Griffith Anderson Limited has a registered office in Covent Garden in central London and is based in Basildon in Essex. The company works with Inverness-based Umbrella Contracts Limited to persuade users to sign up to the tax avoidance scheme.

The main player is Umbrella Contracts, while Griffith Anderson handles the tax-free element of the pay package.

HMRC first allocated the two companies a scheme reference number in January 2023, but both organisations have continued to offer the scheme to users.

Umbrella Contracts was set up in 1998 and filed the last set of accounts in July 2023 for year end 2021, reporting turnover of £35.6m (y/e 2020 £57m) and a post tax profit of £507,438, according to Companies House. It also had 326 staff, including directors, in July.

The annual accounts noted that the company was currently in the midst of an ongoing HMRC enquiry, ‘which is being taken to tribunal review by the company’, and the auditor Mortimer Childe Services noted that this had ‘created a material uncertainty that may cast significant doubt on the company’s ability to continue as a going concern’.

The company currently has two directors, Helen Little, described as a finance director, and sales director Catherine Makey Delaney. Another director, Kelly Edith Amstrong, resigned in May 2023.

Umbrella Contracts offers services to contractors and even promotes a tie-in on its website with a financial adviser branded as Roots Mortgage, trading as the Mortgage Lodge [registration 12496599], which specialises in mortgages for contractors and freelancers.

Griffith Anderson Ltd was set up in April 2018 and has only ever had a sole director Gemma Claire Askew. The company does not have a web presence or website, and faced compulsory strike-off action by the registrar at Companies House earlier but this year but it was dropped in April. Company accounts filed for year end April 2022 showed a balance sheet of £127,571 in current assets. Askew is not involved with any other umbrella companies as a director.

Companies House also lists Askew as a director of BPA Consulting Ltd, which offers management consultancy services, since her appointment in August this year and is not linked to a Frome based agency of the same name which was dissolved in October 2020.

Users are hired through Umbrella Contracts which places the individuals in work and then pays them a salary equivalent to the national minimum wage with tax and National Insurance contributions deducted. They are also told that they will be paid a second payment as a ‘commission’ referred to as schedule 1 in the contract.

The commission element is paid by Griffith Anderson without any deductions, leaving the contractor open to investigation for failure to pay tax if they do not declare the earnings on their annual tax return.

Anyone using the scheme should review their tax liability as a matter of urgency as individuals are liable for the unpaid tax, not the named companies offering the avoidance schemes.