BBC star Jeremy Vine made his ten-year-old daughter a company director to help lower his tax bill by channeling funds through private firm

In a tongue-in-cheek guide to ‘tax accounting for the rich’, Jeremy Vine once advised the wealthy to find a ‘tax magician with the power to bend the rules, befuddle the tax inspector and make money invisible’.

Now it seems that the BBC Radio 2 star has taken his own advice to heart.

Mr Vine appears to have been using his ten-year-old daughter Martha to avoid tax payments.

The presenter of the Jeremy Vine Show and the TV quiz Eggheads, has been funnelling cash through a limited company, Jelly Vine Productions, of which she is a shareholder.

The controversial move will highlight the BBC’s practice of paying some presenters off its books using money from the millions of pounds it earns in licence fee-payers’ money.

In 2012, it emerged that more than 140 BBC stars were funnelling cash through private firms to avoid paying millions in tax. During the resulting furore, Mr Vine ran a spoof, ‘Jeremy’s six-step guide to tax avoidance for the rich’, on his radio show.

Jelly Vine Productions had almost £810,000 in cash on its books in 2013 – the last accounts available, and £1million in 2012. 

If the funds had been paid to Mr Vine through the Pay As You Earn scheme used by most firms, it would have been taxed at 40 or 45 per cent. 

But by channelling them through a private firm, he can declare them as company profits, subject to corporation tax of 23 or 24 per cent.

It is not clear whether these were earnings for Mr Vine’s BBC work or included other fees such as payments for speeches or book royalties. 

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