Snail farm in office was a ‘ploy to avoid shelling out on tax’

A snail farm in an office building linked to a company that describes itself as the “Canceller of the Exchequer” is an attempted tax avoidance ploy, a council has said.
Snai1 Primary Products 2023 Ltd has been keeping about 15 covered crates containing snails on the lower ground floor of 9 Dale Street, in Liverpool city centre, for the past year, according to the BBC.
Under current legislation a snail farm could qualify as “agricultural use” of a building, which means it can be exempt from business rates. Liverpool city council said seeking such an exemption for snail farms was an “avoidance tactic that has been attempted” in the city.
The sole director of Snai1 Primary Products, Terence Ball, operates a host of companies including a snail farm called L’Escargotiere and a firm called BoyceBrook that provides “empty property rates solutions”, both based in Preston, Lancashire.
BoyceBrook’s website states that its team “has a proven track record of minimising the liability for empty property rates” and describes the company as the “Canceller of the Exchequer”.
Crusader, a company where Ball was director, was found to have entered in a “sham” snail farm tenancy deal with Isle Investment Limited, a landlord, in Leeds, according to a 2021 High Court ruling.
The court ruled that Crusader had “agreed to implement a scheme designed to achieve [the property owner’s business rates] avoidance objective”. The owner agreed to pay Crusader 20 per cent of what the business rates would have cost them.
The Court of Appeal upheld the High Court ruling that the tenancies were “a sham”.
Business rates are collected by councils and then redistributed by government to local authorities and used to pay for services. According to Liverpool city council, the business rate for the whole building, partly occupied by Snai1 Primary Products, would be £61,000.
Land Registry records show the building on Dale Street was bought for £5.4 million in 2014 by Finchley Land Ltd, a company registered in the British Virgin Islands whose main shareholder is an Iraqi businessman.
Ball told the BBC that the space is a legitimate snail farm operation but did not respond to the council’s suggestion it was a tax avoidance scheme nor did he respond to questions about whether his firms received payment for occupying part of the building.
Ball did say the firm had told the council and the Valuation Office Agency when it rented the space and “provided full details of the current legislation required for exemption, which unfortunately is mostly ignored”.
Tax avoidance, unlike tax evasion, is not a criminal offence. Liverpool City Council confirmed that Snai1 Primary Products has not made an application for the exemption of business rates and no official probe is underway.
A spokesman for the council said: “The misuse of the agricultural exemption with the use of ‘snail farms’ in commercial premises is a business rates avoidance tactic that has been attempted in Liverpool.
“To date, no agricultural exemption has been awarded on commercial premises and the council’s business rates team continues to monitor the situation closely and will not hesitate to take further action and challenge such tactics to protect public funds and maintain a fair and efficient tax system for all ratepayers.”
Ball was approached for comment.