Sunak paid £1m in UK tax since 2019, records show – BBC News

Rishi Sunak paid more than £1m in UK tax over the last three years, details of the prime minister’s financial affairs show.

The UK tax was paid on earnings of more than £4.7m from income and a US-based investment fund.

Mr Sunak first said he would publish a tax return during his unsuccessful campaign to be Tory leader last year.

He faced calls to be transparent about his finances after it emerged his wife, Akshata Murty, had non-dom status.

The tax details came as MPs questioned former Prime Minister Boris Johnson over whether he misled MPs over Partygate.

Mr Sunak is thought to be one of the richest MPs in Parliament and his personal wealth is something opposition parties have often used as a political attack line.

The PM worked in finance before entering politics and he and his family are thought to own several properties, including a Grade II-listed manor house in his North Yorkshire constituency.

In the last financial year alone, 2021-2022, the prime minister earned more than £1.9m in income and capital gains, according to the records.

Earlier this month, during a trip to Paris for talks with French President Emmanuel Macron, Mr Sunak said he had been too “busy” to publish sooner.

But speaking in Parliament a few weeks ago, Labour backbench MP Richard Burgon questioned why the prime minister had taken so long to publish tax returns.

He said: “People want transparency in our politics, especially because the prime minister is the richest prime minister in history and because of the concerns there have been.”

In his first speech as PM outside Downing Street, Mr Sunak promised to lead a government of “integrity, professionalism, and accountability at every level”.

The Liberal Democrats said Mr Sunak “snuck” the records out “whilst the world is distracted with Boris Johnson’s Partygate grilling”.

“People will be much more concerned today about the staggering tax hikes Rishi Sunak has imposed on them,” the party’s Cabinet Office spokesperson Christine Jardine said.

While there is not a long tradition of prime ministers publishing their tax returns, some of Mr Sunak’s predecessors have chosen to do so in recent years.

Former Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron published his tax return in 2016 after revelations about his late father’s offshore fund were revealed in the Panama Papers.

Theresa May released her tax return during her campaign to be Tory leader in 2016, but did not do so when she was prime minister.

The two previous prime ministers, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, did not publish their tax returns.

The financial affairs of Mr Sunak and his family were thrust into the media spotlight when he was chancellor in 2022.

Mr Sunak’s wife, Ms Murty, revealed she had non-dom status, which meant she did not pay UK tax on her overseas earnings.

Ms Murthy is the daughter the billionaire founder of Indian IT giant Infosys and owns a share of the company, entitling her to dividend payments.

As Mr Sunak came under political pressure, Ms Murty released a statement saying she would pay UK tax on her overseas income but retain her non-dom status.

At about the same time, Mr Sunak admitted he had held a US green card – allowing permanent residence in that country – while he was chancellor.

He returned the green card in October 2021, ahead of his first trip to the US as a UK government minister.

Following these revelations, Mr Sunak referred himself to the prime minister’s ethics adviser, who cleared him of breaching ministerial rules over the declaration of his financial arrangements.

The document released by the government includes an explanation of the prime minister’s tax affairs from 2019.

The document says all of Mr Sunak’s investment income and capital gains “relate to a single US-based investment fund”, which is listed as a “blind management arrangement” on the register of ministers’ interests.

Politicians with share portfolios and investments routinely set up blind trusts when they get government jobs. This allows them to continue earning income from their investments without knowing where the money is invested to avoid any conflicts of interest.

The document says “some of the income of the US-based investment fund is also subject to tax in other jurisdictions (including the USA)”.

Mr Sunak – who has previously worked as an analyst for the investment bank, Goldman Sachs – has acknowledged that his investments are kept in a financial arrangement known as a blind trust.

In February, in an interview with TalkTV presenter Piers Morgan, he was asked whether it was right for prime ministers to have blind trusts.

Mr Sunak said: “I think that’s better than them having control over them.”

Mr Sunak’s records also show that the prime minister paid tax in the US on dividends in the country. A dividend is a sum of money paid by a company to its shareholders out of its profits.

“These US dividends were also subject to tax in the UK,” the document says.

The document says Mr Sunak’s previously held green card status did not impact his tax liability in either the UK or the US during the three financial years reported.