Top taxpayers cough up an extra £510m

THE country’s 50 biggest taxpayers paid almost £3.7billion into public finances last year – an increase of more than £500million on the previous year.

A record number of individuals and families paid more than £100million each to HM Revenue and Customs, according to the Sunday Times Tax List released yesterday.

It meant the top 50 taxpayers contributed £3.69billion, a £510million rise on £3.18billion the year before.

Denise Coates and her family, who run the online gambling firm Bet365, paid more than £480million to become the country’s biggest taxpayers for the third successive year.

Betfred founder Fred Done and his brother Peter paid almost £170million and were fifth on the tax list.

Gambling firms pay duties and levies that other businesses do not attract and researchers found that around £1 in every £5 of tax came from those who earned most of their money from the industry.

A Government review of the gambling industry is due to be published later this year amid calls for tougher regulation.

Tory MP Iain Duncan Smith has led demands for the industry to pay more to cover the cost to public services associated with problem gamblers.

Mrs Coates, 54, launched Bet365 in 2001 with her brother John and it now has more than 63million customers.

The family’s £481.7million tax liability included corporation tax, national insurance and gambling duties, and Mrs Coates’s personal tax on pay and dividends. In 2020 she received a £421.2million salary.

Hedge fund manager Chris Rokos was second on the list, paying £300million in tax.

He was followed by Stephen Rubin, whose family own the JD Sports chain and several sportswear brands and paid around £256million in taxes. In fourth place were the Weston family, who own Primark and Fortnum and Mason and who paid £175.4million.

Discount retailers also featured on the list, including Tom Morris, who founded the Home Bargains chain, Sports Direct owner Mike Ashley and the three Arora brothers behind B&M. Singer Ed Sheeran topped a separate celebrity tax list, having paid £12.5million, followed by the rock band Queen (£9.1million) and David and Victoria Beckham (£7.2million).

Robert Watts, who compiled the tax list, said it was ‘good news for the Chancellor’, adding: ‘Discount retailers and other businesses that did well during the pandemic have made bigger profits and so paid more corporation tax.’

But experts voiced concern that only two of the top ten earners from last year’s Sunday Times Rich List also featured in the tax list – the Weston family and Sir James Dyson.

George Dibb, head of the Institute for Public Policy Research think-tank’s Centre for Economic Justice, said the tax system was ‘broken’ and called for income from wealth to be taxed in the same way as income from work.

He added: ‘It’s too easy for some of the richest people in the country to pay little to no tax at all.’