BBC Newsreader is IR35 Approved

'The Telegraph' has discovered that the public face and voice of HMRC's self assessment advertising campaign, Moira Stuart, has been exploiting her services through her own company, Moira Stuart Ltd since 1st April 2010.

Moira Stuart Ltd's first accounts to 31st March 2011 show income of £22,607 and after deducting administrative expenses of £1,749 the company paid corporation tax of £4,380 at a rate of 21%.  Had she received the money as a salary she would have paid tax of up to £11,303, at the rate of 50%, as well as suffering NIC.

The motivation for Miss Stuart to form her own company could well have been in reaction to the introduction of Labour's 50% additional rate of tax that became effective from 6th April 2010.

Miss Stuart, 62, came to prominence as a BBC newsreader in the early 1980's but left our TV screens in 2007 when she was replaced by a younger colleague on Andrew Marr's 'Sunday AM' show. She has however been reading the news on Chris Evans' breakfast show on BBC Radio 2 for the past two years.

In 2008 HMRC started using her in its advertising campaigns. She replaced Adam Hart-Davis following his public criticism of the Revenue. He described the tax system as difficult to understand and VAT as “absurdly complicated”.

As far as HMRC are concerned IR35 is not an issue when it comes to the celebrity's advertising work for the department because the work is specific and they do not employ her directly. Is that all that is required nowadays to place oneself firmly outside of the intermediaries legislation??