Tory candidate Zac Goldsmith accused of avoiding £5.8m tax as non-dom

Zac Goldsmith, David Cameron’s green adviser and a prospective Tory MP, has been accused of avoiding the payment of nearly £6m in tax during the past 10 years by adopting non-domiciled status.

Goldsmith, the prospective Conservative candidate for Richmond Park, is estimated to have a personal fortune of at least £200m, inherited from his late father, Sir James Goldsmith.

Goldsmith admitted last month that he had claimed off-shore “non-dom” status. Since the news became public, he has said he has given it up.

However, the Liberal Democrat home affairs spokesman, Chris Huhne, has calculated that Goldsmith is likely to have avoided, at a conservative estimate, around £580,000 a year in UK taxes over the past decade as a result of being defined as a non-dom. Goldsmith, who dismisses Huhne’s figures as “fantasy”, says that the “vast majority” of his income comes to the UK and is taxed here. But Huhne told the Observer that if Goldsmith disputes the figures, he should publish his tax returns to prove it and Huhne would do the same. [The Observer]