Asda brothers may avoid £2.5m stamp duty if one sells shares to other

Romance: Victoria Price and Mohsin Issa at an award ceremony in 2018

The co-owners of Asda could avoid paying millions of pounds in stamp duty if one sells their shares in the debt-laden grocer to the other.

The supermarket chain was bought from US firm Walmart by Mohsin and Zuber Issa and buyout group TDR Capital in 2021.

But the future ownership of the company has been thrown into doubt amid reports that Zuber wants to offload his 22.5 per cent stake.

It follows the Daily Mail’s revelation that Mohsin had left his wife of 30 years and is in a relationship with Victoria Price, a former tax partner at EY, which was Asda’s auditor.

Her lawyers said Price disclosed her relationship with Mohsin Issa to EY ‘at the outset’ and that EY have confirmed to her that she met all her obligations and made all appropriate disclosures to the firm’s ethics and compliance teams throughout her career’.

Zuber, who with his brother put in just £100 million in cash when they bought Asda, is said to want at least £500 million for his shares. Sources say the most likely buyer is TDR.

Any buyer would normally have to pay 0.5 per cent stamp duty on the purchase price, suggesting a tax bill of about £2.5 million.

But in a letter replying to queries raised by Liam Byrne, chair of the Business and Trade Select Committee of MPs, Mohsin Issa confirmed ‘there may be a stamp duty saving’ because three of its holding companies are incorporated in Jersey, where no such levy exists.

Mohsin confirmed that ‘no companies in the Asda ownership structure’ were incorporated in jurisdictions outside of England and Wales to seek to avoid paying tax on their income ‘through any favourable tax status’.