Sir Keir Starmer’s tax records reveal £212k earnings for 2022

Sir Keir Starmer paid £118,580 in tax over two years on income of almost £360,000, records released on Thursday show.

The information, made public by the Labour Party, reveals that the Labour leader earned £85,466 in 2022 from his share of the sale of a house he bought for his sister and her children to live in.

Sir Keir paid £23,930 in capital gains tax on the sale of the property. One tax expert said he had overpaid the tax by about £3,000.

Over two financial years, Sir Keir earned just over £250,000 as Leader of the Opposition and a further £22,000 for legal work undertaken before that appointment. He also earned £453 from royalties, having written several books.

The statement for 2021/22 listed a parliamentary salary of £126,154 reaching an annual total of just over £212,000 when combined with his publishing royalties and proceeds from the sale of property.

Sir Keir authorised the release of his financial affairs a day after Rishi Sunak had published details of his income and tax.

22 vs 33 per cent effective rate

The Labour leader’s earnings are dwarfed by Mr Sunak’s. The Prime Minister earned almost £4.8 million in three years, paying tax at an effective rate of 22 per cent. Sir Keir’s effective tax rate was 33 per cent.

The bulk of Mr Sunak’s multimillion-pound income came from capital gains, dividends and interest on a “single US-based investment fund” held in a blind trust.

In total, the Prime Minister paid just over £1 million in tax, according to a summary of his finances released by Downing Street. The information was published at the same time as Boris Johnson was being grilled by MPs over allegations he misled Parliament over lockdown parties, prompting allegations that Number 10 was attempting to “bury bad news”.

Mr Sunak’s tax summary did not include the income of his wife Akshata Murty, who is an heiress to a fortune worth billions. She claims non-domicile status but voluntarily pays UK tax on her global earnings.

In the last financial year, Mr Sunak earned more than £1.6 million in capital gains from his US investments, 10 times the income that he receives as Prime Minister.

At a press conference on Thursday, prior to his own financial statement being made public, Sir Keir said he was “glad” that his political rival had published the details but said “there’s a wider point about choices here”.

He said the record of tax policy under Conservative governments over the past decade showed “they always go after working people” rather than the wealthiest in society.

Mr Sunak said that he had released information about his taxes “in the interest of transparency”.

But he insisted “the most important thing is what I am doing to help people in this country with the cost of living”.

Sir Keir had been pressuring Mr Sunak to release his tax returns following intense scrutiny of his wealth when he was chancellor.

Experts have called for both men to publish their actual tax returns, rather than summaries. Dan Neidle, founder of Tax Policy Associates and formerly a tax lawyer at Clifford Chance, suggested that Sir Keir had paid too much tax on the sale of his sister’s house, by writing on Twitter: