Arcadia Group actually have a good track record in terms of paying their corporation tax in the UK, paying around £591 million since 2002. Unfortunately, the company is far from being an obliging British taxpayer. As the company is registered under Phillip Green's wife's name - who enjoys a life of luxury in the Mediterranean tax haven of Monaco - it is able to sidestep certain UK income tax arrangements. In 2005, Phillip Green awarded himself a £1.2 billion dividend payout, the biggest paycheck in British corporate history. Of this £1.2 billion (under income tax rates at the time) Sir Green should have owed £285 million to Her Majesty's Revenue & Customs. Luckily for Green (yet not so propitiously for the tax man) he was able to channel this payment through a dense network of offshore accounts, onto a tax haven in Jersey and then finally out to his wife Tina's Monte Carlo bank account.



This tax arrangement remains in place, meaning that Phillip Green can pay himself large amounts of cash whenever he wishes without having to pay a penny of UK tax.



Campaign group UK Uncut estimate that Phillip Green's £285 million tax dodge could pay for:



• The salaries of 20,000 NHS nurses
• The recently hiked £9,000 fess of around 32,000 UK students