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Comedian Jimmy Carr is to pay a half-a-million-pound tax bill after quitting a controversial offshore tax-avoidance scheme.

His company is now paying full corporation tax in the UK. Last year he was one of several celebrities exposed for using the “morally wrong” – but perfectly legal – K2 scheme, based in Jersey, to cut his tax bill to just one per cent of his earnings.

But the comic's latest accounts for his business, FN Good Ltd, for the year ending April 2013, reveal it made a £2.5million profit. The tax bill is based on 23 per cent of his bumper earnings.

In June 2012, Jimmy apologised for using K2. Under the scheme he sent the money offshore and was then loaned back the sum, thereby cutting his tax bill to just £10,000 for every £1million earned.

He said at the time: “I met with a financial adviser and he said, ‘Do you want to pay less tax? It’s totally legal’. I said, ‘Yes’. I now realise I’ve made a terrible error of judgment.”