal position in correspondence with you. However, your outright and unqualified allegations of dishonesty, wrongdoing and misconduct are denied by our clients in their entirety.”
Fortune
Barrowman has been a highly successful – if controversial – business figure since long before he and his wife became embroiled in the PPE scandal. Asked by a 2015 Channel 4 documentary why he had bought two yachts, he replied: “I suppose the flippin’ answer is because I can.”
A sizeable portion of his fortune is believed to have been made from a tax avoidance company, AML Tax (UK), which was considered to be at the forefront of selling disguised remuneration schemes.
The schemes, marketed in the 2010s, aimed to cut self-employed contractors’ income taxes by arranging for them to be paid for their work via loans, which are not taxed as they ordinarily have to be paid back. They were marketed on the basis that debts would never be repaid, meaning contractors were remunerated without paying taxes incurred on standard earnings.
In 2016, the UK government moved to close down the practice. It introduced a “loan charge”, which took effect in 2019, and was designed to claw back unpaid taxes by people who, HMRC said, used disguised remuneration schemes from April 1999. The move resulted in an estimated 61,000 contractors facing life-changing bills for unpaid taxes, sometimes totalling hundreds of thousands of pounds. The promoters, however, were not pursued by the tax office.
Aberdeen-based David Johnstone, 70, a retired offshore oil safety consultant, said he used the services of one of the loan companies connected to Barrowman for about five months during 2014 and 2015. He said he paid about £88,000 of his contractor fees to the Barrowman-connected company and received about £56,000 back in loans, but said he became concerned about the arrangement and backed out of the deal.
Johnstone now has an outstanding loan charge bill for about £24,000 – which he insisted he would not pay until HMRC started pursuing the promoters.
“HMRC have behaved very poorly in this matter,” he said. “They’ve chased us hard but seem to be ignoring the purveyors of this snake oil.”
AML was just one of the companies whose clients were affected – but it attracted more attention than most.
In the Commons in October 2019, Carol Monaghan, the MP for Glasgow North West, said: “Companies such as AML that have promoted the schemes are getting away scot-free. AML and its director, Doug Barrowman, appear to have moved away with no consequences whatever. In fact, they are boasting that HMRC is not pursuing them for any assets or unpaid taxes.”
Vanquish
Under the legislation, no loan charge was due if the self-employed contractors had paid back the disguised remuneration loans.
So AML recommended its clients contact another company, Vanquish Options, which the new documents suggest also had multiple links to Barrowman.
The Vanquish pitch was that the self-employed contractors should repay about 5% of the value of their loans and for Vanquish to arrange for a third-party company to take on the liability for the remaining 95%.
Six of the original tax avoidance companies – which are linked back to Barrowman via public records and electronic metadata contained within the documents sent to contractors – then provided letters, written on headed paper and signed by their directors, stating in identical language that their loans had been “repaid and provided for and as at the date of this letter there is no outstanding liability”. The statements were sent by Vanquish to its clients, which they provided to HMRC.
However, as the contractors had not repaid the loans, the claim that the money had been repaid appears to be misleading.
One document, which was later sent by HMRC to a contractor using Vanquish’s services, stated: “None of the loans from the original providers were repaid.” It concluded: “We do not believe that these arrangements work”, adding: “We consider the main purpose of the Vanquish arrangements was to avoid the loan charge and so meets the definition of a tax avoidance arrangement”.
Ray McCann, a former president of the Chartered Institute of Taxation and a former HMRC inspector, said: “Vanquish couldn’t make a credible argument that they didn’t intend or expect the letters to be read by HMRC or used as evidence by those involved that their loans had been repaid. The letters misrepresent the position, raising concerns a criminal offence has been committed.”
In 2019 Barrowman’s lawyers denied to the Times he had “any involvement or interest in Vanquish Options”. A year later they told BBC Radio 4’s File on Four that neither Barrowman nor his group of companies called Knox had at any time owned or controlled Vanquish.
The new records include 2019 emails sent from both Vanquish and Barrowman’s company, AML. The metadata of both companies’ emails sets out that they were sent from the same IP address, which suggests the messages were sent from the same computer.
Furthermore, loan agreements between separate Barrowman-connected companies and self-employed contractors, which also form part of the records obtained by Tax Policy Associates, were created on software packages that appeared to be registered to a Vanquish Options email address.
It is not clear what role, if any, Barrowman played in the Vanquish scheme or the letters.
Lawyers for Barrowman and Knox Group did not answer the Guardian’s detailed questions about their client’s connections to Vanquish Options or the other linked companies.
A spokesperson for Knox Group said: “This investigation is based on a partial and incomplete understanding of the facts. HMRC has had disclosures of all relevant documents and information relating to the loan charge arrangements for a lengthy period and both parties have been engaged in an ongoing and extensive process of dialogue and disclosure with the HMRC for several years in relation to such schemes. HMRC has never even suggested, let alone alleged, that there has been any form of dishonesty or wrongdoing by the Knox Group. To allege otherwise is speculative and not justified.
“At least 50,000 people were affected by the loan charge. Literally hundreds of companies and advisers sold these legally compliant arrangements at the time. The Knox Group accounted for a tiny percentage of this number overall.
“The Knox Group deeply and sincerely regrets that any contractor or their families suffered any distress or anguish arising from tax charges levied by HMRC when it retrospectively amended the relevant legal framework.
“This retrospective change in the law was a matter of industry-wide criticism at the time from bodies – such as the Chartered Institute of Taxation and the Institute of Chartered Accountants.
“The Knox Group denies any and all allegations of dishonesty, misconduct and wrongdoing.”
An HMRC spokesperson said: “We neither confirm nor deny investigations and cannot comment on identifiable individuals or businesses. We collect the tax due under the law, creating a level playing field for everyone and funding public services. We are determined to drive promoters of tax avoidance out of business.
“The loan charge seeks to recover tax that has been avoided by disguising income as loans. It is our responsibility to collect the tax that people owe.
“We take the wellbeing of all taxpayers very seriously and recognise that dealing with large tax liabilities can lead to pressure on individuals. Above all we want to prevent people getting into these types of situations and our message is clear – if a tax scheme sounds too good to be true, it probably is.”
