Thursday briefing: Upset at Sunak wife’s tax status

Top story: millionaire Akshata Murthy has non-domicile status

Morning everyone. I’m Martin Farrer and these are the stories you need to know about today.

Rishi Sunak’s multimillionaire wife claims non-domicile status, it has emerged, which allows her to save millions of pounds in tax on dividends collected from her family’s IT business empire. Akshata Murthy, who receives about £11.5m in annual dividends from her stake in the Indian IT services company Infosys, declares non-dom status, a scheme that allows people to avoid tax on foreign earnings. Murthy, the daughter of Infosys’s billionaire founder, owns a 0.93% stake in the tech firm worth approximately £690m.

Tulip Siddiq, the shadow economic secretary to the treasury, said Sunak should explain how much tax his family saved while “he was putting taxes up for millions of working families”. The non-domicile status is legal and can be used to avoid paying UK tax on income from overseas rents and bank interest as well as foreign dividends. The Treasury declined to comment. A spokesperson for Murthy said India did not allow dual citizenship, “so, according to British law, Ms Murthy is treated as non-domiciled for UK tax purposes. She has always and will continue to pay UK taxes on all her UK income.”

More than one in 10 residents of some of London’s wealthiest neighbourhoods have claimed “non-dom” status at some point, meaning they paid no tax on their offshore income. The number of people who had ever claimed non-dom status in the UK rose from 162,000 in 2001 to 238,000 in 2018. And a report by the Institute for Fiscal Studies says the top 0.1% of earners in the UK have annual incomes in excess of £500,000, showing the effect of “unfair” tax rates available to business owners. More than 50,000 people in the top income bracket account for 6% of all earnings.

Ukraine latest – Volodymyr Zelenskiy says new sanctions by the west against Russia do not go far enough and will be seen by invading forces as a “permission to attack”, as fears of an assault on the east of the country intensify and civilians still there were urged to leave “while the opportunity still exists”. The deputy prime minister, Iryna Vereshchuk, said the authorities would “not be able to help” residents who stayed behind once large-scale fighting erupted. Our reporter in Kyiv tells the heart-wrenching story of a grandfather who fears that his granddaughter – orphaned by the fighting in Mariupol – might be taken to live in Russia. A Russian teacher could be jailed after pupils recorded her making anti-war comments in class and put them online where they were discovered by the police. Here’s what we know so far on day 43 of the invasion, and you can follow all the latest developments at our live blog.

Going nuclear – Boris Johnson will launch Britain’s new energy strategy today with nuclear power at the heart of the long-term plan, but ministers have refused to set targets for onshore wind and vowed to continue the exploitation of North Sea oil and gas. The strategy will enrage environmentalists, who say the government’s plans are in defiance of its own net zero targets and neglect alternative measures that experts say would provide much quicker relief from high energy bills. The main points include increasing nuclear capacity from 7 gigawatts to 24GW, raising the offshore wind target to 50GW (from 11GW today), solar growing five times from 14GW to 70GW by 2035, and an “impartial” review into whether fracking is safe.

Cancer concern – More patients are diagnosed with cancer in A&E in Britain than in other comparable high-income countries. A major study in the Lancet Oncology journal found more than a third of patients in England, Scotland and Wales discover they have the disease only once they are in hospital. People who end up in A&E, sometimes after multiple trips to their GP, are less likely to survive the disease, particularly if they have stomach, bowel, liver, pancreatic, lung or ovarian cancer.

Conversion row – About 50 Tory MPs could force the government to toughen up its ban on conversion practices by backing a move to extend the protections to transgender people. Campaigners fighting to outlaw the controversial exercise said “the battle is definitely still on” and remained confident that No 10 would either be swayed or defeated in the remaining months. The PM said yesterday that he does not “think that biological males should be competing in female sporting events”.

The Swift imperium – Latin teachers are being encouraged to use Taylor Swift’s lyrics, Disney songs, Minecraft and fan fiction to help make the ancient language of Virgil and Cicero more accessible. A Cambridge academic has produced a new guide that suggests Latin should be taught more like a modern foreign language, where students are encouraged to speak, sing, perform or write creatively. Among their successes was Taylor Swift’s hit Bad Blood, the chorus to which was translated as Quod, care, nunc malum sanguinem habemus, and Let It Go (Libera) from Frozen.

Today in Focus podcast

The first round of the French election takes place this Sunday with Emmanuel Macron staking his claim to a second term. But to do so he must beat a resurgent far right, says our Paris correspondent Angelique Chrisafis.

Lunchtime read: how Sheffield estate survived the haters

Branded a no-go area in the 80s, Sheffield’s immense Park Hill estate complex was almost flattened like several of its neighbours. But an often painful redevelopment is giving it a new lease of life, writes Oliver Wainwright.

Sport

A downcast Thomas Tuchel declared Chelsea’s position in the Champions League quarter-final against Real Madrid to be irretrievable after their 3-1 first-leg defeat at Stamford Bridge and described his team’s slump in form as “alarming”. It was a triumph for Madrid’s continuity, however, thanks to 34-year-old Karim Benzema’s hat-trick. In last night’s other quarter-final, Villareal beat Bayern Munich 1-0. Everton’s relegation woes worsened with a 3-2 defeat Burnley, who are now just one point afrift of the Merseysiders. Eric ten Hag is confident of becoming Manchester United’s next manager after talks with the club. Anticipation is mounting in Augusta about Tiger Woods’ return to the Masters later today, and it’s also the return today of cricket’s County Championship. And rugby lost one of its greats yesterday with the passing of Scotland and Lions prop Tom Smith from cancer at the age of 50.

Business

Swedish retailers Ikea and H&M are teaming up to create an “ideas factory” on the high street that aims to seek out, mentor and promote designers and small-scale manufacturers. Atelier 100 will open in London in May and is launching an open call today for creatives and producers based within 100km of the store to help stock its shelves. The FTSE100 is going to take a hit of around 0.25% this morning. The pound is on $1.307 and €1.198.

The papers

The Mirror leads with “Sunak wife tax fury”, and “Sunak’s wife ‘avoided tax’ as non-dom” is the splash in the i. The Guardian has that story on the front but leads with “PM’s push for nuclear power splits Tories and angers green groups”, while the Times also has a picture of the chancellor and his wife but leads with “UK to send armoured vehicles to aid Ukraine”. The Telegraph has a powerful dispatch from Ukraine and the headline “‘What is this pit?’ I asked. They said: ‘This is a graveyard for you’”, while the FT goes with “Western allies impose harshest sanctions yet on Russian banks”. The Express leads with “Thank you PM! Sports stars back Boris in trans row”, and the Mail also leads with that controversy and the headline “Finally, a voice of common sense”.

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