When the King’s tax bill was revealed, claims of being one of the highest taxpayers in the land were wide of the mark, but talk of a new wealth tax makes no sense, says Andy Oury, owner partner at Oury Clark
When Buckingham Palace disclosed that the King had paid £12.9m in tax, it added a curious flourish: that this placed His Majesty ‘among the top 100 taxpayers in the country’.
It is a striking claim, and it isn’t a fact. It’s an inference from a newspaper league table built from publicly available accounts - one that can see footballers, pop stars and the founders of listed companies, but is blind to the thousands of private business owners, dealmakers and investors whose tax never surfaces in any public filing.
My own practice is mostly SMEs and international businesses setting up in the UK, yet even I have clients whose annual tax bills comfortably exceed the King’s. £12.9m is a serious sum; near the top of the actual pile it is not.
