Eamonn Holmes admitted a brutal five-year battle with the taxman left him “bitter” before the breakdown of his marriage to Ruth Langsford . The 64-year-old TV presenter was forced to sell his beloved house in Belfast to pay off a £250,000 tax bill, plus a reported “hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal fees”. Though Eamonn maintained he was a freelancer when he worked for ITV , as he claimed he never received sick pay, holiday pay or company shares, tax officials ruled he was employed by the company and owed 10 years of backdated national insurance and tax payments.
At the time he described the experience as “the most stressful outside of losing my father” and said: “I had a house here [Belfast] until six weeks ago when I was forced to sell it by the Inland Revenue [HMRC]. It's something I’m very bitter about because people think you earn lots of money and therefore you have to pay. It’s like they have taken away everything I ever worked for.
“People think it’s only the Eamonn Holmeses of this world that they’re after. But it’s not. The country is broken.
I was like a lamb to the slaughter – it was the most stressful, humiliating experience." READ MORE: Eamonn Holmes to reveal all on Ruth Langsford split in 'frank' interview as he leaves family home READ MORE: Truth behind Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford sad split: Explosive rows, ill health and last photo It also sparked some of his health woes. A severe bout of shingles in 2018 which "looked.
