Led Zeppelin’s record sales skyrocketed during the 1970s, leaving the band with a difficult problem to solve by 1978: How could the members of the band receive £3.668 million in royalty payments without giving a significant portion of the money to British tax authorities?
The band’s tax advisers had an inventive solution: The members of Led Zeppelin would hand control of their companies to a Shakespearean theatre charity based in a former church in London that was run by an actor known for playing mysterious foreign villains. That would enable the band’s royalties to be classed as profits received by the charity, keeping it out of the reach of the tax authorities.
In 1978, the members of Led Zeppelin and their manager Peter Grant sold their businesses to the charity in the hope of solving their tax problem. But the transaction, despite its inventiveness, failed to solve Led Zeppelin’s financial woes and saw the band caught up in one of the UK’s most infamous corporate scandals.
LedZepNews previously investigated the global network of businesses that Led Zeppelin used to minimise the tax bill on its 1977 US tour, revealed the band’s full 1968 recording contract, examined the band’s corporate empire involving more than 50 businesses across the UK and US, published details of the accounts for Jimmy Page’s London bookshop and also revealed previously unseen New York Police Department documents on the theft of the band’s money in 1973.
Now, we delve into the so-called “Rossminster affair” that saw Led Zeppelin’s companies transferred to a theatre charity before the band’s tax advisors became front page and television news in the UK and the target of co-ordinated dawn raids by the police.
There is no suggestion of illegality by any members of Led Zeppelin or their advisors. Instead, this story highlights how the band reached a multi-million settlement with tax authorities in 1984. Led Zeppelin had attempted to carry out tax avoidance, which is legal, rather than evading tax, which is against the law.