Ajit Karn
London: Prime Minister Rishi Sunak has disclosed his tax returns, disclosing that the British-Indian leader has paid more than £1 million to the Exchequer since 2019 when he became a prominent politician.
The tax disclosure is in accordance with a commitment to transparency made by the British prime minister in November of last year.
Mr. Sunak, one of the wealthiest British politicians, revealed on Wednesday that he earned a total of GBP 4.766 million between 2019 and 2022 and paid approximately GBP 1.053 million in taxes, a tax rate of approximately 22%.
The 42-year-old former finance minister paid GBP 325,826 in capital gains tax and GBP 120,604 in UK income tax on a total income of GBP 1.9 million during the previous tax year.
“I am pleased to have published my tax returns in the interest of transparency, as I promised I would,” said Prime Minister Sunak during a Wednesday visit to north Wales.
“I believe what people are ultimately interested in is what I will do for them,” he added.
After his financial affairs came under scrutiny during last year’s Conservative Party leadership election campaign, which he lost to Liz Truss before being elevated to Prime Minister after Truss’ brief tenure at 10 Downing Street, Mr. Sunak came under pressure to release his tax returns.
It followed the controversy around the non-domicile tax status of his wife, Akshata Murty, who has since relinquished the legal position, which meant she paid tax on her Indian earnings in India.
In April of last year, Ms. Murty, the daughter of Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy, stated that she took the action to prevent the issue from becoming a “distraction” for her husband, who was UK chancellor of the exchequer at the time.
The Labour Party, which has frequently brought up Mr. Sunak’s wealth in Parliament to argue that he lacks empathy for those struggling with a cost-of-living crisis in the country, questioned the “considerable delay” in their publication.
“They [tax returns] reveal a tax system devised by successive Tory governments in which the prime minister pays a much lower tax rate than working people who face the highest tax burden in seven decades,” said Labour Deputy Leader Angela Rayner.
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MPs supported Rishi Sunak’s revised post-Brexit agreement with the European Union (EU) in order to resolve the issue of averting a land border between UK territory Northern Ireland and neighboring EU memberstate Ireland. Although his predecessors, former prime ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, were among the Conservative Party MPs who joined Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in voting against the agreement in the House of Commons on Wednesday, it passed by a vote of 515 to 29.
Mr. Sunak unveiled the Windsor Framework last month, which rewrites the Brexit Northern Ireland Protocol agreed to by Mr. Johnson in 2019. Tory MPs who voted against the revised arrangement included former home secretary Priti Patel of Indian descent, who urged Sunak to “negotiate a better deal.”
