Rishi's wife does not pay tax (millions!!) on dividends!

[FlowerArranger]

From today's Guardian :

Rishi Sunak’s multi-millionaire wife claims non-domicile status, it has emerged, which allows her to save millions of pounds in tax on dividends collected from her family’s IT business empire.

Akshata Murthy, who receives about £11.5m in annual dividends from her stake in the Indian IT services company Infosys, declares non-dom status, a scheme that allows people to avoid tax on foreign earnings.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/apr/06/rishi-sunaks-wife-claims-non-domicile-status?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

Anyone as outraged by this as I am? I mean what the actual fuck?

She pays taxes earned on her uk income in the uk. She pays tax on her income earned in India where she is from.
And this is wrong ….??? Clearly th e brown people don’t deserve what he white people think they should have? Sick

There are some willfully ignorant responses here. Are you determined not to ubderstand the actual facts; is that because she is non-white? So many English and UK born citizens avoid tax using rules and Uk laws quite legally yet you aren't losing your rag about someone who you seem to be saying is not PLU (i.e. not Britsh and not white)
Quite astounding

@Wheniruletheworld

There are some willfully ignorant responses here. Are you determined not to ubderstand the actual facts; is that because she is non-white? So many English and UK born citizens avoid tax using rules and Uk laws quite legally yet you aren't losing your rag about someone who you seem to be saying is not PLU (i.e. not Britsh and not white) Quite astounding

She’s married to the person who makes tax laws.

It’s not ignorant to wonder how she can use a tax law which, at its heart, is based on the principle that you don’t live in the UK for most of the time. Which is odd. Given her marriage.

So, make it about racism or whatever just to deflect from the fact that this is a bad choice.

And it is a choice.

It’s not ignorant to wonder how she can use a tax law which, at its heart, is based on the principle that you don’t live in the UK for most of the time.

The laws on domicile are not about where you live. Once again you are confusing residency with domicile .

@Iggly. It would definitely seem that way as this is how the Guardian are reporting it. Her non dom status was an active decision on her part.

Although I guess it ultimately boils down to her actual intentions for living in this country and whether she's going to remain here.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/apr/07/akshata-murty-non-dom-status-rishi-sunak-a-choice-not-an-obligation-tax-experts

I'd like to know how many MNers would voluntarily pay £millions in tax that they didn't legally owe.

Sadly some will hate them simply because they are rich .They haven't actually done anything wrong. I have noticed on other social platforms too the minute someone has money,posh accent or has gone to private school they are being targeted .

So many English and UK born citizens avoid tax using rules and Uk laws quite legally yet you aren't losing your rag about someone who you seem to be saying is not PLU

Did you miss Gary Barlow and Jimmy Carr getting their names dragged through the mud for similar perfectly legal tax dodging avoiding? Two very white straight males? White straight males without any particular responsibility to anyone and generally in a good position publicly.

This also illustrates why RS in particular should have known exactly what this could turn into and taken steps to avoid it. He didn’t which I can only put down to stupidity, arrogance or greed. No, the optics of this were always a weak spot and would be for any MP whose spouse is in a similar position.

@lljkk

I'd like to know how many MNers would voluntarily pay £millions in tax that they didn't legally owe.

I would love to have so much money that I could pay millions. How amazing would that be.

@lljkk

I'd like to know how many MNers would voluntarily pay £millions in tax that they didn't legally owe.

No, I wouldn't.

However, this is really a tax ruse that's solely open to the rich, so another thing the government could justifiably scrap but don't. Probably, as someone else has suggested, because Rishi has conflicts of interest. Non dom status is supposed to last 15-20 years. Quite why it should be this long is beyond me.

And to echo what another poster said, the Tories have virtually killed the contracting market by incorrectly applying tax laws to squeeze unlawful tax income from contractors. Purely because Rishi didn't like that they were treated differently. Yet he's happy to maintain this loophole.

@Noname99

She pays taxes earned on her uk income in the uk. She pays tax on her income earned in India where she is from. And this is wrong ….??? Clearly th e brown people don’t deserve what he white people think they should have? Sick

It would still be an issue if she was white, don't be so ridiculous.

If she didn't have non dom status she would be assessed for tax on her non British income, that might result in her paying more but no more than any person without non dom status.

Let's have a level playing field. She isn't some international business person who happens to be posted to the London office for a few years before moving to Zurich, New York or Shanghai. She is married, has children here, has a family home here.

If this isn't just a way of her paying less tax then let her give up the non dom status and have her taxes sorted like anyone else.

I haven't RTFT but wanted to comment as someone who was previously non-domiciled myself. There is a definite tax benefit to this position - I was from a lower tax country and I only paid UK tax on my UK earnings for the days I was actually in the UK. I suspect they travel quite a bit. There is a reason she has chosen this approach. But the key here is really that non-dom has guidelines but it is fundamentally about where you live and make your home. When I bought property here I was told it would jeaopardise my non-dom status. When I married a Brit same thing. If you live here, own property here, your kids go to school here, your husband is British, works here lives here, is indeed a high government minister, while you may be able to pay your tax advisors to argue on some kind of technicality, there is definitely a question about where you are domiciled.

@iggly The chancellor of the exchequer does not 'make tax laws'. Do you know how laws are made in this country. Certainly not by a single person. try this:
www.parliament.uk/about/how/laws/

and this re non-dom status
www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/apr/07/what-is-non-domicile-status-and-who-qualifies-hmrc

Oh, and when I bought the property and realised I wasn't leaving (after 3 years) I gave up my non-dom status because I am not a tax dodger. You don't have to exploit every single loophole. It is a choice.

@lljkk

I'd like to know how many MNers would voluntarily pay £millions in tax that they didn't legally owe.

Didn't you know everyone does it !Well judging by the comments they must do

The optics of being married to someone who has made this choice are pretty awful for Sunak. I think this news intertwined with the cost of living crisis has sabotaged his chance of becoming PM.

@missmoon

Lots of people on here saying that she doesn’t need to pay taxes in the UK on her Indian income because she’s an Indian national. That’s not how it works!

She has to pay taxes on her worldwide income in the UK if she is normally resident in the UK, regardless of nationality. The only way to get out of this is by claiming “non-dom” status. The vast majority of Indian citizens in the UK pay taxes here and don’t have non-dom status. Non-dom status isn’t automatic, she would have had to apply for it, and provided proof that she isn’t normally resident in this country and has stronger links with India. She would have hard to show (for example) that she lives in India (or visits) a good part of the year, her children go to school there, she is planning to move back there in the near future, her links to India are stronger than her links to the UK, etc.

This seems a bit hard to square with the fact that her husband lives in Downing Street, is an MP, and wants to be prime minister! Also, her children presumably go to school here and not in India.

It’s relevant because (a) the family are saving a huge amount in tax, while the rest of us have to pay, and (b) her husband writes the rules on non-dom status and taxation! There is a massive conflict of interest.

I'm waiting for the media to now name all the entertainers, football players and other multi-millionaires who are non-dom as well. Bet that's not going to happen as: A - it's not part of their current narrative B - what they're doing is not illegal.

But @MigsandTiggs none of their spouses are tinkering with our living standards. That is the point here. Her spouse is in a unique position. Around their kitchen table the Sunaks have conversations about shaving millions off their personal tax bills (quite legally admittedly), while millions of people have similar conversations about how theyre going to cope

@Cornettoninja

So many English and UK born citizens avoid tax using rules and Uk laws quite legally yet you aren't losing your rag about someone who you seem to be saying is not PLU

Did you miss Gary Barlow and Jimmy Carr getting their names dragged through the mud for similar perfectly legal tax dodging avoiding? Two very white straight males? White straight males without any particular responsibility to anyone and generally in a good position publicly.

This also illustrates why RS in particular should have known exactly what this could turn into and taken steps to avoid it. He didn’t which I can only put down to stupidity, arrogance or greed. No, the optics of this were always a weak spot and would be for any MP whose spouse is in a similar position.

No! They actively sought to avoid paying tax whilst having no legal basis from which to do so.

She is legally non dom. Her not paying taxes here on money not earned here, dividends not due here is a total non story. She is a wealthy women, married to a wealthy man who is in UK politics.

What steps could RS have taken that would have been legal? He declared her income, as he is legally onliged to do. All this 'ooh, the optics' stuff is weird, in a purity spiral manner. "He that is without sin" if you prefer a more religious take on it.

And who is fanning these flames? Starmer has said that if she were using perfectly legal schemes to reduce her tax bill it would be "breathtaking hypocrisy" Really? Not good business planning? Why's that then? Because she is a woman? An Indian woman? Sunak's wife? Choose your poison!

By all means lobby to change the system. But we all know that isn't going to hapen. Starmer won't fight for it, because it is absolutely certain that he uses similar legal business tactics to protect his own millions, c8 of them I believe. He is far, far more wealthy than Johnson, as is Corbyn! And Starmer didn't escape the sleaze scandal unnoticed.

Stop being drawn in by the politicking of the career politicians we are all now lumbered with. There is very little difference to the left or to the right, should you be able to find those politcal polarities these days!

It is like we've had collective amnesia about this "non-dom" business. I distinctly remember that there was a huge furore previously about it, particularly around people with "non-dom" status sitting in the house of lords. Lists of non-dom people were published and there was a lot of public anger. Small changes were made around the house of lords but that was it and it all died down eventually.

Now we find that the wife of the chancellor, the man who has just raised our taxes, is also benefitting from this carefully protected loophole. The idea that this is racial motivated is nonsense, it is the fact that non-dom status is not acceptable to most of the British public as it allows very wealthy people who live here and benefit from doing so to avoid paying tax here for what is, for them, a nominal fee.

The issue is that our tax laws specifically allow rich people to reduce their tax burdens way beyond what normal people can do and this now goes straight to the top as even the Chancellor's wife is doing it by using a loop hole that some how asks us not to believe the evidence in front of our eyes that despite being married to a senior British politician, having 3 homes here, having children and educating them here, making large donations to top UK private schools, she is actually domiciled in India and all this is just a temporary arrangement. Just like all the other tax Dodgers who are insisting that Monaco or other tax havens are their true homes, not their massive piles in London. It stinks.

Many of us pay over a third of our incomes in taxation (either from direct deductions or through VAT), yet we have super rich people paying only tiny fractions of that.

Although I can imagine the Chancellor looking around the Cabinet table and considering how loyal his friends have been, if anyone does have prejudices about Indians and tax, you might not want to have a look at what a Churchillian approach to tax involved.

@Eleganz

It is like we've had collective amnesia about this "non-dom" business. I distinctly remember that there was a huge furore previously about it, particularly around people with "non-dom" status sitting in the house of lords. Lists of non-dom people were published and there was a lot of public anger. Small changes were made around the house of lords but that was it and it all died down eventually.

Now we find that the wife of the chancellor, the man who has just raised our taxes, is also benefitting from this carefully protected loophole. The idea that this is racial motivated is nonsense, it is the fact that non-dom status is not acceptable to most of the British public as it allows very wealthy people who live here and benefit from doing so to avoid paying tax here for what is, for them, a nominal fee.

The issue is that our tax laws specifically allow rich people to reduce their tax burdens way beyond what normal people can do and this now goes straight to the top as even the Chancellor's wife is doing it by using a loop hole that some how asks us not to believe the evidence in front of our eyes that despite being married to a senior British politician, having 3 homes here, having children and educating them here, making large donations to top UK private schools, she is actually domiciled in India and all this is just a temporary arrangement. Just like all the other tax Dodgers who are insisting that Monaco or other tax havens are their true homes, not their massive piles in London. It stinks.

Many of us pay over a third of our incomes in taxation (either from direct deductions or through VAT), yet we have super rich people paying only tiny fractions of that.

^this

You have to pay £30k for her non Dom status I understand - so it is only for very fucking rich.

None of us know where Murty pays tax, people are assuming its paid in India but we don't know how her wealth is held. All we know is that she has used her Indian citizenship to claim non dom status despite being clearly established in the UK, children at UK schools etc. HMRC normally require evidence of non doms being longer term temporary residents.

It matters in two ways. Her husband is responsible for decision making on the non dom rules and HMRC senior staff have said they were not aware of this in discussions on non dom rules.

It also matters that the people we may be electing to high office have a long term commitment to the country which is questionable if they or their spouse have declared to HMRC they plan to leave.

[quote Wheniruletheworld]@iggly The chancellor of the exchequer does not 'make tax laws'. Do you know how laws are made in this country. Certainly not by a single person. try this:
www.parliament.uk/about/how/laws/

and this re non-dom status
www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/apr/07/what-is-non-domicile-status-and-who-qualifies-hmrc[/quote]
You know exactly what I mean. He oversees HMRC who, funnily enough, will draft the tax laws which are then put before Parliament. Better?

I know how Parliament works but thank you.

I also know that non Dom status is a choice based on the principle that you are not putting down permanent roots in the UK.

It’s a loophole which she is exploiting.

It’s high profile because of who her husband is.

Made worse by the fact he’s overseeing the biggest cost of living crisis we’ve ever known in living memory.

"She is married to the chancellor, for one thing. And she LIVES here, which the rules say mean she should pay here. And if she doesn't, that's interesting too."

The rules say she can elect to pay tax on her overseas earnings on the remittance basis as a non domiciled individual. She has chosen to do so. All within the tax rules.