Take That have paid nearly £20m owed in tax money

Take That have repaid more the £20m owed to HM Revenue and Customs following their involvement in a tax avoidance scheme.

In 2014, Gary Barlow, Howard Donald, and Mark Owen along with manager Jonathan Wild, were found to have put £66m in artificial tax shelter known as Icebreaker. It is believed Icebreaker contained something in the region of £300m as nearly 1,000 investors put their money in the scheme. Icebreaker claimed to offers these investors opportunities to fund creative industries that provided them tax relief on losses bigger than their investments. However in a court tribunal, a judge ruled that Icebreaker was a not an investment programme, but rather a means of tax avoidance and ordered the Take That members, along with their manager, to pay what money was owed to HMRC. https://twitter.com/GaryBarlow/status/506880377709801472 Former Take That members Jason Orange and Robbie Williams were not involved in the scheme. In April 2015, Take That announced their tax affairs were “fully up to date” but did not make clear whether the money owed to the taxman had been paid. It is now believed that the bands remaining tax bills were quietly paid earlier this year. As reported in the Daily Mirror, a spokesman for Take That said: "We have no comment beyond what we said a year ago."