Moira Stuart, the public face of HMRC who tells people that “tax doesn’t have to be taxing”, has set up a company that allows her to avoid the full impact of the 50p top tax rate.

The Sunday Telegraph has revealed that Stuart, who’s currently the newsreader for the Chris Evans Breakfast Show on BBC Radio 2, has set up a private company that allows her to pay corporation tax, instead of income tax at up to 50%, on some of her income.

Companies House filings show that the newsreader is sole director and shareholder of Moira Stuart Ltd, a firm set up in April 2010.

The company’s accounts reveal that £22,607 was paid into the firm during the 2010-11 tax year. After £1,749 of administrative expenses, Stuart paid corporation tax on income of £4,380. However, had these taxes been subject to income tax, she would have had to pay a bill of over £11,000.

A spokesman for HMRC said that Stuart works on specific advertising campaigns for HMRC and is "not employed directly" so there is "no question of disguised employment". He would not comment on the tax rate paid by Stuart for her HMRC contract.

On the BBC's Andrew Marr programme, foreign secretary William Hague became the first senior cabinet minister to criticise the common practice of setting up a limited company to avoid paying higher taxes.

He said: “I'm not very fond of that sort of behaviour. Sometimes people will have agreed their own arrangements and done it over a long time, and that's their contractual arrangement, so of course they will have their legal rights to that.

“But, particularly at this time in the nation's history, people should be paying their taxes fully.”

Stuart was unveiled as the front woman of HMRC’s self-assessment advertising campaign in 2008. Earlier this month, it was revealed that a record 9.45 million Self Assessment tax returns were filed on time this year, and a record 7.65 million (80.9%) of them were filed online.

The busiest day for online returns was 31 January, when HMRC received nearly 445,000.