The top cabinet minister, a former chancellor, told the Sunday Times that he was a non-resident, arguing that his father was born in Pakistan. He also admitted that he kept wealth in an offshore trust until he became a minister in 2012, dissolving him and paying a 50% tax on the wealth he brought to the United Kingdom. “I have been living in the UK for tax purposes all my public life,” he said. “Given the growing public interest in these issues, I want to be open about my previous tax statements. My pre-political career was in international finance. “For almost two decades I was constantly traveling around the world for work.” Before becoming an MP in 2010, Javid said he had spent a few years as a non-host, leaving in 2009. “For some of those years I did not have a home for tax purposes, but I paid all the UK taxes due to my income and I always did,” he said. “In 2006 I moved to Singapore with my family and as a result I was no longer a tax resident in the United Kingdom. In 2009, when I returned to the United Kingdom, I became a tax resident in the United Kingdom and also cautiously chose to leave my non-resident status, making the United Kingdom “the residence of my choice”. He added: “Before returning to the UK and entering public life, some of my financial investments were based on an offshore trust. Although this was a perfectly legal arrangement, when I became a minister in 2012, I decided to voluntarily break this trust, repatriate all assets to the UK and pay 50% income tax on those assets. “This approach deliberately imposed the greatest possible tax burden and offset any accrued benefits from the previous trust agreement, but I thought it was the right thing to do.” As chancellor before Risi Sunak, Javid boasted that the Conservatives had introduced more than 100 meters to “fight aggressive tax evasion and evasion” in order to make the tax system “simpler and, most importantly, fairer.”
