Addison Lee founder ordered to pay £20.5m in tax after tribunal ruling

A tax tribunal in London has ruled that Sir John Griffin, founder of the Addison Lee taxi firm, must pay an additional £20.5m in tax covering the years 2013 to 2020. The decision follows a challenge by HM Revenue and Customs against Griffin's claim that he should be treated as a non-domiciled taxpayer, or "nom-dom," based on his ties to Ireland.

Griffin, 84, was born to Irish parents in 1942 and moved to London at age nine. He had argued he considered himself Irish at heart and should be taxed accordingly, which would have shielded his foreign-held earnings from UK tax rates.

What the tribunal found

Judge Michaela Snelders and tribunal member Gill Hunter concluded that by April 2013 Griffin had settled in England "in every meaningful sense" — building his home, raising his family in Hertfordshire, growing his London taxi business, and organising his personal and professional life there. While he retained a strong emotional attachment to Ireland, the tribunal found this never turned into a firm intention to permanently relocate. As evidence, it noted Griffin spent only eight nights in Ireland in 2015, one of the years he claimed Irish domicile.

Griffin also tried to argue his domicile should match that of his father, Jack, who moved from Ireland to England for work in 1935. HMRC's legal counsel countered that the father's domicile had already shifted to England before Griffin turned 21 in 1963, a position the tribunal accepted.

Background

Griffin founded Addison Lee in 1975 and sold it to private equity firm the Carlyle Group in 2013, when it was valued at around £300m. Nom-dom status was abolished by the UK's Labour government in April 2025, following an earlier pledge by the previous Conservative administration to scrap it. Griffin, knighted in 2024 for services to business and charity, did not appear before the tribunal in person, as HMRC accepted he was medically unfit to do so due to cognitive decline.