The wife of the British Treasury Secretary has made the front pages of major newspapers - albeit with a headline that is very unfavorable to her and him.

Rishi Sunak's wife Akshata Murty, the daughter of an Indian billionaire, avoids paying millions in taxes in the kingdom through a special status.

Philip Pickert

Business correspondent based in London.

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As an Indian citizen, Murty has opted for Non Domiciled Tax Status, which means she does not have to pay UK tax on her overseas income.

"Non-Domiciled", or Non-Dom for short, literally means: not resident.

This led to strange headlines.

She is a "non-resident" living in the heart of London.

Murty shares a flat with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sunak, at 11 Downing Street, a house next door to Prime Minister Boris Johnson.

Murty justifies her tax status by saying that India does not allow its citizens to acquire a second, foreign citizenship.

Akshata Murty, the daughter of the billionaire founder of Infosys technology group Narayana Murty, owns 0.91 percent of Infosys' shares.

Her fortune is currently estimated at £690 million (around €830 million).

It received more than £11.5m in dividends last year.

It has avoided the UK dividend tax of 38 per cent through its non-dom tax status.

This is legal - but offers a large political target.

"It's not fair," Labor politicians like Ed Miliband accused as the news was discussed on Thursday morning television.

Wave of cost increases in the UK

British Finance Minister Sunak has been married to his college friend Murty since 2009, whom he met at Stanford University.

The wedding was then celebrated with a thousand guests in Bangalore.

Together they own a magnificent home in his South Yorkshire constituency.

The revelations about her tax status come at the worst possible time for him.

His poll ratings have already fallen.

Since the beginning of April, citizens of the UK have had to shoulder a wave of rising costs – most notably their energy bills – and rising taxes from higher social security contributions.

Sunak, who was very popular during the Corona period, was accused of burdening citizens too much.

His own three-digit million fortune as an ex-investment banker is also discussed.

Now his wife's tax history is coming to the public at an inopportune time.

Tulip Siddiq, the Labor Party's economic policy spokesman, happily picked at the wound.

Sunak should explain how much tax his family pays while "raising taxes for millions of working families".

The Treasury Department declined to comment officially on Thursday.

Sunak has always tried to keep his wife out of politics.

“I am an elected politician, my wife is not” – he did not want to comment any further when questions arose weeks ago as to whether Infosys would continue to do business in Russia.

"It's very annoying when people go after my wife now," he said.

A spokesman for 42-year-old Murty stressed on Wednesday evening that India does not allow dual citizenship, so Murty is "treated under British law as a non-resident for British tax purposes".

She has always paid her taxes in the UK on her UK income - and will continue to do so.

A gym chain in which she had invested millions recently slipped into bankruptcy.

"Relic of British Colonial Tax Law"

The "Non-Dom" tax status is, according to The Times, a "bizarre relic of British colonial tax law" introduced at the end of the 18th century.

According to a study by sociologists and lawyers from the London School of Economics and Political Science and the University of Warwick, more than 200,000 wealthy people in the UK had at least part-time non-dom status by 2018.

In the wealthy London districts of Kensington, City and Westminster, more than one in ten residents had this status.

According to the study, as many as 22 per cent of the UK's top bankers with an annual income of more than £125,000 (€150,000) have opted for non-Dom tax status at least at one point.

As many as 40 per cent of people earning more than £5m have Non-Dom status.

According to the latest government figures, there were just over 75,000 non-doms in the kingdom in 2020.

The rules for this have been tightened and restricted several times over the past decades.