The chancellor’s wife has non-domicile status, which she and her husband say is because she cannot have dual citizenship with India.
Rishi Sunak has dramatically broken his silence in the row over his wife’s tax affairs, declaring: “To smear my wife to get at me is awful.”
In an interview with The Sun, hitting back at attacks by opposition MPs on his multi-millionaire wife, he said: “She loves her country like I love mine.”
Mr Sunak told The Sun: “People, I don’t think, have an issue with the fact that there’s an Indian woman living in Downing Street.”
The chancellor came out fighting after the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer accused him of “breath-taking hypocrisy” over his Indian-born wife’s status as a “non-dom”.
That means, because she is an Indian citizen she does not have to pay UK tax on income from foreign investments or earnings, but pays UK taxes on her UK income.
Mr Sunak claimed the attacks on his wife, Akshata Murty, were unpleasant and unfair and insisted his wife had done nothing wrong or broken any rules but had followed the letter of the law.
“Every single penny that she earns in the UK she pays UK taxes on, of course she does.
“And every penny that she earns internationally, for example in India, she would pay the full taxes on that.
“That is how the system works for people like her who are international who have moved here.”
Rejecting Sir Keir’s claims of hypocrisy, Mr Sunak admitted non-dom status had been tarnished by some British-born people attempting to use it to dodge tax.
