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Sky News
16-07-2025
- Business
- Sky News
HMRC 'doesn't know' how many billionaires pay tax in the UK
HM Revenue and Customs does not know how many billionaires pay tax in the UK, according to a new report by MPs. The Public Accounts Committee says this is despite the fact only a small number of people have this status - and the significant sums of money involved. HMRC has been told it "can and must" do more to understand how much the very wealthiest in society contribute to the public purse, as "there is a lot of money being left on the table". 6:36 Artificial intelligence and The Sunday Times Rich List were identified as two ways of getting a clearer picture. The taxman is facing calls to reveal how it plans to increase contributions from billionaires both domestically and offshore, amid a squeeze in the public finances. MPs added: "There is much public interest in the amount of tax the wealthy pay. People need to know everyone pays their fair share." The report pointed to the US, where the Internal Revenue Service links its data to the Forbes 400 list of rich Americans. PAC member Lloyd Hatton added: "This report is not concerned with political debate around the redistribution of wealth. "Our committee's role is to help HMRC do its job properly, ensuring wealthy people pay the correct tax. "While HMRC does deserve some great credit for securing billions more in the tax take from the wealthiest in recent years, there is still a very long way to go before we can reach a true accounting of what is owed." 1:16 Mr Hatton added that the committee was "disappointed" that HMRC could not offer any insights into the tax arrangements of billionaires from its own data - as "any single one of these individuals' contributions could make a significant difference to the overall picture". At present, about 1,000 people within HMRC are focused on the tax affairs of the UK's wealthiest, but funding has been secured to increase this headcount by 400 - with a view to "increasing prosecutions of those who evade tax". A spokesperson added: "The government is determined to make sure everyone pays the tax they owe. "Extra resources were announced in the recent spending review which allows us to significantly step up our work on closing the tax gap among the wealthiest."
The Independent
15-07-2025
- Business
- The Independent
MPs baffled as HMRC unsure how many billionaires pay tax in UK
A new report reveals HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) cannot identify how much tax UK billionaires pay, despite the small number of individuals and vast sums involved. The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) stated HMRC "can and must" do more to understand and explain the tax contribution made by the nation's wealthiest. Its report on collecting the right tax from wealthy individuals said: 'HMRC does not know how many billionaires pay tax in the UK or how much they contribute overall.' It highlighted The Sunday Times Rich List and artificial intelligence (AI) as ways that the revenue body could dig deeper into wealth and assets. The PAC is calling for the revenue body to publish its plan for increasing tax yield from wealthy taxpayers both domestically and offshore. It said HMRC does not collect information on taxpayers' wealth and says that it only collects the data needed to administer the tax system as required by UK tax legislation. The report said: 'There is much public interest in the amount of tax the wealthy pay. 'People need to know everyone pays their fair share.' HMRC's plan for improving its understanding of the wealth and assets held by billionaires could include how it might immediately start work on comparing available data on known billionaires, such as The Sunday Times Rich List, with its own records, the report suggested. In the United States, the Inland Revenue Service has worked with researchers to link its data to The Forbes 400, the report said. There is 'much more' that HMRC can do to improve its work to risk assess and target wealthy people, in particular through the use of data and technology and recruiting wealth management experts, it added. It said: 'We think there is scope for HMRC to use artificial intelligence (AI) to better exploit and analyse data and, in this way, improve its risk assessment and targeting of wealthy individuals. 'Possible uses of AI to speed up the system include sifting large amounts of data and suggesting what information is missing from tax returns.' The tax authority told the inquiry that the tax gaps – the difference between taxes theoretically owed and those actually paid – for wealthy people and for offshore wealth are particularly difficult to measure. Since 2019-20, HMRC defines wealthy individuals as those with incomes of £200,000 or more, or assets equal to or above £2 million, in any of the past three years. The PAC said it is concerned that HMRC is overly confident and optimistic in its estimate that the wealthy tax gap is £1.9 billion. Its partial estimate of the offshore tax gap, of £0.3 billion, seems far too low, particularly when compared with UK residents holding £849 billion in offshore accounts in 2019, the committee said. PAC member Lloyd Hatton said: 'This report is not concerned with political debate around the redistribution of wealth. 'Our committee's role is to help HMRC do its job properly ensuring wealthy people pay the correct tax. 'While HMRC does deserve some great credit for securing billions more in the tax take from the wealthiest in recent years, there is still a very long way to go before we can reach a true accounting of what is owed. 'We already know a great deal about billionaires living in the UK, with much information about their tax affairs and wealth in the public domain. 'So we were disappointed to find that HMRC, of all organisations, was unable to provide any insight into their tax affairs from its own data – particularly given that any single one of these individuals' contributions could make a significant difference to the overall picture. 'We found a similar apparent lack of curiosity in how wide the tax gap is both for the very wealthy and for wealth stashed away offshore. 'Our report shows that, however you slice it, there is a lot of money being left on the table. 'HMRC must, under its new leadership, begin collecting the correct amount of tax from the very wealthiest – and this must include wealth that is currently squirrelled away in tax havens. 'There is certainly room for improvement.' The yield from HMRC's compliance work with wealthy individuals has more than doubled in recent years, with it collecting £5.2 billion in 2023-24, up from £2.2 billion in 2019-20. But the report said: 'The scale of this success suggests either non-compliance among the wealthy has got worse, or that previous estimates of the extent to which they were avoiding tax were too low.' HMRC has identified opportunities that will help it close the tax gap. There are currently around 1,000 people in the wealthy team, and HMRC has secured funding for another 400 staff, the report said. The population of wealthy taxpayers that HMRC's wealthy team administers is growing, up from 700,000 individuals in 2019-20 to 850,000 individuals in 2023-24, it added. HMRC treats wealthy people as one single group and says it finds some billionaires have quite straightforward tax planning, while some millionaires with much lower wealth will have set up very complex offshore trusts and structures, the committee said. The revenue body deploys customer compliance managers according to taxpayers who pose the most risk and says managers typically end up working on cases relating to individuals with wealth above £10 million, it added. The committee recommended that HMRC should review whether segmenting its wealthy customer group according to different levels of wealth and complexity would help it to assess and then target the most significant risks. HMRC should also write to the committee to explain how confirmed funding to date will feed through to better compliance performance, and what it expects to achieve from future investment, the committee said. It added that a lack of penalties issued to enablers of tax evasion is 'particularly disappointing' despite unscrupulous advisers often playing a key role in helping the wealthy evade tax. HMRC should assess whether it is using its powers to tackle non-compliance by the wealthy sufficiently, in particular, whether it makes enough use of available sanctions, the report said. An HMRC spokesperson said: 'The Government is determined to make sure everyone pays the tax they owe. 'Extra resources were announced in the recent spending review which allows us to significantly step up our work on closing the tax gap amongst the wealthiest. 'This includes recruiting an extra 400 officials specialising in the wealthy and offshore tax gap, and increasing prosecutions of those who evade tax.' HMRC assesses the wealthy population according to who poses the biggest risk based on all taxable income and gains, rather than wealth alone.
Hindustan Times
09-07-2025
- Business
- Hindustan Times
Jensen Huang net worth: How Nvidia's $4 trillion market value contributes to CEO's fortune
Jensen Huang, the co-founder and CEO of Nvidia, has seen his net worth soar to over $140 billion after the Silicon Valley chipmaker on Wednesday became the first publicly traded company to surpass a $4 trillion market valuation. Bloomberg Billionaires Index lists Huang as the 10th richest individual in the world. He is 9th on Forbes' real-time billionaires list. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's net worth has soared over the last year(AFP) On Wednesday, Nvidia's stock rallied as high as $164.42, giving it a valuation above $4 trillion before retreating slightly. "The market has an incredible certainty that AI is the future," said Steve Sosnick of Interactive Brokers. "Nvidia is certainly the company most positioned to benefit from that gold rush." Read More: What is Wall Street's new acronym 'TACO' and why Donald Trump calls it 'nasty' How does Nvidia's massive market value contribute to Jensen Huang's net worth? Huang has a 3.5% ownership stake in Nvidia, making him the largest shareholder. His net worth has surged massively in the last five years. In 2022, it was listed at $20.6 billion (Forbes 400 estimate). In 2023, his net worth rose to $44 billion. In 2024, it was $117 billion, and now the 62-year-old's fortune stands at over $140 billion, according to Bloomberg. Nvidia's latest surge to $4 trillion marks a new threshold in a fairly consistent rise over the last two years as AI enthusiasm has built. In 2025 so far, the company's shares have risen 20%, whereas the Nasdaq has gained 6%. The Taiwan-born Huang has wowed investors with a series of advances, including its core product: graphics processing units (GPUs), which are foundational to many of the generative AI programs pursued throughout the technology sector, with applications in autonomous driving, robotics and other cutting-edge domains. In the most recent quarter, Nvidia reported earnings of nearly $19 billion despite a $4.5 billion hit from US export controls designed to limit sales of cutting-edge technology to China. (With inputs from AFP)
CNBC
02-07-2025
- Business
- CNBC
With $6B donation, Warren Buffett has now given away over $60B: It's ‘substantially more than my entire net worth in 2006'
Warren Buffett's charitable giving over the past two decades now totals around $60 billion, after the billionaire investor recently announced plans to give away another $6 billion to five different charities, including the Gates Foundation. The 94-year-old said in a press release on June 27, that this total amount — all donated in shares of his company, Berkshire Hathaway — is "substantially more than my entire net worth in 2006." Indeed, in 2006, Buffett's net worth was roughly $46 billion, according to that year's Forbes 400 list of the richest Americans. At the time, this made him the second-wealthiest person in the U.S., behind Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, whose net worth was then estimated at $53 billion. As of Wednesday morning, Forbes estimates Buffett's net worth at $145.2 billion, making him the seventh-wealthiest person in the world. With his latest round of donations, Buffett is continuing to fulfill his 2006 commitment to give away more than 99% of his wealth, as part of the Giving Pledge he launched with longtime friend Bill Gates. At the time, Buffett pledged to donate roughly 4% of his remaining shares in Berkshire Hathaway, the holding company that currently boasts a market value over $1 trillion. Buffett still owns about 13.8% of Berkshire's shares, Reuters reported on June 27. Buffett's net worth has continued to climb over the past two decades along with Berkshire's rising market value, though the iconic investor downplayed any strategies that would have helped fuel that growth: "Nothing extraordinary has occurred at Berkshire; a very long runway, simple and generally sound decisions, the American tailwind and compounding effects produced my current wealth," he noted in the press release. Roughly $1.4 billion of Buffett's latest stock donations are split between four different family-run foundations, including charities led by each of his three children, and one named for his late wife, Susan Thompson Buffett, who died in 2004. The other $4.6 billion gift goes to the Gates Foundation. While Buffett said he's committed to fulfilling his pledge to donate to these charities annually throughout his lifetime, the billionaire confirmed to The Wall Street Journal in 2024, that his donations to the Gates Foundation will cease upon his death. The task of dispersing the vast majority of Buffett's wealth after his death will mostly fall to his three children. However, in 2024, Buffett announced that he had updated his will, to add three independent trustees to his charitable trust, to potentially succeed his children. The move was meant to reduce any uncertainty about how Buffett's wealth will be distributed in the future, he explained in a 2024 letter that spoke out against "dynastic" wealth. "I've never wished to create a dynasty or pursue any plan that extended beyond the children," Buffett wrote. "I know the three [independent trustees] well and trust them completely. Future generations are another matter. Who can foresee the priorities, intelligence and fidelity of successive generations to deal with the distribution of extraordinary wealth amid what may be a far different philanthropic landscape?" In the same letter, he suggested that all parents make sure that their children "read your will before you sign it," in order to understand "both the logic for your decisions and the responsibilities they will encounter upon your death," Buffett wrote. "You don't want your children asking 'Why?' in respect to testamentary decisions," he added, "when you are no longer able to respond."
Time of India
24-06-2025
- Business
- Time of India
How billionaire Mark Walter, set to own the controlling stake in Lakers, made his fortune
HighlightsMark Walter, CEO of Guggenheim Partners, is set to acquire a controlling interest in the Los Angeles Lakers, further expanding his investment portfolio that includes various sports franchises. With an estimated net worth of $6.1 billion, Mark Walter co-founded TWG Global, which holds a diverse range of companies including those in finance, insurance, and aerospace technology. Walter and his wife, Kimbra, are actively involved in philanthropy, supporting organizations such as the Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation and Chicago Beyond. The billionaire slated to take over the controlling interest in the Los Angeles Lakers has built a career leading businesses investing in everything from sports franchises to artificial intelligence . Mark Walter is CEO of the global investment and advisory company Guggenheim Partners , which is estimated to have more than $325 billion in assets. He's also co-founder and CEO of holding company TWG Global . Forbes estimates Walter's net worth is $6.1 billion. The publication ranked him at No. 216 on its Forbes 400 list last year. Walter received an undergraduate degree in business administration from Creighton University and a law degree from Northwestern University, but ultimately chose business over a career in law. In the mid-1990s, he co-founded Liberty Hampshire, an investment management firm in Chicago. That business became part of Guggenheim Partners, which Walter co-founded in the late 1990s. In addition to Guggenheim, Walter co-founded TWG Global with film producer Thomas Tull. The company holds a portfolio of finance and insurance sector companies, including Guggenheim Investments , Guggenheim Securities, Group 1001 Insurance and Delaware Life. It also includes aerospace and defense technology company Shield AI. Last month, TWG Global announced a partnership with Palantir Technologies and Elon Musk's AI company, xAI, maker of Grok, aimed at developing artificial intelligence for use in the financial services industry. TWG Global also includes investments in sports, media and entertainment franchises, such as the controlling interest in the Los Angeles Dodgers, Premier League club Chelsea, the Professional Women's Hockey League and - through TWG Motorsports - ownership of several auto racing teams including Cadillac Formula 1. Beyond business, Walter and his wife, Kimbra, have founded or contributed to various philanthropic organizations, including the Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation, the Academy Group, Chicago Beyond and OneGoal.
