The scheme was revealed in a BBC report which found an executive from the group was promoting a plan to set up a large number of limited companies to exploit the government’s Employment Allowance which was introduced last year.
The allowance is designed to encourage small businesses to take on more workers and enables companies to claim £2,000 off their annual employers’ National Insurance bill.
“Schemes like this don’t work and anyone thinking of using it should think again,” a spokesman for HMRC said in a statement issued in response to the BBC report.
“HMRC will pursue users and promoters on behalf of the vast majority of people who play by the rules. Failing to disclose an attempted avoidance scheme is punishable by a fine of up to £1 million.”
The BBC secretly recorded Anderson Group’s sales manager, Ian Moran, promoting the tax avoidance scheme to a recruitment agency.
The agency he was pitching to employed 300 workers, many of whom hold low paid jobs in warehouses or as labourers.
Moran suggested that if the recruitment agency were to set up more than 100 limited companies with a couple of workers in each of them, each company could then claim the £2,000 allowance, cutting the agency’s National Insurance bill from £300,000 a year to zero.
Moran suggested in the recording the recruitment agency, which said it had no intention of using the scheme, might like to spend the £300,000 on Bentleys and ski chalets.
