Sajid Javid had non-dom status and did not pay tax in the UK on his overseas income for six years, it was revealed last night.
The health secretary, who earned up to £3 millon a year at the time working for Deutsche Bank, admitted that between 2000 and 2006, before he began his political career, he had non-dom status.
Javid said he was entitled to this because his father was born in Pakistan. He issued a statement explaining he also benefited from an offshore trust while he worked for the bank.
In a statement, he said: “I have been domiciled in the UK for tax purposes throughout my entire public life.
“Given heightened public interest in these issues, I want to be open about my past tax statuses.
“My career before politics was in international finance. For almost two decades I constantly travelled around the world for work.”
He said that after a posting in New York he returned to the UK, and “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.”
Referring to the offshore trust, he said: “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 per cent 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.”
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