Harry Potter’s agent sues over tax dodge

HIS advice helped J.K. Rowling to maximise her £820million fortune, but literary agent Neil Blair is now involved in a High Court battle over advice he received.

I can disclose that Blair is suing a law firm for £2 million, alleging it advised him to invest in a tax avoidance scheme even though it should have known it would later fall foul of Government rules.

He claims the firm, Fieldfisher, said he’d be able to set off losses against other income in the tax avoidance scheme created by investment management company Ingenious, which was also a Fieldfisher client.

Unfortunately for Blair, and other famous figures including David Beckham, HMRC decided such schemes effectively constituted unlawful tax evasion, which led to hundreds of people receiving big tax demands.

The writ says Fieldfisher ‘failed to exercise the level of competence, skill and diligence expected of reasonable solicitors’. It adds: ‘It acted negligently and in breach of its contractual and common law duties’ to his business, the Blair Partnership.

Blair’s been Rowling’s agent since she ditched her long-term business partner, Christopher Little, in 2011. Blair had left Little’s company to start his own agency. It was recently revealed that Little, who died earlier this year aged 79, was paid £10 million compensation after he was forced out of the Harry Potter franchise.

A Blair Partnership spokesman tells me: ‘At the time, it was advised that this was a legitimate way for Mr Blair to invest. All tax due has been paid. J.K. Rowling is not involved in any way.’