Gary Neville has arrived in Liverpool ahead of his address at the Labour conference this evening after criticizing the Tories’ tax cuts despite continuous claims that he was one of several football players who had been dodging taxes for years.
By lowering taxes for the affluent, Liz Truss, according to the former Manchester United and England defender, is “taking the absolute mickey out of us,” and having Sir Keir Starmer as prime minister would be “a shift that cannot come soon enough.”
However, detractors noted that Rishi Sunak’s major criticism of Boris Johnson’s administration just this year was that it was “raising taxes to a post WWII high.”
The multi-millionaire apparently received a letter from HMRC 12 years ago over possible tax evasion when he was a football player, where he made an estimated £60,000 per week.
He has been questioned on Twitter on whether he was able to lawfully avoid paying taxes on part of his profits. What a hypocrite @GNev2 is, someone said. When he was making millions, he himself evaded paying taxes. The wealthiest, in his opinion, need to pay more taxes now. Someone another said, “Write a sizable check out then”. Transmit it to HMRC. Clear your throat. You are a hypocrite if you don’t.
Another person said: “Gary Neville, a well-known economist, opposes tax cuts. Can he honestly state that he never used even one tax avoidance strategy to safeguard his millions? According to the billionaire former football player who undoubtedly employed tax evasion techniques.
The highlight of the day is Mr. Neville, who joined Labour last year and will talk on stage at 5:10 p.m. Prior to Rachel Reeves’ address at noon, he made an appearance alongside her at a side event on the future of English football.
Before traveling to Liverpool, Mr. Neville called the tax cuts offered by Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng “immoral” and “madness” in an interview with the Daily Mirror.
By lowering taxes for the affluent, Ms. Truss, according to the Sky Sports commentator, was “taking the entire Mickey out of us.” He said that having Sir Keir as prime minister would be “a shift that cannot come soon enough.”
People are having trouble paying their electricity bills, he added. No one I know who makes more than £150,000 a year will believe that giving us more money is the correct thing to do, Gary added.
They want improved public services, better health, better education, and shorter wait times for medical care.
However, his detractors on social media have urged him to release his tax return because he was implicated in many tax dodging incidents when he was a football player.
Mr. Neville, David Beckham, Sol Campbell, Steven Gerrard, Ashley Cole, Joe Cole, and Nicky Butt were among the celebrities identified by The Observer in 2004 as evading taxes on income from TV advertising.
In 2006, the same publication referred to him as “England’s somewhat unglamorous right-back” and noted that his private company, Tiger Sports Management, has £559,000 in assets.
According to tax experts, this enabled players to make sure that payments for their image rights were paid to a firm rather than to them personally.
This made them liable for corporation tax, which was charged at a rate between 21% and 28%, rather than income tax, which was collected at a rate of 40% at the time.
When requested to eliminate the loophole that permitted the England players to legally avoid paying taxes, then-Chancellor Gordon Brown agreed.
According to The Times, he was one of 20 elite players who received a letter from HMRC in 2010 about the tax arrangements related to image rights, amid allegations that the players were using the loophole to avoid paying an estimated £100 million in taxes annually.
The letters informed the players that HMRC was looking into their financial situation and that they could need to provide copies of their contracts, receipts, and other paperwork. If Mr. Neville or Manchester United were required to pay any more taxes, it is unclear.
MailOnline has requested comments from Mr. Neville’s representative, especially any on the conclusion of the HMRC inquiry.
Since Mr. Neville left professional football and transitioned into business, establishing hospitality firms, there have also been additional scuffles. He is the owner of the Old Trafford-area Hotel Football, which has 133 rooms. In the northwest, he has also built residences and business sites.
In 2017, it came to light that he had been covertly purchasing real estate and developing it under other names, ostensibly so that it would be simpler to get planning approvals.
He claimed to have done this in an interview that appeared in the most recent issue of British Airways’ in-flight magazine Business Life.
It’s odd, he continued, that when I purchase under a different business name or apply for a planning permit under a different name, such requests don’t often get the same kind of scrutiny.
He was allegedly connected to a company in 2019 that misled British tourists into purchasing timeshares.
After £47 million in loans were offered to Brits wishing to purchase timeshares in Malta that were partially owned by Neville, the financial watchdog started examining the matter.
Customers allege that they received loans from Barclays to pay back their investments after being convinced that “United stars,” including Ryan Giggs, owned the houses they were investing in.
But according to testimony given during a session of the Upper Tribunal of the Tax and Chancery Chamber, the loans were arranged without the terms being made explicit and without the “necessary credit checks.”
In 2009, Neville and Giggs each invested 1.1 million euros in Island Hotels Group Holdings, becoming non-executive directors of the firm.
He “fell in love” with the island and purchased a home there in 2000. The following year, he was named an ambassador for Maltese tourism.
It is an honor to be associated with Malta in such close proximity, he told The Times of Malta. Malta has a special place in my heart.
Malta boasts excellent hotels and dining establishments. In the fifteen years that the island has drawn many guests, I have seen significant changes.
The level of service is rising, and I think Malta has big things in store.
The group Neville was a part of held 50% of the Golden Sands resort and 50% of Azure Services Limited, a business that handled the timeshare marketing.
In 2015, while Island Hotels was getting ready to be acquired by another Maltese company, he left his position there.
Kwasi Kwarteng, the chancellor, “fanned the flames” of the falling pound by suggesting further, “unfunded” tax cuts, his Labour counterpart said as the pound reached an all-time low versus the dollar.
The highest rate of income tax was one of the measures that Rachel Reeves said ministers were irresponsibly playing with the country’s finances and frighten the markets with the “scale” of Government borrowing to pay for.
The pound dropped to 1.03 dollars, its lowest level versus the US dollar since decimalization in 1971, losing more than 4% of its value before recovering part of that loss when trade resumed on Monday.
The declining value of the pound was being driven by market confidence in the economic plans of the incoming prime minister, Liz Truss, which might result in an increase in imports of food and oil into the UK.
Mr. Kwarteng tried to avoid answering inquiries over the weekend about how the markets had responded to the largest program of tax cuts in 50 years, which he unveiled on Friday. He even claimed there would be “more to come.”
Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today program from the Labour conference in Liverpool, Ms. Reeves said: “It is really disturbing.”
“I believe a lot of people had hoped that things would calm down over the weekend, but I do believe the Chancellor kind of fanned the flames on Sunday by suggesting there may be more stimulus, more unfunded tax cuts, which has resulted in overnight the pound falling to an all-time low against the dollar,”
The prime minister and Mr. Kwarteng are “two gamblers in a casino pursuing a losing streak,” the shadow chancellor said, warning that they are “betting with the nation’s finances.”
Here’s the thing: They aren’t gambling their money; they are gambling all of our money, thus it is both horribly unfair and irresponsible, according to Ms. Reeves.
Speaking at a Bloomberg business event, Sir Keir Starmer also attributed the “true upheaval” in the financial markets on the Tory Government.
The Labour leader approved the basic rate’s decrease to 19p in the pound while declaring that his party will reinstate the 45% tax rate on incomes above £150,000.
Ms. Reeves warned that the size of the Government’s borrowing was all that had’spooked the markets’ and that Labour would borrow to pay for the tax reduction.
‘When I set out my fiscal rules last year I said that in emergency situations – and we are absolutely in a national emergency at the moment – you can borrow and the Government is borrowing, it’s the scale of the borrowing…’ she said.