Latest news with #wealthy
Wall Street Journal
14 hours ago
- Entertainment
- Wall Street Journal
Insiders Spill the Secrets Behind a Bezos-Sized ‘Super-Wedding'
Floor-to-ceiling floral installations. Performances by pop megastars. Catering by Carbone. A security guard just for the gold-plated cutlery. For the wealthiest people on Earth, it's no longer enough to have a luxury wedding. Today, the new normal is a 'super-wedding,' akin to a music festival in size and with costs running into the millions.
Telegraph
a day ago
- Business
- Telegraph
Wealthy taxpayers underpay £2.1bn despite HMRC crackdown
Wealthy individuals underpaid more than £2bn in taxes last year despite a crackdown on hidden earnings. HMRC estimates the amount of uncollected tax from the richest people rose from £1.9bn to £2.1bn in the financial year ending April 2024. The so-called 'tax gap' – the difference between taxes the taxman expects to be paid and the amount actually collected – is estimated to be worth £46.8bn. Wealthy people avoided approximately £200m more in taxes in the previous financial year, figures released by HMRC suggest. In the last three years, the amount individuals are underpaying in tax has increased by around 17pc per year on average, according to analysis by UHY Hacker Young. The figure stood at £1.4bn in 2020-21, increasing to £2.1bn in 2023-24 – or 50pc over those three years. The taxman suspects the uncollected taxes are the result of loopholes in the law and illegal tax evasion. It comes after the Government set out plans to raise billions of pounds in extra revenues by clamping down on unpaid taxes. James Murray, the Exchequer Secretary, said: 'We are determined to go further and faster to make sure everyone pays their fair share. 'In our first year in office, we have set out plans to raise an extra £7.5bn through the most ambitious ever package to close the tax gap.' It comes as Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor, is also poised to water down Labour's tax raid on non-domiciled UK residents by reversing a decision to charge inheritance tax on their worldwide assets. Neela Chauhan, partner at accountants UHY Hacker Young, said: 'These numbers tell you where we can expect HMRC to launch its crackdown – against wealthy people, where unpaid tax is rising. 'Rachel Reeves has allocated substantial new resources to HMRC to step up tax investigations, we expect that to translate into unannounced visits by the taxman and more aggressive mailshots from HMRC to individuals it suspects of underpaying tax.' Small businesses were blamed for making up the largest share of unpaid taxes, at 60pc. Wealthy individuals were responsible for just 10pc by comparison. HMRC has zeroed in on high net-worth individuals it suspects of underpaying tax in recent years. It defines a wealthy individual as someone earning more than £200,000 a year or with assets over £2m in any of the last three years. There were 850,000 wealthy individuals in 2023-24 who together paid £119bn in personal taxes – a quarter of the nation's personal tax bill. Since 2019-20, the amount of revenue HMRC has collected from wealthy individuals through investigations and other compliance work has shot up from £2.2bn to £5.2bn.
Wall Street Journal
a day ago
- Business
- Wall Street Journal
The Secret to Building a $100 Million Megamansion
As the merely wealthy take stock amid a correction in the public markets, a tariff war and concerns about an impending recession, the super rich continue to spend. Look no further than the ultra high-end real-estate market for evidence of this alternate financial reality. Billionaires are still paying tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars for well-located sites in markets like Los Angeles, Miami, Palm Beach and Aspen, Colo.
Bloomberg
a day ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
Homes Left Alone
Morning, I'm Chloé Meley The rich are fleeing London, leaving estate agents with a surplus of luxury homes to sell and no one to buy.
Bloomberg
2 days ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
UK Inheritance Tax Surge on Rich Was Mistake, Policy Author Says
One of the architects of the UK Labour government's flagship crackdown on the wealthy said it was a 'mistake' to expose non-doms to an immediate 40% inheritance tax on their overseas assets. Arun Advani, director of the independent Centre for the Analysis of Taxation, told Bloomberg News he had recommended staggering the introduction of IHT on the super-rich who live in Britain but are not resident for tax purposes. A gradual approach would have stopped many of them leaving the country, he said.
