8:23 am, January 27, 2023
Lady Philomena Clark is the car dealer facing the largest tax bill after a record year of profits at Arnold Clark.
Lady Clark and her family will hand over £92.7m to the taxman, according to the latest Sunday Times Tax List, after her hugely successful dealer group generated profits of £398.1m in 2021.
Lady Clark is the largest shareholder in the business which generated £33m of profit every month in 2021.
Arnold Clark topped the latest Car Dealer Top 100 list of the most profitable dealer groups in the UK after what boss Eddie Hawthorne described as a ‘Carlsberg year’ for the motor trade.
Car dealers are now set to fork out tens of millions of pounds in tax after that bumper year of earnings which saw our Top 100 most profitable dealers make a combined £2.6bn in EBITDA profit – up £950m on 2020.
The Sunday Times Tax List, revealed today (Jan 27), lists the biggest taxpayers in the UK.
Lady Clark tops the list of automotive taxpayers, sitting one place behind Sir James Dyson, the inventor and tech entrepreneur, who will pay £93m in tax.
The UK’s top placed taxpayer is Alex Gerko, a Mosco-born maths whizz who made a fortune from trading up to $300bn a day. He was paid a £1.3bn dividend in March last year and will shell out £487.4m in tax.
Three car dealer families are in the top five automotive taxpayers, with the Marshall family in third. The sale of the family’s shares in Marshall Motor Group to Constellation Automotive Group completed in May last year so will not be included in this year’s figures.
Marshall Motor Group was sold for £325m and the Marshall family owned 64.4 per cent of the business.
Biggest automotive taxpayers’ bills
Source: Sunday Times Tax List. In brackets, the position in Sunday Times list
- Lady Philomena Clark and family, Arnold Clark – £92.7m (13th)
- John Bloor, housebuilder & Triumph Motorcycles – £86.4m (15th)
- The Marshall Family, formerly Marshall Motor Company – £60.3m (18th)
- Lord Edmiston, IM Group – £29.7m (46th)
- The Tordoff family, JCT600 – £17.4m (72nd)
JCT600’s Tordoff family owners are fifth in the automotive list and 72nd overall with a £17.4m bill.
JCT600 clocked up EBITDA profits of £58.3m in 2021 and was the eighth most profitable car dealer group.
The Tax List includes corporation tax, dividend tax, capital gains tax, income tax and payroll taxes as well as gambling and alcohol duties, according to the most recently filed company accounts, says the paper.
‘We consider a person or family’s share of a business’s taxes to be the same as the percentage of the company they own,’ explained the paper.
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