Last year Nigel Farage announced he had bought a house in Clacton, Essex, but in fact it was his partner Laure Ferrari, 46, who shelled out almost £900,000 for the property
Nigel Farage was quick to call for Angela Rayner to quit over her stamp duty blunder, but it seems he found his own way of paying less tax on a new home.
Despite the Reform leader announcing last year he had bought a house in Clacton, Essex, where he is MP, in fact it was his partner Laure Ferrari, 46, who shelled out almost £900,000 for the plush home. As her sole property, she would be liable for nearly £32,000 in stamp duty, according to HMRC’s online calculator.
If Mr Farage had bought it himself, it would have cost him at least £75,000 as second home duty – saving £44,000 and leading to claims of hypocrisy over Ms Rayner. After Ms Rayner quit the government for saving £40,000 in stamp duty on her home at Hove, East Sussex, yesterday, we quizzed Mr Farage as he stepped off the podium fresh from his hatemongering Reform conference speech.
READ MORE: Angela Rayner’s resignation letter in full as she quits as Deputy PMREAD MORE: Keir Starmer reshuffles Cabinet after Angela Rayner quits over tax error – changes in full
When asked if he had lent or given Ms Ferrari money towards to purchase, the 61-year-old said: “I haven’t lent money to anybody. I didn’t give her money. She comes from a very successful French family and she can afford it herself. It’s convenient, it works, and she loves it there.”
He confirmed it is Ms Ferrari’s “sole UK asset” but denied the arrangement had saved tax, adding: “That is a disgusting allegation, unfair and untrue.” But in January, when asked if he had bought a home in Clacton, Mr Farage replied: “I have. Which is why you can see me out often on a Saturday morning buying the essentials. I’m out meeting lots of constituents on a regular basis.”
And last year, shortly before the purchase went through, he said “I have bought a house in Clacton,” and said “I’ll be living there…What more can I do?” We are not revealing the exact location of the home, which has four bedrooms and a swimming pool and is in a sought-after suburb.
Before Ms Rayner resigned, Mr Farage said: “I don’t see how she can survive this.” There is no suggestion that either Mr Farage or his girlfriend have broken any rules over the Clacton house.
But Good Law Project director Jo Maugham said: “Farage has given two contradictory versions of the purchase. One that he bought it and the other that his girlfriend owns it. If the second one is correct then he has engineered a massive saving on stamp duty, larger than the one that forced Angela Rayner to resign.
“Farage has said Rayner should go and if he doesn’t he’s a hypocrite.” Mr Farage is a buy-to-let landlord with a property portfolio worth £3million, including a family home on the outskirts of London.
As of May last year, his business Thorn In The Side Ltd had cash in the bank of more than £1.7m – more than enough to buy the Clacton property, and the higher stamp duty, outright.
Mr Farage has been the sole owner since 2017 of his £1m family home, which he kept in the split from his second wife. He also has two beachside homes on the Kent coast worth £1.2m through his company. One is rented out and the other is being refurbished. And there is an investment property he rents out in Surrey.
We revealed in 2013 that Mr Farage set up an offshore trust in the Isle of Man to avoid inheritance tax but later insisted it had been a mistake and he had never used it.
He put his 50 per cent stake in investment firm Farage Limited which he ran with his brother Andrew, into the trust. It later went into liquidation, with Nigel Farage no longer a director, owing £103,000 tax.
HMRC got 13 per cent of the cash back and Andrew was found to have received “potentially unlawful dividends” of £124,000. He “disputed the figures” but “provided no documentation to support his comments” and went bankrupt.
The liquidators of the company only got £39,000 of the £124,000 back. Last year, we revealed Mr Farage’s deputy leader Richard Tice put millions of pounds worth of shares in his property empire in an offshore trust based in Jersey.
The tycoon businessman admitted he set up the RJS Tice Family Settlement in the Channel Islands tax haven more than three decades ago before moving it to the UK five years ago. He told us it was created while he was working in Paris in his 20s when it was “unclear if I would return to the UK”.
Last year, the Mirror and Good Law Project revealed nearly three-quarters of registered donations to Reform come from wealthy people or companies linked to tax havens. The party that claims to be the most patriotic has received £16.5m since 2019 from such donors.