UK’s Indian-origin finance minister Rishi Sunak’s wife is non-domiciled for tax purposes says her spokesperson

As the country faces tough economic conditions and the govt is racking up taxes, this statement comes as the answer to Tulip Siddiq’s comment on Sunak benefitting from his wife’s tax status

Indian-origin British finance minister Rishi Sunak should say whether he had benefited from his wife’s tax status, Tulip Siddiq, a lawmaker and Treasury spokeswoman in the opposition Labour Party had said.

Right on the cue, comes the statement from his wife, Akshata Murthy’s spokesperson that Akshata is a citizen of India, and was hence treated under British law as non-domiciled for UK tax purposes. The reason is that India does not allow its citizens to hold the citizenship of another country simultaneously.

Akshata is the daughter of the billionaire co-founder of the Indian IT company, Infosys, Narayana Murthy. She owns around 0.93% of the company. As Sunak’s Indian citizen wife, Akshata is considered non-domiciled for the UK tax purposes, but her spokesperson said she pays taxes in Britain on all her UK income.

Akshata’s tax status deems that she is not needed to pay taxes in Britain on dividends from the Indian business. The news, coming in even as the UK govt is calculating taxes in millions for people, was in almost all of Britain’s top newspapers

Sunak, who became UK’s finance minister in February 2020 just when the world was about to face a pandemic, is now grappling with some of the toughest economic conditions the UK has faced in decades. Soaring Inflation and dropping standards of living are being compared to what the country faced in the 1950s.

To help fund the rebuilding of the country’s national health service and its public finances, he has increased the tax take to the highest level since the 1940s.

“Akshata Murty is a citizen of India, the country of her birth and parent’s home,” the spokeswoman said in a statement.