Dubai Dicky faces a third week of tax tales

Another week, another raft of allegations for Reform deputy leader Richard Tice, who must treat the Sunday Times thudding through his letterbox this week the way the rest of us do an annual tax bill.

Last month, the newspaper ran a story on its front page headlined “Tice ‘avoided £600,000 in tax”, outlining how Dubai Dicky managed to avoid paying the sum after obtaining a rare and obscure legal status for his company, which owns a number of industrial estates.

The following weekend, it published a follow-up story, again by Whitehall editor Gabriel Pogrund, claiming that Tice’s company broke the law by failing to pay tens of thousands of pounds in tax on dividends which were paid to him and his offshore trust. It said that Tice, the party’s business, trade and energy spokesman, received at least £91,000 in excess as a result of the failure.

The party claimed the row was “a minor administrative error”, with Zia Yusuf, its home affairs spokesperson, telling Sky News it was a “non-story” and Tice himself calling the failure a “technicality” and saying “overall HMRC received the correct amount of tax due”.

Then this weekend, Pogrund was back on the beat, reporting how Tice had failed to pay almost £100,000 in corporation tax, benefiting his investment company, which then made large donations to Reform UK. The paper claimed he ran four shell companies which did not pay any tax on profits between 2020 and 2022, with the entities existing purely to receive dividends from Tice’s property investment firm and passing on the money – including the cash that tax specialists say is owed to HMRC – to their parent company.

In response, Tice put out a lengthy statement on social media predominantly attacking how “Establishment [sic] media is coming after me” but also acknowledging mistakes may have been made.

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“Here’s the reality: tax efficiency is a basic corporate responsibility and duty to shareholders. A long career with multiple businesses is bound to feature some errors. Naturally I am always happy to put things right and if numbers need rechecking, of course I will pay what is owed – be that more or less.” he wrote. He also added that “after several weeks of this treatment, I won’t be indulging the Sunday Times any further”.

Which would suggest that, having greeted the first Pogrund story by immediately threatening legal action over what he deemed a “libellous” tale, he is no longer looking to pursue the paper in the courts. It is understood that Tice has yet to trigger anything legal.

Still, just the threat that he might, possibly, one day was enough for Reform’s in-house TV station to pull down the shutters on the story. GB News, where Tice presented his own Sunday Sermon show until last year, has declined to cover it on the basis that he was considering legal action.

When Labour MP Tom Hayes appeared on Camilla Tominey’s show at the weekend, the presenter stopped him as soon as he mentioned Tice’s tax affairs, telling him to “park that right now” and demanding they “reconstitute” the interview before he “really embarrasses himself”.

Later that day, she took to X to say that the “Tice tax claims are the subject of legal action”. When tax expert Dan Neidle – heavily quoted in the Sunday Times stories – said that they were not currently the subject of a court complaint and that Tice had yet to identify a single error, she wrote: “No I won’t correct it because I was told by the channel’s lawyers this morning, before going on air, not to repeat the allegations because Tice was planning to sue. With respect Dan – I’ll take instructions from them not you. Thank you and good luck.”

Except there would be nothing to stop the allegations being repeated even if Tice had begun legal action. The main restriction on media organisations is in criminal cases when proceedings are said to be active – eg, someone had been arrested.

Any action Tice took would be the civil, not criminal courts, having no impact on the freedom of the media to report – as GB News’s lawyers and Tominey, an experienced journalist, should know. Still, at least someone’s got Dicky’s back!