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Gary Lineker has renewed his call for a wealth tax on the super wealthy, asking how much money the very richest “actually need” and predicting heavy lobbying against any such measure from those who would pay it.
The former footballer and Match of the Day presenter, 65, is one of more than 120 UK millionaires who signed an open letter organised by Patriotic Millionaires UK urging the Prime Minister, Andy Burnham, to introduce a 2 per cent wealth tax on assets exceeding £10 million.
Speaking on Davina McCall’s Begin Again podcast on Thursday, Lineker said there comes a point in a person’s life “where you have a wealth” and can “perhaps contribute to society”. He acknowledged that anyone can already pay more voluntarily, but argued that this misses the point. “I think if you can get it as a kind of law that the super wealthy contribute more to society, it would make sense,” he said.
The open letter to Mr Burnham, published in July, was covered by Business Matters when millionaires urged the new Prime Minister to tax their wealth, and prompted a public rejection of the idea from the broadcaster James May.
“Will they really leave over 0.2 per cent of their wealth?”
Lineker took aim at the argument that a wealth tax would drive the richest out of the country. “Especially when you’re talking about obviously super wealthy, like the billionaires, and you think, well, and they say, well, they’ll just leave the country. Will they really over like 0.2 per cent of their wealth? I mean, would they? Why? And you just think, well, would you want those kind of people in the country?”
He said a higher bill “wouldn’t really make any difference” to the individuals concerned, and compared the accumulation of assets among the super wealthy to a crude game of one-upmanship in which they measure themselves against each other.
“As someone that’s pretty wealthy, I’ve always been a contributor to tax,” he said. “I’ve always paid top, top-level tax and for a long, long, long time, and happy to do so. And then, if they want us to dip in, I think most of us would like to help in a way. So we’ll see if the government does that. There’d be a lot of lobbying against it, of course, from the super wealthy.”
Lineker’s intervention has drawn sharp criticism from opponents who point to his own tax history. Court documents show that HMRC began pursuing him for outstanding tax in 2019, when he was earning more than £1.7 million a year as the BBC’s highest-paid presenter, and that he resisted demands for £3.62 million in income tax and £1.31 million in National Insurance over his television work between 2013 and 2018.
HMRC argued that he should have been classed as an employee of the BBC and BT Sport, where he presented Uefa Champions League coverage. He was instead paid as a contractor through Gary Lineker Media, a partnership set up in 2012 with his then wife Danielle Bux, which allowed him to be paid partly in dividends at a lower corporation tax rate. He has said that all taxes were paid on the income.
HMRC pursued the case under the IR35 rules designed to tackle so-called disguised employment. After a three-day tribunal in London, a judge ruled in Lineker’s favour in 2023, finding that he was a freelancer with direct contracts with both broadcasters. HMRC appealed but settled the case in 2024.
Around 20 years earlier, Lineker was among a number of stars who put at least £100,000 each into film investment schemes run by Ingenious Media, which offered large tax breaks to investors. Publicly available records show he was a member of a series of limited liability partnerships set up by the firm between 2003 and 2007 that helped to finance films including The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Life of Pi and Avatar. In 2016 HMRC said the schemes amounted to “tax avoidance” because they sought to use “artificial losses” to avoid millions of pounds in tax. In 2017, leaked documents suggested he had avoided stamp duty on the sale of a luxury home in Barbados because it was bought through an offshore company.
“If he wants to pay more tax he could sign a cheque”
Andrew Griffith, the Conservative shadow business secretary, said: “If self-righteous preaching was an Olympic sport, millionaire crisp salesman Gary Lineker would win gold. It beggars belief that he would spend his time on elaborate tax avoidance schemes whilst lecturing others on why they should pay more tax. As per usual for out of touch celebrities, it’s one rule for him and another for everyone else.”
Robert Jenrick MP, Reform’s Treasury spokesman, said: “Gary Lineker’s hypocrisy is breathtaking. If he wants to pay more tax he could sign a cheque to the Treasury tomorrow. But he won’t because he’s spent years trying to pay as little tax as possible on his taxpayer-funded income.”
Charlie Dewhirst, the Conservative MP, said: “This is the kind of gross hypocrisy we’ve come to expect from Gary Lineker. If he is so desperate for everyone else to pay more, why did he bother battling HMRC for five years to save himself millions of pounds in extra tax?”
Maxwell Marlow, director at the Adam Smith Institute, described the call as “nothing but an absurd PR stunt”. He said: “If Gary and his dinner party chums want to pay more tax, they are welcome to do so by speaking to HMRC, preferably out of a courtroom.”
Lineker himself acknowledged on the podcast that wealthy individuals can already pay more if they choose, saying “we all do stuff with charities and things like that”, but insisted that a statutory requirement on the super wealthy to contribute more “would make sense”.
