Anti-poverty campaigner Marcus Rashford buys 11 houses

Back in 2020 we asked why footballer Marcus Rashford was placing some of his considerable wealth into a group of limited companies (which the accounts now show are also transferring money inter se in what are called “related party transactions”). The usual reason for this is to minimise tax payments and, at the time, we wrote to Labour-icon Rashford asking if this was the motivation behind his actions. No response was forthcoming.

This method of tax avoidance - if that is what it is - is lawful, but is surely not practised by the former starlet since he is a proselytiser for the greater Government use of, er, taxation in the relief of child poverty. Rashford believes that taxpayers' money should be taken from workers to pay for free school meals etc. Indeed, young Marcus supports the charity, FareShare, and so is presumably anxious to pay his own FairShare.

Last season Rashford's footballing career took a Klinsmanesque dive with his twinkling skills often replaced by truculent pouting. He was not picked for England in Euro 2024. Off the pitch, he was banned from driving for six months after doing 104 mph on the motorway in his £560k Rolls Royce. But the anti-poverty campaigner is doing very nicely with his Cheshire and Manchester property portfolio, and other commercial activities.

Despite his eye-watering pay for kicking a leather ball (or not when he has been warming the bench) and his associated commercial income Rashford is buying up properties via borrowing from the bluest of blue-blooded bankers, Coutts & Co. Once again, this may have the effect of reducing his tax-bill - surely something Rashford does not intend given his anti-poverty campaigning - but he only has to file basic accounting information for his companies so that it is difficult to assess the true position. I am sure he will wish to put the record straight in due course.

Marcus’s main property empire is being built through a Company called MUCS Properties Limited, registered for the purpose of "other letting and operating of own or leased real estate". He is the sole shareholder of the Company (i.e. he owns it outright) and the “person with significant control”. He may well own other properties too, but the Companies House records now list ownership of no less than 11 properties which are valued in the accounts at a handy £7,096,098.

A separate Company which appears to be the main conduit for Rashford’s football/image rights etc. also seems to be doing very nicely thank you with net assets of just under £17m. But in the “now you see it, now you don’t” Rashford company accounts the most recent ones show that this Company has distributed money to Marcus not via pay or dividends but via an interest-free loan of a mere £11,487,181. Still, as we have seen above, Rollers don’t come cheap.

Marcus has moved all the Companies addresses from Manchester to business premises in Essex where many others are registered too - including a “management consultancy” owned by Marcus’s mum, and one owned by former Red, Paul Scholes.

Marcus follows in the studmarks of many other footballers who have amassed property empires - and why shouldn't they - given their relatively short careers? And, as above, we are sure Rashford's weird corporate structure has not been established to minimise his tax bill since this would be morally wrong wouldn't it?

Liverpool fans joked about Robbie Fowler's enormous rental empire with the song, "We all live in a Robbie Fowler house!" How long before Cheshire residents are singing a similar ditty for the Man U (former?) star?

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