Has Mickey goofed on tax?

Mickey Mouse is facing a battle with the taxman after the Walt Disney company admitted it was being investigated for allegedly not paying enough tax.

The media giant, which has been tipped as a potential buyer of media assets in the UK, said in a regulatory filing last week that the US Internal Revenue Service was examining three years' worth of the company's tax returns, running from 1993 to 1995.

The IRS has indicated it will be "challenging certain of the company's tax position", but Disney claimed there wouldn't be a material earnings impact.

This is not the first time the Mickey Mouse group has been in trouble over attempts to keep down its taxes. A lawyer who used to work for Disney, Judy Denenholz, claimed she was dismissed for refusing to go along with a plan to understate millions of dollars of legal fees in a tax-cutting scheme.

The Disney group has also been in a battle with the literary agency which owns the merchandising rights to AA Milne's Winnie the Pooh books. The agents say Disney, which has turned Pooh, Tigger, Piglet et al into international stars, has been underestimating the income they generate for decades and has taken the giant corporation to court in the US to gain a larger slice of the cake.