All Britons should do their best to pay the minimum tax possible, Reform UK’s deputy leader has argued as he dismissed a newspaper investigation over his own tax affairs as a smear.

Richard Tice, who was presenting a press conference on Monday about Reform’s claims to have saved large sums of money in the English councils it runs, faced questions about a Sunday Times story which detailed a scheme the paper said had helped him avoid nearly £600,000 in corporation tax.

According to the paper, Tice’s property company used a rare legal status known as a real estate investment trust, or Reit, which meant it paid no corporation tax between 2018 and 2021. Labour has urged HMRC to investigate the arrangements.

Asked whether he was right to minimise his tax payments in such a way, Tice told reporters he rejected the idea people should “pay the absolute maximum tax possible”.

Asked if he would encourage everyone in the UK to pay as little tax as legally possible, Tice replied: “Yes, of course, that’s what you should do.”

Tice also used a tweet by the Sunday Times journalist, Gabriel Pogrund, about the story, which confirmed that Tice had paid the necessary tax under the terms of the scheme, to claim the story about him had been misleading.

“Given that was his conclusion by the end of the afternoon, maybe he was just trying to smear me,” Tice said.

In fact, Pogrund’s tweet had restated what the story set out: that while Tice did not appear to have broken any laws or criminally underpaid tax, his use of a Reit scheme for his property company was a complex and unusual way to minimise the amount owed.

Tice sought to characterise the story as an attempt by the media to argue that everyone had to pay the maximum tax possible.

“We have entered a new a new world where there is a moral imperative now in the United Kingdom that you shouldn’t just pay tax as required,” he said, arguing that this “new moral code” would lead to people leaving the UK in large numbers.

“You must pay the maximum personal income tax rate on everything. That is a mad situation to be in. We have to call it out,” he said.

“How many friends and family do you have who voluntarily choose to pay more tax than they are legally obliged to do, or who voluntarily decide, actually I’m going to pay the absolute maximum I can?”

Tice also denied that Reit schemes, of which there are around 200 operating in the UK, were specialist or beyond the use of less rich taxpayers, saying anyone could invest in them.

In a letter to HMRC released on Sunday night, the Labour chair, Anna Turley, called for an investigation into a series of areas where, she said, it was possible that Tice and his company had abused the intentions of the Reit process, calling it “a deeply troubling case which needs to be investigated with the utmost urgency”.