Eamonn Holmes ‘forced’ to sell home after 'stressful' tax row: 'They've taken everything'
GB News presenter Eamonn Holmes says he was also forced to fork out 'hundreds of thousands' in legal fees.
Eamonn Holmes revealed he had to sell his home in the Belmont area of Belfast after losing two appeals against HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC), costing him “hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal fees”.
The presenter, 64, says tax officials ruled he was a staff member when working for ITV, rather than a freelancer - but he insists he never received any sick pay, holiday pay, or shares in companies.
It was ruled that Holmes needed to pay 10 years of backdated National Insurance and tax payments, leaving him with a bill reported to be around £250,000.
The GB News presenter now says that the only way he could pay the bill was by selling his Belfast home.
He told his former UTV co-star Gerry Kelly: “I had a house here until six weeks ago when I was forced to sell it by the Inland Revenue," referring to HMRC.
"It’s something I’m very bitter about ... because people think you earn lots of money and therefore you have to pay. It’s like they have taken away everything I ever worked for.
“People think it’s only the Eamonn Holmeses of this world that they’re after. But it’s not. The country is broken.”
Holmes worked for ITV for almost three decades and presented This Morning with his wife Ruth Langsford for 15 years.
Last year, he said the tax row was “the most stressful experience outside of losing my father”. He also believed the ordeal sparked a severe bout of shingles in 2018, which could have left him blind.
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He said: “I was like a lamb to the slaughter – it was the most stressful, humiliating experience.
“It was bloody scary to see [the illness]. It looked as if someone had taken a baseball bat to my face and smashed me about a bit.”
Unfortunately, Holmes’s health woes did not stop there and he is now confined to a wheelchair after undergoing spinal surgery following chronic issues with back pain.
The father-of-four has been trying all sorts of treatments including physiotherapy, stretching procedures and epidural injections, but he fears he may never regain his full mobility.
In the interview, which will be screened later this month, he added: “I have tried every treatment, but you go: ‘Maybe I’ll never get out of it,’ which is a harsh reality to face.”