Queen documents freely accessible on Company House (interesting)

For those of you that are interested, Company House in the UK allows free access to all company related documents in PDF format.

If you look for instance for Queen Productions, you can even find a copy of the original incorporation from 1975, as well as company records and annual statements, including documents signed by both John, Brian and Roger during the years.

Below a list of companies owned by the members of Queen (some of them are dormant):

Roger Taylor:

Lochquest Ltd
Nightjar Productions Ltd (Roger's main company which cashes in dividends from QP Ltd)
QM Productions Ltd
Queen Multimedia Ltd
Queen Music Ltd
Queen Productions Ltd
Raincloud Productions Ltd
Smashing Records Ltd

John Deacon

Goldfinch Productions Ltd (John's main company which cashes in dividends from QP Ltd )
QM Productions
Queen Multimedia Ltd
Queen Music Ltd
Queen Productions Ltd
Raincloud Productions Ltd

Brian May
Duck Productions (Brian's main company which cashes in dividends from QP Ltd)
Flakward Ltd
QM Productions Ltd
Queen Multimedia Ltd
Queen Music Ltd
Queen Productions Ltd
Raincloud Production
Tonleigh Ltd (Brian's ”touring” company, now dormant)

Freddie
Goose Productions
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/01220218/filing-history?page=3

Mercury Songs Ltd
https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/01346089/filing-history

(Freddie is known as Frederick Mercury on the Company House website).

Typically one would have to pay to access company accounts, but as this is a beta version, you can look for almost anything and anyone for free. It gives a rather interesting (financial) insight on the matter

Interesting read.....strange that the four of them received quite different salaries in the year (pages 10-11).

Dont forget they were proficiently brilliant tax evaders (rightfully so) so these figures were probably the lowest they could probably get away with (it was all abroad).

Didn`t Freddie had a company called "Mighty Tape" ? Or is it my memory failing here ?

He also was a shareholder for a car-rental company around 77/ 78. He was moaning abut all that "hard work" in an interview the "Bravo" back then.

[QUOTE] [b]mooghead wrote:[/b]

Dont forget they were proficiently brilliant tax evaders (rightfully so) so these figures were probably the lowest they could probably get away with (it was all abroad). [/QUOTE]

So now you're a tax-evasion advocate? Well, I guess it fits in nicely with the rest of the anti-social jerkwad personality you've been displaying on this forum for the past year or so.

If you made the kind of money they did you would be too, its all legal. Get mad at the system that allows it, not me ;-)

Avoidance is legal.
Evasion is not.

Probably avoidance rather than evasion. Avoidance is legal, and many more people are doing it than realise they are. For example "salary sacrifice" schemes. Tax evasion is defined as illegal. Again, being paid cash in hand is a widespread example of that.

Coming from the Left politically, I'm not in favour of either. But it helps to know the difference. A little.

Dammit.. got my avoid/evades mixed up didn't I... durr....

Interesting read! Thanks for sharing!

Nosey fuckers

I'm a tax guy - so I may as well chime in. Avoidance is not necessarily legal... there are legal ways to do it. However, most 1st world countries have set their tax regimes to tax their residents on world wide income. Meaning that it's not as lucrative as you may think. Basically, depending on the regime, you would have to report income earned in another country and depending on the relationship with that country (tax treaties) your country would allow you to benefit from a credit based on what you paid in that other country.

Setting up corporations in many countries will allow you to defer taxes until you ultimately move the cash in to your personal account. This is usually allowable with royalty income - and such is probably the case with Queen.

If you look at the accounts (1986 and onwards) , the ”country of residence” is in most cases England for Brian, Roger, John and Freddie. All profits made and paid as dividends were taxed at the UK dividend tax rate, then distributed from Queen Productions (and other Ltd companies) to each individual band member's Ltd company and taxed accordingly.

Therefore Queen was not avoiding taxes from the mid-80's onwards (they were tax exiles especially in the beginning of the eighties due to the corporate tax being so high in the UK). Also one can see that overseas income was taxed overseas and un-taxed in the UK (due to double tax treaty), whereas the overseas income was relatively small compared to their UK income.