iGaming Dynasties Top UK’s Highest Tax-Payers List
Bet365 CEO Denise Coates, and her family, have topped the highest tax-payers list in the UK for the second year in a row followed closely by Betfred’s Fred and Peter Done in third position.
Coates and her family are reported to have paid £573m ($787.6m/ €653.2) in taxes for 2020, according to the Sunday Times Tax List 2021, which ranks tax liability for the UK’s richest people. The Done brothers reportedly paid £191.3m in tax for the same period.
The Coates family’s 2020 wealth was reported as an awe-inspiring £7.17bn, while the Dones’ tallied up to a comparatively modest £1.2bn.
The Dones were the tax list’s highest climbers, having not even made the top ten last year. This is primarily because the Sunday Times changed methodologies this year and included gambling duties paid by businesses during the 2019/2020 tax year.
The pair saw the combined tax of Betfred and businesses services firm Peninsula Group increase from £45m to £191m during 2019/2020, hence leaping from 22nd to third position in the list.
The two betting families were among just 17 businesses that paid more tax during 2019/2020, which the newspaper cited as being down to investor unease at UK business conditions prior to the pandemic, as well as the inevitable economic downturn.
In April 2020, Coates contributed £10m to the University Hospitals of North Midlands through her charity foundation.
