Non-domiciled status of Akshata Murty became an issue of discussion in Britain when Rishi Sunak first entered the race to become the U.K. PM in April this year
Non-domiciled status of Akshata Murty became an issue of discussion in Britain when Rishi Sunak first entered the race to become the U.K. PM in April this year
Akshata Murty, Britain’s incoming Prime Minister Rishi Sunak‘s wife whose tax status on income from outside the U.K. had triggered a controversy, earned ₹126.61 crore ($15.3 million) in dividend income in 2022 from her shareholding in India’s second-largest IT firm Infosys.
Ms. Murty, daughter of Infosys co-founder Narayana Murthy, held 3.89 crore shares, or 0.93%, of Infosys at the end of September, according to company filings with the stock exchanges.
Her holding is worth ₹5,956 crore (about $721 million) at Tuesday’s trading price of ₹1,527.40 on the BSE.
Infosys paid ₹16 per share final dividend for 2021-22 fiscal on May 31, this year. For the current year, the firm this month announced an interim dividend of ₹16.5, according to the company’s stock exchange filings.
The two dividends totalled ₹32.5 per share or ₹126.61 crore for Ms. Murty.
Infosys is among the best dividend-paying companies in India. In 2021, it paid a total of ₹30 per share dividend, which would have given Ms. Murty a total of ₹119.5 crore in that calendar year.
Mr. Sunak, 42, on Sunday won the race to lead the Conservative Party and is now set to become Britain’s first Prime Minister of Indian origin and its youngest leader in modern times.
While Mr. Sunak is a British national, his wife Ms. Murty is an Indian citizen. Her non-domiciled status, which allows her to earn money abroad without paying taxes in Britain for a period of up to 15 years, has been a divisive issue in the U.K.
Non-domiciled status of Ms. Murty became an issue of discussion in Britain when Mr. Sunak first entered the race to become the prime minister in April this year.
At that time, her spokesperson had stated that as a citizen of India, she was unable to hold citizenship of another country and that “she has always and will continue to pay U.K. taxes on all her U.K. income.”
As the controversy snowballed, she at that time announced that she would pay U.K. tax on all of her worldwide earnings out of a “British sense of fairness”.
It is not known how much taxes she paid in the U.K. on the dividend income that accrued to her after April — ₹16 per share final dividend for the 2021-22 fiscal year (April 2021 to March 2022) paid on May 31, 2022, and ₹16.5 a share interim dividend for 2022-23 fiscal that is due to be paid on October 27.
Met Sunak at Stanford
Born in her mother Sudha Murthy’s hometown of Hubballi in northern Karnataka, Ms. Murty did her schooling in Bengaluru, before moving to Claremont McKenna College in California, where she graduated with a dual major in economics and French.
She did a fashion designing diploma from the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in Los Angeles, which followed a short work stint at Deloitte and Unilever.
She thereafter went on to pursue her MBA at Stanford where she met Rishi Sunak.
The two married in 2009. The couple, who own a vast real estate portfolio, has two children, Krishna and Anoushka.
They live in a £7 million townhouse in Kensington. They also own a flat in Kensington, a mansion in Mr. Sunak’s Yorkshire constituency and a penthouse in California.
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The son of a pharmacist mother and doctor father, Mr. Sunak was educated at one of England’s most renowned schools, Winchester, and then Oxford. He spent three years at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and later gained an MBA from Stanford in California.
According to Infosys filings, the promoters hold 13.11% of the company. Of this, the Murty family owns 3.6% (Narayana Murthy holds 0.40% stake, his wife Sudha 0.82%, son Rohan 1.45% and daughter Akshata 0.93%).
Other promoters include co-founder S. Gopalakrishnan, Nandan M. Nilekani and S.D. Shibulal and their families.
