Former Liverpool player loses £300,000 IR35 tax appeal
Former Liverpool player and Sky Sports pundit Phil Thompson owes HMRC nearly £300,000 after losing an appeal related to IR35 rules.
Thompson was a defender on the Liverpool FC team between the 1970s and 1980s. During his football days, he represented the England team on 42 occasions.
Following the end of his career on the field, he went on to be a pundit on Soccer Saturday on Sky Sports for 22 years until August 2020.
He supplied his services as a football pundit through his company, PD & MJ Ltd.
HMRC assessed his work for Sky from 2013-14 to 2017-18 and found that he belonged inside IR35 legislation. They concluded that he owed £294,306 in tax for PAYE and NIC.
Thompson first appealed against this decision to the First-tier Tribunal, but on 11 December 2023, the Tribunal dismissed his appeal.
He took his case to the Upper Tribunal in January. Still, the two judges dismissed his appeal on Monday, ruling it did not disclose a material error of law by the previous Trububal in making its decision.
Rebecca Seeley Harris, an IR35 expert at Re Legal Consulting, noted that “this is the sixth consecutive win for Revenue.”
In January, former Manchester United captain Bryan Robson lost part of his IR35 tax case against HMRC. The Tribunal found he was an ‘employee’ in his ambassadorial role at his former club.
In August, former Sky Sports rugby commentator Stuart Barnes was stung by IR35 after a Tribunal overturned his appeal to pay a near £700,000 bill to HMRC.
Gary Lineker’s dispute over a £4.9m tax bill went back to court in December as HMRC aimed to overturn a previous ruling in the Match of the Day presenter’s favour.
Qdos CEO, Seb Maley stated that “HMRC pursues a high profile freelance presenter who has fallen into the trap of working in a way that reflects disguised employment. The result is a staggering tax bill.”
While Seeley Harris explained that “it is getting more and more difficult to establish yourself as an independent contractor and the framework of control is becoming the dominant factor again”.
“The bigger picture is that HMRC sees IR35 compliance as a priority,” Maley added.
This comes after a government report earlier this month on IR35 revealed that £4.2bn in extra tax was generated since the reforms. However, experts warned that the impact “has been continually downplayed.”