Hayley Mills was a renowned child actor in the 1960s who worked extensively with The Walt Disney Company. However, she barely saw most of the money she made at the peak of her stardom. In a recent interview, she revealed that her financial advisor had allegedly mishandled her finances, while much of her earnings were ultimately lost to taxes.
Mills blasts financial advisor who couldn’t save her earnings from Britain’s taxation system
On the Rosebud Podcast, Hayley Mills talked about losing most of the fortune she earned as one of Disney’s biggest child actors. She starred in films like Pollyanna, The Parent Trap, and That Darn Cat!, which shot her to stardom. She revealed that most of the fortune she made as a child star was taken away by the “taxman.”
The original Parent Trap actress claimed financial advisor Stanley Passmore mishandled the trust fund created for her earnings and left her facing a devastating tax situation. During the podcast conversation, she explained that most of her movie earnings had been placed into a trust fund because the British taxation system in the 1960s could take as much as 90 percent of the income of high earners.
“It was rather a big chunk,” Mills said, adding, “It was most of it because it was all put into a trust fund, because [British] supertax was 90 percent in those days, so they had to do something.”
However, Mills said Passmore was not very reliable when it came to financial guidance. She recalled that when she turned 21, instead of finally gaining access to her money, she was handed documents from the Inland Revenue informing her that she still owed taxes on nearly all of her earnings.
“The trust company was set up for me. Stanley was also involved in setting up a trust company for Jack Hawkins. And the Inland Revenue attacked his trust company, which affected British law. It created the precedent,” Mills said.
“And so, when I reached 21, instead of being given the key to the door, I was handed an envelope across a green baize tablecloth by Stanley, which was the Inland Revenue basically saying, ‘Thank you. You owe us 90 percent of your earnings,’” she further added.
Mills said she was perplexed by the situation and looked to her financial advisor for clarity. According to the actress, Passmore simply laughed and told her she would probably need to move to America.
“And I’ve never been good at figures. I said, ‘Well, what does this mean? I don’t understand.’ And Stanley laughed and said, ‘Well, I think it means you have to move to America.’ And that’s all he ever said. He was a crook,” she stated.
Mills had stated in previous interviews that if the money she earned had been handled properly, she could have bought a bigger house or a better car. More importantly, she said it would have given her the freedom to turn down job offers she did not want or relocate to America for work.
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