Complicated spring for Boris Johnson’s finance minister. After the strong criticism concerning the millions saved in taxes by his extremely wealthy wife, the setbacks are linked for Rishi Sunak, whose tax provisions go badly on Saturday in the midst of a purchasing power crisis.
Until recently the darling of conservatives, Rishi Sunak was accused of hypocrisy and a lack of transparency after admitting that he had until last year had a US “green card” granting him permanent resident status in the United States, where he filed tax returns while serving as a British minister.
The problems began earlier this week for the minister when the press revealed that his wife Akshata Murty, an Indian billionaire whose fortune exceeds that of the Queen of England, benefited from a privileged tax status allowing her not to pay taxes to the treasury of his majesty on his income received abroad.
“The problem is that the Chancellor of the Exchequer has not been transparent”
If Akshata Murty announced on Friday that she was giving up her benefits so as not to be a “distraction” for her husband, Rishi Sunak “has tried several times to cover his tracks” concerning his family’s tax arrangements, Labor MP Louise denounced on Saturday. Haigh on the BBC microphone.
Akshata Murty did not break any law but “the problem is that the Chancellor of the Exchequer was not transparent (…) on the tax status of his wife. He was not transparent about the fact that he held a green card in the United States and filed tax returns there. Not just when he was a member of parliament but when he was finance minister,” she pointed out.
It benefits from trusts based in tax havens
Friday, the British newspaper The Independent also revealed that Rishi Sunak was one of the beneficiaries of trusts in the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands (two tax havens) set up to manage his wife’s tax affairs. According to a spokesman close to the Sunak family, “no one in Akshata’s family is aware of the existence” of these trusts.
Be that as it may, the cascading revelations concerning the minister and his wife go wrong at a time when British households are strangled by major price increases. Still a little darling of the Conservatives, the popularity of the eloquent 41-year-old minister collapsed after he announced aid measures deemed far from commensurate with the historic fall in purchasing power .