Before being fined by the Metropolitan Police for breaking pandemic lockdown restrictions, Chancellor Rishi Sunak was already having a bad week over the exposure of his wife Akshata Murty’s tax-avoidance.
In December 2020, the World Socialist Web Site described the multi-hundred millionaire as “the living embodiment of government in the service of the financial oligarchy… of rule of, by and for the oligarchy.” The recent scandal has confirmed this characterisation.
On Wednesday last week, the Independent newspaper revealed that Murty had been claiming non-domicile tax status, at the bargain rate of £30,000 a year and a promise of her intention to return to India someday, meaning she does not pay UK taxes on income earned abroad.
That income is substantial. Murty owns a 0.91 percent stake in her father’s multibillion pound company Infosys, bringing her net worth to over half a billion pounds—“richer than the queen”, as the press have pointed out. In the last seven and a half years, the Guardian reports, she has received dividend payments of £54.5 million.
Factoring in the different rates of tax charged on that income across that period, Murty would have been charged roughly £20 million in taxes were it not for her non-dom status. That money alone would cover the April energy price hikes of nearly 29,000 households.
Of course, this isn’t the half of it. The declared…
