Go, Jo

The DCMS Select Committee looking at personal service companies and BBC presenters on Tuesday will take evidence from Jolyon Maugham QC, who is already advising both broadcasters and presenters under pressure from HMRC.

He blogs - and most recently, wrote after the Christa Ackroyd case, where HMRC won the day. I'm sure the BBC has read the whole thing, but here's a key extract.

"Alongside the legal question there is a moral one: are the presenters really to blame? Answering that question is altogether more difficult. Some presenters will be financially sophisticated. Some will knowingly have engaged in risky tax behaviour. But a great majority will have relied on their advisers, will have been tacitly encouraged by the attitude of the BBC (‘how could the BBC be involved in tax avoidance?’) or other major broadcasters, and will have been fortified by the many years in which HMRC seemed barely to bother to apply IR35.

Is it really fair that we point the finger only at the presenter? Should the BBC escape moral obloquy? And what of the army of advisers?"

Jo came to the UK from New Zealand in his teens, and worked initially as a clerk, at the BBC where he wrote a play for Radio 4 and a feature for Radio 3, before studying law.