Sunday Times Tax List 2023: Merseyside’s top taxpayers revealed in new millionaires’ rich list

The Times list includes a scrap metal dealer, a 30-year-old gym tycoon, JK Rowling and the boss of Wetherspoons.
Watch more of our videos on Shots! 
and live on Freeview channel 276
Visit Shots! now

In the same week that Conservative Party chairman Nadhim Zahawi was sacked by the Prime Minister following a multi million-pound tax dispute with His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, The Times has released its list of the biggest tax payers in Britain.

There are no former Tory chancellors of the exchequer on there, but there are plenty of Merseyside-based business people who have been paying out hundreds of millions of pounds in tax.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

The rankings include a scrap metal dealer, a 30-year-old gym Tycoon, JK Rowling, the boss of Wetherspoons and taking No.1 spot is Moscow-born maths whizz turned trader Alex Gerko, who pays out the equivalent of £1.3 million in tax per day.

Who is Merseyside’s biggest taxpayer?

According to the most recently filed company accounts analysed by The Times as of 15 January, Liverpool-born Home Bargains founder Tom Morris and family are the UK’s ninth biggest taxpayers, putting £112.2m into government coffers.

Reclusive Morris, who began his retail empire with a single shop in Old Swan  in 1976, is regarded as the richest ever Liverpudlian. Anyone who has taken a drive down the M62 recently will have been struck by the enormity of the gargantuan Home Bargains warehouse currently being built on the outskirts of Warrington.

Scrap metal tycoon Chris Sheppard and his family are the next biggest taxpayers from the area. European Metal Recycling was founded by his father in 1994 and is based in Warrington. The family’s scrap metal empire now has sites in the US, India, Thailand and Hong Kong. They paid £29.1m in various taxes according to the survey and form a new entry on the 2023 list. That puts the them as the UK’s 48th highest taxpayer.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

A fellow new entry on the Top 100 Tax List is retired brickie Steve Morgan, who founded housebuilders Redrow. Garston-born, he completed a two-year diploma course at Liverpool Polytechnic (now Liverpool John Moores University) before entering the business world aged 21 and making it big with Redrow.

A life-long Red, he attempted to buy Liverpool FC in 2004 for around £61m but his bid was rejected. He invested in Wolverhampton Wanderers instead. Morgan paid £23.1m in tax according to his latest accounts, ranking him 57th in the UK.

Elsewhere in the North West, Salford-born BetFred founders Fred and Peter Done and their family are the UK’s fifth biggest taxpayers, putting £136.8m into government coffers.

  • The Times said absence from their Tax List does not imply individuals are not paying their UK taxes - simply that the survey compilers have been unable to estimate how much they have paid.