LEADING Asian businessmen - brothers Simon, Bobby and Robin Arora - as well as Ranjit Boparan and his wife Baljinder are among the UK’s 50 biggest taxpayers, according to The Sunday Times (31).
The Arora brothers are the biggest shareholders of budget retailer B&M, and according to The Sunday Times, their tax liability was £37 million, with the family wealth estimated to be £2,111m in 2020.
Ranjit and Baljinder Boparan of Boparan Holdings were ranked 21 in the list. The couple paid £37m in tax and their wealth was estimated to be £593m last year.
Simon Arora and his family were scheduled to receive a bonus as B&M Bargains announced a special dividend of 20p per share to shareholders after bumper sales.
Arora bought B&M - then a small, loss-making chain of stores – in 2005 with his brother Bobby.
Together the Aroras turned the budget retailer into a discount giant, with hundreds of stores across the UK and Germany and surging ahead of its rivals on the FTSE 100 last year as it continued to operate under its 'essential' status.
The brothers grew up in Manchester after their father came to the UK from India in the late 1960s – reportedly with just £10 in his pocket.
Boparan Holdings was founded in 1993 and has more than 25 years’ experience in the food industry. Notable acquisitions of the firm include Northern Foods and Brookes Avana in 2011.
Ranjit and wife Baljinder Boparan are the sole shareholders of Boparan Holdings, the holding company for 2 Sisters Food Group.
Recently, Boparan Holdings agreed to sell part of its Fox’s Biscuits business to CTH, a Belgian holding company related to Ferrero Group, for £246 million.
Following the deal, CTH will acquire Fox’s biscuit manufacturing sites at Batley and Kirkham, where Fox’s brand biscuits are produced, from Northern Food Grocery Group Limited (NFGG), a subsidiary of Boparan Holdings.
Previously, the Boparan Restaurant Group rescued restaurant chain Gourmet Burger Kitchen (GBK).
Denise Coates and family topped the tax payers' 2021 list as they paid £573m in taxes with a wealth of £7.166 billion.
They are followed by Glenn Gordon and family with a wealth of £3.186bn and tax liability of £436.4m, followed by Fred and Peter Done as they paid £191.3m in taxes on their wealth of £1.2bn.
According to the Sunday Times, a third (17) of the 50 business owners, celebrities and entrepreneurs who featured in last year’s rankings have paid more tax this year.
Sixteen of the individuals and families who made the 2020 Tax List are paying less tax this year, and a further 17 are paying so much less that they have fallen out of the top 50 altogether.
Notably, last year payment of £20.4m tax was necessary to make it to the list. This year that has plummeted to £13.1 million, down nearly 36 per cent, the report said.
Martin Rosenbaum (Pic credit: rosenbaum.org.uk)
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