Comic Jimmy Carr to pay £500,000 tax bill

COMEDIAN JIMMY CARR is to pay around £500,000 in tax after leaving the controversial K2 tax avoidance scheme that left him paying a rate of just 1%.

As a result, his company is now paying full corporation tax. The legal, but infamously “morally repugnant” scheme worked by transferring salaries into a Jersey-based trust, which lent investors back the money. As the loan could technically be recalled, it was not subject to income tax. It sheltered £168m from the taxman annually.

As a result of the revelations, Carr became the face of the government’s battle against tax avoidance, with the prime minister branding the comedian’s tax affairs “dodgy” during a state visit to Mexico.

But the comic’s latest accounts for his business, FN Good Ltd, for the year ending April 2013, reveal it made a £2.5m profit, the Mirror reports. The tax bill is based on 23% of his earnings.

His tweeted apology at the time read: “I met with a financial adviser and he said, ‘do you want to pay less tax? It’s totally legal’. I said ‘yes’. I now realise I’ve made a terrible error of judgment.”

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