Thursday, April 07, 2022

Rishi Sunak’s Wife Claims Non-domicile Status

THE GUARDIAN: Tax status allows Akshata Murthy to avoid tax on foreign earnings

Akshata Murthy earns an estimated £11.5m a year in dividends from her stake in Indian company Infosys. Photograph: Samir Hussein/WireImage

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.

Murthy, the daughter of Infosys’s billionaire founder, owns a 0.93% stake in the tech firm worth approximately £690m. The company’s most recent accounts suggest that Murthy’s stake would have yielded her £11.6m in dividend payments in the last tax year.

Under UK tax laws, Murthy’s status as a non-dom would mean she would not have had to pay tax on the dividend payment from overseas companies. Infosys is headquartered in Bengaluru, India, and listed on the Indian and New York stock exchange. By contrast, UK resident taxpayers pay a 38.1% tax on dividend payouts. » | Rupert Neate | Wednesday, April 6, 2022