The past, L.P Hartley told us, is a foreign country. Unfortunately for Jeremy Vine, that foreign country can rear its head at any point.

HMRC has been pursuing Mr Vine's personal services company ("PSC"), Jelly Vine Productions Limited ("Jelly Vine"), for tax that HMRC believes is unpaid.  

Jelly Vine was engaged by four BBC productions between 1 July 2013 and 30 December 2015. HMRC believes that Mr Vine was really a disguised employee of the BBC for these productions and that the fees paid to Jelly Vine should have been subject to employment taxes. In reality, HMRC contends, the BBC were not paying Jelly Vine to provide someone to front programmes but were directly hiring Mr Vine and had an employer/employee relationship with him.

In 2018 Mr Vine appealed HMRC's decision on the basis that the amount of tax that HMRC was claiming was “estimated and excessive”, that HMRC's decisions were made prematurely and invalidly and that he was not an employee for some or indeed all of the payments concerned.

In a preliminary hearing it was judged that HMRC is entitled to issue a determination if it “appears" to HMRC “that there may be tax payable for a tax year” and as such HMRC “may determine the amount of that tax to the best of their judgment and serve notice of their determination”. Therefore there was nothing invalid or premature about HMRC's determinations.

The case will now proceed to the First-Tier Tribunal to determine whether Mr Vine does have an unpaid tax liability.

Mr Vine is far from the first TV star to battle with HMRC under IR35, the rules brought in to tackle the perceived tax gap resulting from an individual's employment status being hidden through engaging a PSC. As the PSC provides the individual to fill the role, the relationship is presented as client/contractor rather than employer/employee. 

Introduced in 2000, it was the PSC's responsibility to determine if there was really an employment relationship between the end client and the individual who provided the services. The rules changed for public bodies in 2017, such that the determination had to be made by the end client and in 2021, the private sector was brought into the net, meaning that the determination has to be made by the engaging company, rather than the PSC who received the funds.

Fellow TV stars Lorraine Kelly, Gary Lineker, Eamonn Holmes, Kaye Adams, Adrian Chiles and others, have all faced challenges from HMRC, with varying degrees of success. Whilst uncertainty about the full extent and applicability of the rules rages, with some commentators branding them as not fit for purpose, HMRC has shown no signs of stopping its pursuit of celebrities for taxes it believes should have been paid.