F1 champion loses £1.4 million court battle

Former Formula 1 world champion Jody Scheckter has lost a high-profile court battle against HM Revenue and Customs over a £1.4m tax bill connected to his organic buffalo farming business.

The 76-year-old South African, who won the 1979 World F1 drivers' championship with Ferrari, had challenged a backdated demand for £1,457,634 after an HMRC inspector ruled that his farming partnership had wrongly offset losses against profits from other parts of his business between 2008 and 2010.

Scheckter purchased Laverstoke Park in Overton, Hampshire, after relocating to England with his wife Clare in 1996, subsequently investing £55m of his personal fortune into the estate and around 3,000 acres of surrounding land.

The venture, which supplied organic meat to Ocado and specialised in buffalo mozzarella, closed its dairy and buffalo farming operations in 2024, citing significant increases in costs and a reduction in milk volumes.

The seven-figure losses incurred by the LLP Laverstoke Farm Produce had been set off against taxes owed on other income through a mechanism known as sideways loss relief.

HMRC declared the arrangement invalid in 2019 and issued the demand for repayment. The relief is available to farmers, but only where the enterprise becomes profitable within five years of being established.

The Laverstoke farming partnership registered a loss in almost every year since it was founded, meaning it failed to satisfy that requirement.

Judge: 'Considerable sadness' over failed venture

Dismissing Scheckter's appeal at the First-tier Tribunal, Judge Tony Beare said it was impossible to have been involved in the case without feeling "considerable sadness" at how the project had turned out.

The judge acknowledged that Scheckter "was extremely passionate about the positive effects which healthier eating would engender for everyone" and said the tribunal expressed its "profound regret for the way that things developed."

Scheckter, who competed in Formula 1 between 1972 and 1980 and won ten grands prix across nine seasons, is still the only African to have won a Formula 1 world championship.

After retiring from motorsport, he founded Firearms Training Systems, a weapons simulation business whose revenues exceeded £100m by the early 1990s, before channelling much of that wealth into Laverstoke Park.

The judge stressed that Scheckter did not fall into the category of a hobby farmer seeking to avoid tax on other income, but ruled that the losses for the three relevant years could not lawfully be offset under the Income Tax (Trading and Other Income) Act 2005.