In a crackdown on tax avoidance by ‘disguised employees', HMRC has claimed that TV presenter and former England striker Gary Lineker is liable to pay £4.9 million in income tax and National Insurance contributions (NICs).

In tax tribunal documents released earlier this month, HMRC saidLineker owes the tax authority £3,621,735.90 and £1,313,755.38 in NICs for work he did for the BBC between the 2013/14 and 2016/17 tax years and for BT Sport during the 2015/16 and 2017/18 tax years.

It claims that Lineker should have been taxed as an employee of the two companies, while the 60-year-old argues he was self-employed at the time and contracted out his work through his personal service company, Gary Lineker Media, and thus was only liable to pay corporation tax.

The case is one of HMRC's long-running strings of IR35 cases, legislation designed to crack down on workers who bill for their services through limited companies for a lower tax bill, despite essentially being employees of their client.

The rules changed last month to bring the private sector into IR35 regulation, which puts the onus of determining tax status into the hands of the company hiring the contractor.

If a contractor works is deemed to be essentially an employee of a medium or large company they have contracted their services to, they might be liable to pay more in tax.

Get in touch with us to discuss IR35.