Accountants can sometimes struggle to market themselves. It’s not really part of the skillset. Often, an advert for an accountancy firm will centre around a stock image of a group being sent into gleeful rapture by a graph illustrating growth, and the text will read "Martin & Martin: Because You Matter” or something equally insipid. This might be the best firm in the industry, but how on Earth can you tell?
There is a more insidious other type of advert, though. This is the invariably male Instagrammer in an extremely tight shirt with about three buttons done up who is reading from a ChatGPT script, shouting at the screen, telling you that you are losing money and you should message him now. With him, you’ll actually profit off your tax return.
If anyone on social media is keen to explain the difference between tax avoidance and tax evasion, they might have something dodgy to sell you. So, as a bit of a tonic, here are a few times it all caught up with people.
Introducer agreements
In September 2025, HMRC publicly named five UK accountancy firms for their involvement in promoting a tax avoidance scheme linked to B2BTradecard Limited. The firms were:
- HB&O Ltd.
- Ojak Consultancy Limited.
- Atlas Accountancy Limited.
- Henry Bramall & Co Limited.
- Roelken Limited.
These firms entered into "introducer agreements”, receiving fees for referring clients into a scheme marketed as a legitimate tax-saving strategy. The scheme allowed businesses to claim corporation tax deductions on "advertising services”, then returned up to 80% of the spend via prepaid debit cards with no income tax or NIC applied.
HMRC’s view was that this was ”disguised remuneration”, which basically meant that it should have been taxed like normal income. They were being super sneaky and they got caught, which is really satisfying. A bit like watching a thief nick someone’s phone then immediately fall off their bike.
HMRC Counter Avoidance Director, the unforgettably named Jonathan Smith, said:
"Promoting tax avoidance is unacceptable. Accountants and tax advisors should give their clients sound advice, not steer them towards schemes that can result in large tax bills.”
If you’re ever short of something to read on a beach, there’s a lovely list of named tax avoidance schemes, promoters, enablers and suppliers on the HMRC website.
The loan charge
One fun way of avoiding tax is to just call income something else entirely. But it can’t just be anything – it can’t be called James. It has to be called something that sounds legitimate. Something like "loan”.
So, what’s a loan scheme? The pitch was simple:
- You receive most of your pay as a "loan”.
- Loans aren’t taxable.
- So, no tax.
You may have worked out the issue here, which is that loans are generally repaid. They might, like the majority of student loans, only be partially repaid before they default, but there has to be an attempt.
After years of failed crackdowns (2011, then 2016), HMRC introduced the "loan charge” in 2019. It taxed any outstanding "loans” from these schemes as income – often, amusingly, all in one go.
Around 50,000 people were affected, many hit with huge, unexpected bills. One of the most high-profile names here is Douglas Barrowman, whose businesses sold loan schemes to thousands of contractors. A barrowload, maybe.
Tax lawyer Dan Neidle has done a deep dive on this world, highlighting the usual pattern:
- Schemes marketed as safe with risks downplayed.
- Clients left with major liabilities when they failed.
- Follow-up "fixes” that also didn’t work.
Barrowman denies wrongdoing, but the consequences for users are well documented. And if the name sounds familiar, it’s because Barrowman and his wife, Tory Peer Baroness Michelle Mone, have also been tied to the PPE scandal. Probably the only thing worse than being in the midst of a national scandal is when your spouse also becomes the centre of a national scandal halfway through yours. Thankfully, the UK has a brilliant reputation for adequately punishing wealthy scammers, so if any wrongdoing has been committed, everyone will be satisfied with the resulting judgement.
Manufactured losses
We’ve focused on the UK, but it’s fair to say that, if there’s potential for a bit of conmanship, an American has had a crack at it. In the early 2000s, one of the Big Four, Ernst & Young, was a major player.
Between 1999 and 2004, through an internal unit called VIPER (Value Ideas Produce Extraordinary Results) – which sounds less like a tax team and more like a Pete Hegseth Signal chat group – EY marketed engineered tax loss schemes to wealthy clients. Like the name VIPER, these weren’t subtle.
At a basic level, these schemes created artificial losses using complex financial transactions (often involving options or partnerships), which clients could then use to offset real income. Real income, fake losses, and a very small tax bill.
In total, around $2 billion in tax was avoided by roughly 200 clients. And EY collected about $123 million in fees for the service. But, to be fair, maybe some of those clients really wanted that extra money, so we should hold judgement until we get the full story.
The IRS eventually caught on. EY paid $123 million to settle – conveniently, the same amount they’d earned – in exchange for avoiding criminal prosecution. So, crime doesn’t pay, but you can sometimes break even.
🧠 Final thoughts
Tax avoidance is here to stay. For as long as there are tax laws, they’ll be people eager to slip through that tight little alleyway that keeps you as rich as possible and on the right side of the law.
Time and again, these schemes follow the same arc – marketed as safe, structured to look legitimate, and ultimately failing when tested properly. And eventually, they all run into the same problem. HMRC (or the IRS) tends to take a very literal view of what income actually is. But if you have $123 million lying around, you might be able to reach a gentleman’s agreement.
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