The Non Domicile Status of Chancellor’s Wife

Rishi Sunask, a chancellor in UK married with Akshata in 2009. The couple met each other in Stanford University United States during their university days. Akshata belongs to a billionaire tech family in India. After the couple got married, they moved to the UK when her husband got selected as the chancellor.

NR Narayana Murthy and Sudha Murty, the parents of Akshata left her in Mumbai at the house of their grandparents so that they can earn more for the family.  Years after Akshata enrolled herself in Claremont McKenna College in California where she studied Economic and French. She moved further in her career and completed her MBA from Stanford in the field of Fashion Designing and Merchandising.

First ever job she had after Stanford was as a marketing director for a Dutch technology incubator fund in San Francisco. In 2007, she launched her own brand of Fashion but, it was slackened after few years.

In 2015, with her husband Sunaks, she opened a joined venture London-based Catamaran.

WHY IS AKSHATA STILL AN INDIAN CITIZEN?

 It’s been almost 9 years, Akshata is living in UK, but she is domiciled in India. It is a policy in India that no one can have dual nationality. It is the reason why she is not applying for UK domicile. She has claimed that she’s happy with her non-Dom status, which can easily be given to the people who were born abroad or whose parents are living in UK for less than 15 years.

The Non-Dom status is only available to British occupants claiming the domicile. The only difference is that their center of their personal and financial interests – is outside the UK.

By claiming the domicile a resident must pay an annual levy of £30,000, resulting in liability for taxation only on their British revenue rather than all the net worth they earn worldwide.

In the British colonial era, the taxes were introduced to support the British Empire.

The status of Ms Murty requires to pay up to 11.6 M Euros per year.  The spokeswoman to Ms Murty said: “Akshata Murty is a citizen of India, the country of her birth and parents’ home. India does not allow its citizens to hold the citizenship of another country simultaneously.

“So, according to British law, Ms Murty is treated as non-domiciled for UK tax purposes. She has always and will continue to pay UK taxes on all her UK income.”

Labor’s shadow Treasury minister Tulip Siddiq said: “The Chancellor has imposed tax hike after tax hike on the British people. It is staggering that – at the same time – his family may have been benefiting from tax reduction schemes. This is yet another example of the Tories thinking it is one rule for them, another for everyone else. Rishi Sunak must now urgently explain how much he and his family have saved on their own tax bill at the same time he was putting taxes up for millions of working families and choosing to leave them £2,620 a year worse off.”

The Chief executive of the accountancy firm Blick Rothenberg, Nimesh Shah told the Times that it’s Akshata’s choice to have a non-Dom status in UK, rather than a certainty. He further added, “You can give up your domicile of origin, which you inherited from your father, If you state in a tax return that your intention is to live in the UK and You can give up your domicile of origin, which you inherited from your father, If you state in a tax return that your intention is to live in the UK and you’re not going to go back to your country of origin, you will be considered British for tax purposes and you’ll lose your domicile of origin. You’re not going to go back to your country of origin, you will be considered British for tax purposes and you’ll lose your domicile of origin.”

To give up her Indian status means the right to vote, selling assets and the property will no more be in control for Akshata.