Tax haven Britain

13 January 2013

It has been a good year for Phil Shadbolt. The awards have been rolling in for the solar-powered road signs and street lights made by Zeta Specialist Lighting, where he is managing director. Then there is the £4m of government funding awarded to the company to develop energy- efficient LED lighting.

To top it off, Shadbolt was recently told by his advisers that potentially he will be able to more than halve the tax bill on much of his profits under the government’s “patent box” scheme.

From next April profits generated by patented products will qualify for a lower rate of corporation tax, falling in stages to 10% by 2017. Shadbolt, an electronics engineer whose Bicester-based business was spun out of Oxford Brookes University, has 14 patents filed or pending for Zeta’s technology.