Paul Baxendale-Walker

Paul Baxendale-Walker is a talk show host, former lawyer and an author of legal text books. He is, together with Andrew Thornhill Q.C., the author of The Law and Taxation of Remuneration Trusts (Key Haven, 1997) and also Purpose Trusts (1999, 2009 ).

Paul Baxendale-Walker was born of Anglo-Brazilian parents, but was orphaned and grew up in a variety of Children's Homes. He took a degree in law at Hertford College of Oxford University and went on to qualify as a barrister and later solicitor. He worked in taxation law at the Bar in Lincoln's Inn and then in various City law firms and Arthur Andersen, before establishing his "Baxendale Walker" practice in Mayfair in 1994.

In 1994, Baxendale-Walker advised the trustees on the taking of loans from a pension fund established for the benefit of employees. Unknown to him, the borrowers were fraudsters and £2,135,000 went missing. In subsequent civil proceedings, Mr Justice Etherton found Baxendale-Walker was not guilty of dishonesty. In the course of the civil trial it transpired that he had given a reference for an associate of the fraudsters without any proper basis for the factual assertions in the reference. In consequence in 2005 the Solicitors Disciplinary Tribunal suspended him as a solicitor for three years. The Court of Appeal upheld the decision in 2007.

Baxendale-Walker was struck off the roll of solicitors by the Solicitors' Disciplinary Tribunal on 11 January 2007, on the grounds that he had a conflict of interest in advising his clients on his own tax schemes. He subsequently claimed that the Law Society and others had conspired to put him out of business. On 18 April 2011, his claim was struck out by the High Court on the basis that it had no real prospect of success. He is currently suing the Law Society in California Federal Court for millions of dollars, arising out of what he claims to have been unlawful interference by the Law Society in his US legal business.

Baxendale-Walker is the author of the Employee Benefit Trust (EBT) tax strategy implemented by Glasgow Rangers FC, which was(April 2011) challenged by HMRC in a first tier tax tribunal. In November 2012, the Tribunal upheld the legality and tax effectiveness of the EBT strategy. Rangers got to keep an estimated £50 million saved by Baxendale-Walker's advice.

He still owns Baxendale Walker LLP, which has offices in London and Glasgow, and regularly features on TV as an expert commentator on tax matters.