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Gary Lineker has been accused of 'gross hypocrisy' after calling for tax hikes despite fighting a five-year legal battle with HMRC and his involvement in a controversial tax avoidance scheme.

The former England footballer last week signed an open letter with more than 100 other millionaires urging Andy Burnham to increase taxes for the wealthiest.

The self-styled 'patriotic millionaires' declared: 'We want you to tax us. We can afford it.'

But the ex-BBC presenter faced criticism over his colourful tax affairs, including a protracted fight against the taxman over a £4.9million bill he didn't want to pay.

Court documents reveal how the father-of-four resisted demands from the taxman to pay £3.62million in income tax and £1.31million in National Insurance over his television presenting work between 2013 and 2018.

After years of legal wrangling a judge finally ruled in his favour in 2023 following a costly three-day tax tribunal in London.

It came around 20 years after Lineker was among a number of stars who pumped at least £100,000 each into schemes run by a firm called Ingenious Media, which gave huge tax breaks to film investors.

In 2016 HMRC said the schemes amounted to 'tax avoidance' as they tried to use 'artificial losses' to avoid millions of pounds in tax.

Gary Lineker, pictured with his ex-wife Danielle Bux, has been accused of 'gross hypocrisy' after calling for tax hikes despite fighting a five-year legal battle with HMRC and his involvement in a controversial tax avoidance scheme

Lineker was one of several stars who pumped at least £100,000 into schemes run by Ingenious Media, which gave huge tax breaks to film investors. Pictured: The scheme helped produce films like Avatar

And in 2017 leaked documents suggested that Lineker, 65, avoided stamp duty when selling a luxury home in Barbados because he bought it through an offshore firm.

Andrew Griffith, Tory shadow business secretary, lambasted the star, saying: 'If self-righteous preaching was an Olympic sport, millionaire crisp salesman Gary Lineker would win gold.

'It beggars belief that he would spend his time on elaborate tax avoidance schemes whilst lecturing others on why they should pay more tax.

'As per usual for out of touch celebrities – it's one rule for him and another for everyone else.'

Maxwell Marlow, director at the Adam Smith Institute: 'Gary Lineker's hypocritical call for wealth taxes, as he previously battled with HMRC to reduce his tax take, is nothing but an absurd PR stunt.

'If Gary and his dinner party chums want to pay more tax, they are welcome to do so by speaking to HMRC – preferably out of a courtroom.'

Reform Treasury spokesman, Robert Jenrick MP, said: 'Gary Lineker's hypocrisy is breathtaking. If he wants to pay more tax he could sign a cheque to the Treasury tomorrow.

'But he won't because he's spent years trying to pay as little tax as possible on his taxpayer-funded income.'

Documents show that HMRC began pursuing Lineker for outstanding tax in 2019. He was earning more than £1.7 million a year as the BBC's highest-paid presenter.

The taxman said he should have been classed as an employee of the BBC and BT Sport, where he presented coverage of the Uefa Champions League.

Instead, he was paid as a contractor through Gary Lineker Media, a partnership he set up in 2012 with his then wife Danielle Bux, allowing Lineker to be paid partly in dividends, at a lower corporation tax rate. He has said that all taxes were paid on the income.

HMRC targeted him under IR35 legislation designed to crack down on tax avoidance by so-called disguised employees.

But Lineker won his appeal in 2023, with a judge ruling he was a freelancer and had contracts with both broadcasters. HMRC appealed but settled the case in 2024.

Charlie Dewhirst, Tory MP, said: 'This is the kind of gross hypocrisy we've come to expect from Gary Lineker.

'If he is so desperate for everyone else to pay more, why did he bother battling HMRC for five years to save himself millions of pounds in extra tax?'

Publicly available records also show that Lineker was a member of a series of limited liability partnerships (LLPs) set up between 2003 and 2007 as movie financing schemes by Ingenious Media.

The schemes helped produce films such as The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, Life Of Pi and Avatar.

Leaked documents from 2017 suggested that Lineker, 65, avoided stamp duty when selling a luxury home in Barbados because he bought it through an offshore firm

But a complex arrangement of loans allowed investors to write off massive losses against their income, saving them huge amounts in tax.

In 2012 Dave Hartnett, then the head of HMRC, described film schemes as 'scams for scumbags'.

There is no suggestion that they were illegal and Ingenious has always insisted its partnerships were trading to make profit.

In August 2016 a tax tribunal found that members of the firm's schemes were entitled to only a third of the tax relief they had previously claimed. Lineker later tweeted that he had 'coughed up years ago'.

In 2021 the Court of Appeal ruled that partnerships were trading with a view to profit, but in a statement HMRC highlighted how the court also 'noted that the LLPs were tax avoidance schemes'.

Separately, documents from the Paradise Papers showed Lineker co-owned a Barbados property through a company called Goalhanger Inc, registered in the British Virgin Islands. It is said to have been sold to new owners in 2010.

Under Barbados law, stamp duty of 1 per cent and transfer taxes of 2.5 per cent are payable on any property.

But the sale can be made tax free if the property was sold by a company in the BVI.

Lineker later insisted it had been declared to HMRC and all taxes due in the UK and abroad had been paid in full.

Lineker bought a £2.2 million five-bedroom mansion in the exclusive Royal Westmoreland development in Barbados in 2005. It is not clear whether this is the property referred to.

The 120 signatories to last week's letter argued that a 2 per cent tax on wealth over £10 million could raise £24 billion a year, while reforms to impose capital gains tax at the same rate as income tax could raise a further £12 billion.

The letter said: 'We're not talking about higher taxes on those who get up and go to work for their income every day, but on the very richest whose income is derived from the wealth they hold.'

Lineker's spokesman did not respond to a request to comment.