Singing adviser jailed over tax avoidance scam

A tax adviser who tried to defrauded taxpayers of £70 million, and sang a celebratory song about the scam, has been jailed for 18 months.

David Perrin, deputy managing director at Vantis Tax, devised and operated a tax avoidance scheme that exploited the rule around giving shares to charity.

He advised 600 wealthy clients to buy cheap shares in four companies he had set up and listed on the Channel Islands Stock Exchange. He then paid people money from an offshore account to buy and sell the shares, inflating their price to £1 from the few pence they were bought for.

The owners of the shares then donated 329 million shares to unsuspecting charities and tried to claim £70 million tax relief on income and company profits of £213 million.

Perrin, who used to work at the Inland Revenue in the ‘80s and ‘90s, also pocketed £2 million in fees from the clients. He spend his cut of the cash on expensive second homes, exotic holidays, works of art and luxury cars.

The tax avoidance scheme was so popular that Vantis employees performed a celebratory song at their annual conference, to the tune of Gloria Gaynor’s ‘I will survive’.

The song included the verse:

‘They should have changed that stupid law, they should have buggered charity, but they have left that lovely tax relief, for folks to pay to me.’

HM Revenue & Customs criminal investigator Jim Graham said: ‘With his knowledge of the tax system, Perrin though that he was one step ahead of both HMRC and the law.

‘This cynical fraud not only stole millions of pounds from taxpayers, but also conned innocent charities into accepting gifts of virtually worthless shares, just so Perrin could inflate his own criminal earnings.’