Party claims Tice’s £91,000 tax row is a ‘minor administrative error’. 14 hours earlier. Joe PikePolitical correspondent. PA Media. Reform UK’s deputy leader Richard Tice’s property firm was embroiled in a tax dispute, which the party dismissed as “a minor administrative error.” The firm, established and owned by Tice, neglected to pay £91,000 in tax prior to distributing dividends to him and his offshore trust, the Sunday Times reported. Tice described the oversight as a “technicality,” insisting that “HMRC ultimately received the full tax owed.” Labour branded the controversy “a major scandal that strikes at the core of Richard Tice’s integrity and credibility.” An HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) spokesperson stated: “We neither confirm nor deny investigations and cannot comment on identifiable individuals.” Quidnet REIT Limited, Tice’s company, invests in real estate. The Sunday Times reported that it “failed to pay a required 20 per cent levy on [its] dividends … before transferring profits to Tice and his Jersey-registered trust.” Zia Yusuf, Reform UK’s home affairs spokesperson, described it as “a minor administrative error” and called it a “non-story” on Sky News. “Any tax not paid or underpaid by the dividend-paying company… was overpaid by Richard himself through income tax,” Yusuf explained. “So it appears HMRC settled it by netting off.” In an X post, Tice stated that the Sunday Times’s article showed “overall HMRC received the correct amount of tax due.” He remarked that the newspaper was “effectively complaining I paid too much tax rather than [my] company pay some tax on my behalf.” A Labour spokesperson commented: “This is a major scandal which goes to the heart of Richard Tice’s integrity and credibility.” Reform can’t overlook it. “Richard Tice must urgently clarify if his business complied with the law and paid all the taxes it owed.”
