The chancellor wants you to pay your taxes, but it turns out his wife (who is richer than the queen) has been dodging her UK tax bill.
Akshata Murty, wife of chancellor Rishi Sunak, is a “non-domicile”. That means she lives in the UK, but has registered her permanent home in another country.
As a “non-dom” she pays no British tax on money earned overseas. And Murty earns a lot.
Her father, Narayana Murthy (he spells his surname differently), is an Indian billionaire businessman who founded the tech giant Infosys.
Akshata owns £700 million of Infosys shares. Apparently, the Queen only has £350 million to her name!
Last year Akshata Murty received £11.6 million as her slice of the Indian company’s dividend payments to shareholders.
And as a non-dom she dodged a £2 million payment in taxes to the UK government.
This has outraged many in the UK.
The UK has £2million less to spend on education, housing and healthcare because of the chancellor’s wife.
But the bigger issue may be fairness. Since Rishi Sunak was made chancellor in 2020, he has raised taxes 15 times for the rest of us – including many in Britain who are already struggling.
It is no surprise anger greeted the chancellor and his millionaire wife who are sitting pretty when many are paying more tax – their fair share – and struggling to heat their homes or feed their children.
Rising East went out and asked East Londoners for their thoughts. Listen here:
Non-doms?
Gov.uk says that in April 2020 there the UK had 75,700 with non-domiciled taxpayer status. So who are they?
Perhaps unsurprisingly a lot of non-doms are rich.
According to one report, fully four in ten people in the UK with an income of £5 million or more in 2018 claimed non-dom status at some point.
The report from the London School of Economics and the University of Warwick gained unprecedented access to the personal tax records of anyone who was a UK non-dom from 1997 to 2018.
And from the other side of the income scale, under 3 in 100 of those earning less than £100,000 in 2019 had ever claimed non-dom status.
The difference between the rich and the poor suggests this is about trying to pay less tax.
And we know the public sector needs more money and would greatly benefit from the extra revenue that these people can afford to pay.
Rishi’s wife changed her status pretty quickly in the face of the outrage. It turns out she can spare the cash. Maybe it’ll make the chancellor think about fairness. But then again don’t hold your breath waiting for that to happen.