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The TV host says he’s ‘very bitter’ after financial woes ‘forced him to sell’ home
The past few years have not been the kindest to Eamonn Holmes and Ruth Langsford. On top of all the health struggles the GB News host has had to endure and the loss of his beloved mother, Eamonn has been locked in a long-running dispute with HM Revenue and Customs. The presenter, 64, said that selling his home in Belfast, Northern Ireland, had been the only real option and that HMRC had “taken away everything I ever worked for”.
The financial problems have taken their toll on the former This Morning star, who believes the stress of the dispute – which left him having to shell out “hundreds of thousands of pounds in legal fees” and ordered to pay £250k after he lost two appeals – caused his health to deteriorate.
“I had a house here [in Belfast] until six weeks ago when I was forced to sell it by the Inland Revenue (HRMC),” he revealed. “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.”
It’s thought Eamonn had dreamt of moving back to his hometown in the future, away from the Surrey home he shares with wife Ruth, previously saying when asked, “Oh gosh yes, but Ruth wouldn’t want that. She won’t go, she wouldn’t go.” The broadcaster has clearly taken the tax blow hard. “People think it’s only the Eamonn Holmeses of this world that they’re after. But it’s not. The country is broken,” he added.
A tribunal in 2020 ruled Eamonn – who hosted This Morning with wife Ruth for 15 years until they were replaced by Alison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary in 2021 – was employed by ITV while hosting the daytime show, not working as a freelancer.
Tax officials ordered him to pay a decade’s worth of backdated National Insurance and tax payments.
Eamonn admitted that the ensuing dispute was “the most stressful experience outside of losing my father”. He believed his anxiety resulted in a case of shingles in 2018, which could have left him blind.
At the time he said, “I was like a lamb to the slaughter – it was the most stressful, humiliating experience. “It was bloody scary to see [the illness]. It looked as if someone had taken a baseball bat to my face.”
His health continued to suffer following the bout of shi
