{"id":7122,"date":"2022-07-14T12:12:00","date_gmt":"2022-07-14T11:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxpolicy.org.uk\/?p=7122"},"modified":"2022-10-14T12:13:33","modified_gmt":"2022-10-14T11:13:33","slug":"hunt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/2022\/07\/14\/hunt\/","title":{"rendered":"Did Jeremy Hunt avoid tax on his \u00a315m payout from the sale of Hotcourses?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>No.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This is the next in my series of posts on the Tory leadership candidates.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jeremy Hunt made a sweet <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/business-38638577\" target=\"_blank\">\u00a315m<\/a> from the <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/m.marketscreener.com\/quote\/stock\/IDP-EDUCATION-LIMITED-25036357\/news\/IDP-Education-Limited-completed-the-acquisition-of-Hotcourses-Ltd-from-Jeremy-Hunt-and-others-35215054\/\" target=\"_blank\">sale of Hotcourses<\/a>, the company he founded. There were a number of ways he could have avoided tax on the sale:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul><li>Hold Hotcourses through an offshore company (saving stamp duty<sup class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote \" data-mfn=\"1\" data-mfn-post-scope=\"0000000000002f4e0000000000000000_7122\"><a href=\"javascript:void(0)\"  role=\"button\" aria-pressed=\"false\" aria-describedby=\"mfn-content-0000000000002f4e0000000000000000_7122-1\">1<\/a><\/sup><span id=\"mfn-content-0000000000002f4e0000000000000000_7122-1\" role=\"tooltip\" class=\"modern-footnotes-footnote__note\" tabindex=\"0\" data-mfn=\"1\">Stamp duty is paid by the purchaser, but they typically knock it off the purchase price. Yes, it&#8217;s only 0.5%, but people still routinely avoid it<\/span> and, more importantly, capital gains with a bit of extra &#8220;planning&#8221;).<\/li><li><a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/2022\/05\/22\/how-to-avoid-cgt\/\" target=\"_blank\">Move abroad <\/a>before selling the shares.<\/li><li>Hold through a UK company and at least try to defer the capital gain.<\/li><li>Make some dubious claim to be a non-dom, and hold the Hotcourses shares offshore.<\/li><li>Use some dodgy tax avoidance scheme to try and magic the gain away (in 2017 this was about as plausible as a chocolate teapot, but that doesn&#8217;t always stop people trying).<\/li><li>Get some non-dom relatives to establish an offshore trust, have the trust establish a company in Gibraltar, and have that company hold the Hotcourses shares. Then the Gibraltan company makes a tax free profit. <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/2022\/07\/10\/zahawi\/\" target=\"_blank\">Hard to believe anyone would do something so transparent<\/a>.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>There&#8217;s no sign Hunt did any of this. The Companies House documents <a rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" href=\"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/assets\/hotcourses.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">show<\/a> that he held the shares himself and sold them himself. He probably paid around \u00a32m in tax. Good for him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"modern-footnotes-list \"><li><span>1<\/span><div>Stamp duty is paid by the purchaser, but they typically knock it off the purchase price. Yes, it&#8217;s only 0.5%, but people still routinely avoid it<\/div><\/li><\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No. No, he didn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7130,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[141],"tags":[129,130,106,124],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/07\/TELEMMGLPICT000302322850_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqwDIxTHuQZNmYookEhyB1O2QnZJIETfWB_fUbKb77n0w.webp","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7122"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7122"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7122\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8207,"href":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7122\/revisions\/8207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7122"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7122"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/heacham.neidles.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7122"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}