- Craig Oliver was secretary of Paya Limited, a business set up to deal with his BBC presenter partner Joanna Gosling‘s earnings
- Companies House figures seen by MailOnline show around £150,000 a year was paid into the firm
- The Daily Mirror claims the business could have saved her £22,000 a year in tax
- ‘Speculation around her financial benefits from setting up a company is wildly inaccurate,’ a source close to the couple said
David Cameron‘s spin doctor helped his celebrity wife run an ‘avoidance’ scheme that may have diverted thousands away from the tax man, it was claimed today.
Craig Oliver’s partner, BBC news presenter Joanna Gosling, could have pocketed an extra £22,000 a year by being paid through a private company the pair set up, according to newspaper reports.
It comes just days after the Prime Minister declared comedian Jimmy Carr ‘morally wrong’ for putting millions in an offshore tax dodging scheme.
But it appears one of his closest aides helped his wife to run a company for several years that may have reduced the tax she paid on her estimated £150,000-a-year earnings
‘It is total hypocrisy and Craig Oliver should stay out of Downing Street until it is sorted out,’ Labour MP John Mann told the Mirror last night.
‘The Jimmy Carr publicity stunt has clearly come back to haunt the Prime Minister.’
Mr Oliver, who is a former senior BBC executive, ran Paya Limited with Ms Gosling to handle her earnings. He was paid £2,999.97 to be secretary
The TV presenter hit the headlines herself recently after wearing a short skirt to work on the BBC Breakfast sofa.
Classed as a ‘TV and journalism’ company, they were helped by accountant Nicholas Ridge, who says he helps TV producers ‘make sure their tax bills are kept as low as possible’.
Figures from Companies House seen by MailOnline show that around £150,000 a year was funnelled into Paya.
If Ms Gosling had earned the cash via PAYE she would have paid around £52,000 a year in income tax and national insurance, according to the Mirror.
But paying herself via a company would have allowed her to cut this to as little as £29,800, making a tax saving of up to £22,000 a year, the paper claims.
These are based on figures to 2008, when the company changed the type of return it sent to Companies House.
Last year Mr Oliver quit as Paya’s secretary after details of the company emerged, not long after Mr Cameron’s previous spin doctor and former News of the World editor Andy Coulson resigned over the hacking scandal.
Mr Oliver was also in the news last month after he was filmed giving BBC political correspondent Norman Smith a dressing down over his coverage of the Leveson Inquiry.
A source close to Mr Oliver told MailOnline today: ‘There was never any tax saving motive. It was a condition of employment by the BBC.
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Good grief *facepalm*
You just couldn’t make it up.
it just gets better we pay they evade just typical of our gloroius leaders rip off britain where the poor pay for the rich because they cant part with a penny jeff3 shame on you
So damn ludicrous and glad Camerons being made a fool of again. How is he still leader of the party, even his cohorts must be embarrassed by now?