Rupert Grint, a former Harry Potter star who played Ron Weasley, has been ordered to pay £1.8 million in taxes following a long legal battle with HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC). The ruling is connected to an investigation into his tax return for the financial year 2011-2012, which he had filed incorrectly.
The dispute centers on a £4.5 million payment Grint received from a company that managed his business affairs. The actor argued that this sum, described as “likely residual income and bonuses” from his work in the Harry Potter films, should have been treated as a capital asset. According to Grint’s lawyers, this money was a capital gain, and thus, it falls under a lower 10% tax rate rather than an income tax that could run as high as 52%.
HMRC, however, claimed that the £4.5 million payment should be treated as income and should be taxed at the higher rate. The tax man argued that the money in question was mainly earned from the acting work of Grint, particularly from the popularity of the Harry Potter series, and should hence be treated as income rather than capital.
The appeal was dismissed by a ruling delivered by tribunal judge Harriet Morgan. According to the ruling, the payment “derived substantially the whole of its value from the activities of Mr. Grint” and was “otherwise realised” as income. This means that Grint had to pay £1.8 million in additional tax.
This is the second time in 2019 that an actor has lost a case. In this case, another case where he had also lost involved a £1 million tax refund. There, too, the HMRC had won after conducting an investigation into another tax return of his.
At 36, Grint has had a fulfilling career since his time as Ron Weasley in all eight of the Harry Potter films, released between 2001 and 2011. In the years following the conclusion of the series, Grint has been featured in a few films, such as Into the White and Knock at the Cabin. In television, he has enjoyed success in the Apple TV series Servant, in which he has been featured for the past four years.
The case in court about Grint’s tax payment is one of the complicated issues related to celebrity income and how it is classified with regard to creative works’ earnings.
