Health Secretary Sajid Javid has become the latest Cabinet minister to find his private financial arrangements under scrutiny as he admitted to being a “non-dom” in the past.
Mr Javid, who lived and worked in New York and Singapore during his career as a banker at Chase Manhattan and Deutsche Bank, also disclosed that before becoming a minister he had held some financial investments in an offshore trust.
In a statement, he added that he had “always comprehensively declared all information required” by tax, government, and parliamentary authorities about his personal finances.
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The Sunday Times reported that before he began his political career he had held non-domiciled status for six years between 2000 and 2006, a status he was entitled to because his father was born in Pakistan, and which would mean not having to pay UK taxes on his overseas earnings.
Labour accused the health secretary of hypocrisy – after he and other ministers spent much of last week defending a rise in National Insurance that is aimed at putting more money into the NHS and social care.
Mr Javid made the disclosures amid intense scrutiny on Rishi Sunak, after it emerged that the chancellor’s multi-millionaire wife Akshata Murty held the tax-reducing non-domicile status and that Mr Sunak had held permanent US residency status even after moving to Number 11.
The health secretary, who has previously held the offices of home secretary and chancellor, said: “Given heightened public interest in these issues, I want to be open about my past tax statuses.”
He said: “I have been domiciled in the UK for tax purposes throughout my entire public life.
“That was not a legal duty, but I believed it to be a moral one.”
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Mr Javid said that he had been tax resident in the US from 1992 to 1996.
“At that point I came back to the UK and was tax resident here,” he said.
“For some of those years I was non-domiciled for tax purposes, but I paid all UK taxes due on my income and have always done so.”
In 2006, Mr Javid moved to Singapore and was therefore no longer a tax resident, something which changed when he returned in 2009 and he also “proactively chose” to give up his non-dom status, he said.
He was elected an MP in 2010 and was appointed a Treasury minister in 2012 at which point he said he disclosed his previous tax statuses and fully declared his assets in a ministerial declaration.
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Mr Javid added: “Prior to returning to the UK and entering public life, some of my financial investments were based in an offshore trust.
“While this was an entirely legitimate arrangement, on becoming a minister in 2012 I decided to voluntarily collapse that trust, repatriate all assets to the UK, and pay 50% income tax on those assets.
“This approach deliberately incurred the heaviest possible tax burden, and offset any accrued benefits from the previous trust arrangement, but I believed it was the right thing to do.
“I have paid all UK taxes, complied with all UK tax rules, and disclosed all relevant information to HMRC.”
Mr Javid has previously come under pressure for still holding share options in a tech firm that provides artificial intelligence software to the health sector.
Wes Streeting, Labour’s shadow secretary, said of the latest disclosures: “Last week Sajid Javid was lecturing struggling taxpayers about their duty to pay higher taxes, but this is the guy who spent six years as a non-dom and had an offshore trust to avoid paying his fair share of tax in Britain.
“The hypocrisy stinks.
“The luxury of being able to choose how much tax you pay, where you pay it, and when you pay it, is not one that is enjoyed by most people in this country.”