UK premier agrees to inquiry into chancellor’s tax affairs

By Karim El-Bar

LONDON (AA) - British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday agreed for an inquiry to take place into Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s tax affairs, at the latter’s request.

Sunak has been rocked by revelations that his wife was non-domiciled for tax purposes, and that they both held green cards, in Sunak’s case even while he was chancellor for over a year and a half.

This means he would have declared himself a permanent US resident and paid taxes on his overseas earnings to the US rather than the UK.

His wife’s non-dom tax status meant she did not pay UK tax on her overseas earnings either. She insisted she did nothing wrong, but volunteered to change her tax status and pay UK taxes on these overseas earnings for last year and every year going forward.

Sunak asked Johnson to have Lord Geidt, the independent advisor on ministerial interests, investigate.

Sunak tweeted a copy of his letter to Johnson, and wrote alongside it: “Today I have written to the Prime Minister asking him to refer my ministerial declarations to the Independent Advisor on Ministers’ Interests. I have always followed the rules and I hope such a review will provide further clarity.”

Johnson’s deputy spokesperson said: "I can confirm that the prime minister has agreed to the request from the chancellor for Lord Geidt to undertake this work.”

Sunak has also ordered an inquiry into how his and his wife’s tax affairs were leaked to the media.

Neither are deemed to have broken the letter of the law, but the public outcry was over the perception they were paying less tax than they could when Sunak himself has raised taxes on the British public to their highest levels in a generation to deal with the economic fallout of the pandemic.

Environment Secretary George Eustice told ITV that Sunak had done the right thing “because there’s obviously been some controversy around this.”

"The chancellor has been clear throughout that he's declared everything in the usual way, in the right way, but given the coverage there's been around this over the weekend, it's right that he should now ask Lord Geidt to take a look at this,” he said.

Opposition Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer said: "Whilst they are asking other people to pay more in tax, they seem to be involved in schemes to keep their own tax down, and this is now a pattern of behaviour.”