Yahoo Finance Sir James Dyson moves tax residency back to UK
Sir James Dyson switched his main residency back to the UK from Singapore, according to new company filings revealed on Wednesday.
According to the documents for the firms Dyson controls including his family office Weybourne, he now primarily lives in Britain.
Dyson, a prominent Brexit supporter announced in 2019 he would move his technology company's global headquarters to Singapore.
The move garnered the businessman much criticism from UK lawmakers, at the time he had described the decision as a commercial decision unrelated to Brexit.
A company spokesperson said "nothing has changed" and that the "structure of the group and the business rationale underpinning it are unaltered."
"The UK remains a base for around a third of Dyson’s global workforce – the majority of whom are engineers and scientists – and is a key creative and inventive hub receiving significant investment in R&D [research and development]," the spokesperson added.
"Singapore is, and remains the global headquarters of Dyson, our leadership team is based here and it is the centre of our sales, engineering and manufacturing operations."
The company previously, said it intends to hire over 2,000 people in Southeast Asia over the coming years but announced in July it will cut 900 of its 14,000 global taskforce due to the pandemic.
The cuts hit UK workers the hardest, with 600 of the 4,000 jobs in the UK being axed.
Sir James, who's worth $29bn (£21bn) founded the company in 1993 in Bath. It has since turned into one of the UK’s most successful tech firms, with sales of over £5.4bn ($7.5bn) in 2019.
While the company is best known for its vacuum cleaners it also makes hairdryers and fans.
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The relocation follows revelations the billionaire exchanged private text messages with prime minister Boris Johnson over tax issues during the COVID pandemic.
Dyson, agreed to make ventilators for the UK coronavirus efforts in 2020, and was messaging Johnson to ensure his staff would not pay extra tax if they came to work in Britain, the BBC reported.
A few weeks after the conversation the tax rules for non-residents coming to the country for COVID-related work were relaxed for a temporary three-month period.
According to the company, the ventilator project, cost the firm £20m, with staff from both the UK and Singapore working "around the clock" to make the ventilators. It said at the time that the company would fund the project itself, without the help from UK taxpayers' money.
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