‘Lord Ashcroft is a non-dom’, Lib Dems to allege in parliament

I hear that the Liberal Democrats plan to use PMQs (and parliamentary privilege) to allege that a leak from HMRC suggests that Lord Ashcroft, the Tory donor, mastermind of the marginals strategy, has non-dom status for tax purposes.

If true, this is a mighty headache for David Cameron. He is spared a clash with Gordon Brown on the day the news comes out as the PM is in Copenhagen so it’s a Harman/Hague/Cable event today.

Lord Ashcroft has always insisted that he has complied with the requirements placed on him when he gained his peerage.

But those requirements were not that rigorous.

They required him to be resident here, not resident here for tax purposes.

There is no suggestion that Lord Ashcroft has not paid tax due on his earnings within the UK.

The suggestion, as with Tory candidate, Zac Goldsmith, outed as a non-dom a couple of weeks ago, is that he might not be paying tax on his non-UK earnings, unlike normal UK taxpayers.

Related: ConservativeHome and Lord Ashcroft

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