EIGHT of Britain’s biggest companies are paying bonuses early so their high earners can avoid the new 50% rate of tax.

Tesco, Whitbread, SAB Miller, Land Securities and the London Stock Exchange have brought forward payments to avoid the new rate, which starts on April 6. Dairycrest, Invensys and Allen & Overy have done the same.

As a result, thousands of executives will have bonuses taxed at the current rate of 40% instead of 50%. The higher rate affects everyone earning more than £150,000 a year.

The companies choosing to accelerate their bonus payments normally hand them out in April or May.

A number of the firms have decided to sign off their annual accounts in record time to allow their staff to escape the new tax rate this year.

Marks & Spencer and J Sainsbury have already said they will pay their bonuses early.

Tax experts believe the rush could give the Treasury an unexpected boost ahead of this week’s budget.

Firms have taken different approaches to avoiding the higher tax rate. At Tesco, the early bonus payout affects 1,700 staff. Only a small proportion of them earn more than £150,000, but all the payments are being brought forward. Sir Terry Leahy, the chief executive, got a cash bonus of £1.2m last year.

Whitbread, owner of Premier Inn hotels and Costa Coffee, is making early payments to about 40 senior staff.

The London Stock Exchange has given staff the option of having their bonuses paid before or after the April 6 deadline, depending on their personal tax circumstances.

Land Securities is paying up to 25% of its bonuses early to about 100 people. Dairycrest is accelerating about half the bonus payment to 550 staff, even though there are only about 10 on the payroll who earn more than £150,000.

SAB Miller, the brewer, is understood to be bringing forward bonus payments, though it is unclear how many of its 550 UK staff are involved.

Some company directors are also selling share options ahead of the tax deadline. Andy Haste, chief executive of RSA Group, the insurer, exercised options worth more than £9m last week. Mick Davis, boss of the mining giant Xstrata, sold shares worth about £5.4m.

A number of entrepreneurs are rushing through big dividend payments to avoid a separate tax rise that comes into effect next month. Receiving the payments early will allow business leaders to avoid tens of millions of pounds in tax.

Dividends are currently taxed at 32.5% but from April 6 the rate will rise to 42.5% for those earning more than £150,000 a year.

An earlier dividend date will ensure that Mark Coombs, chief executive of the fund manager Ashmore, will pay about £2.7m tax on £11m of dividends, allowing for tax credit. If the payment were made next year he would pay £4m in tax.

Bill and William Adderley — the father and son who own the majority of Dunelm Mills, the home furnishings group — stand to save more than £400,000 in tax by having their dividends paid about three weeks early.

Bruno Schroder, who owns nearly 14m shares in his family’s investment group, will receive nearly £3m in dividends this month. His tax bill will be reduced from £1.1m to £732,100.

Mike Warburton, a tax expert at Grant Thornton, the accountant, said that bringing forward the dividend payment date had become “standard guidance” to clients seeking to avoid the new 50% income-tax rate.

“I have many clients who have taken out large dividends, in a number of cases greater than £10m each,” he said. “We expect high tax rates for another three to four years, and some entrepreneurs have taken out big dividends from their companies so they then have enough funds to draw on tax-free for the next few years until the rates come down.

“For many of these people a 40% tax rise was acceptable but they saw a 50% rate as unfair. It was inevitable that entrepreneurs would take advantage of simple, legal steps like these.”

Receiving their dividends early will save Peter Hargreaves and Stephen Lansdown, founders of Hargreaves Lansdown, the investment firm, about £2.5m in tax.

Simon Nixon, who owns a 53% stake in Moneysupermarket.com, the price comparison site, is expected to save £1.4m after the firm’s decision to pay a special dividend on April 1.

The true tax levied on dividends is usually lower than the headline rates, as the transactions can be subject to a tax credit. The effective rate of tax is usually 25%, which is expected to rise to 36.1% next month.

Accountants said that entrepreneurs running hundreds of private companies had made similar moves, but those transactions had not yet been made public.

Additional reporting by Robert Watts and Kate Walsh