Gambling company owners revealed as UK’s second-biggest taxpayers

The Coates family, which owns online betting giant Bet365 and Championship football club Stoke City FC, have been revealed to be the UK’s second-biggest taxpayers.

Denise, John and Peter Coates paid an estimated US205 m in taxes, including corporation tax, income tax and dividend tax. Top of the list was JD Sports owner Stephen Rubin, who paid US240 m. The rankings have been published by the Sunday Times in its first-ever Tax List. The newspaper has been publishing its annual Rich List for 30 years.

Stoke-based Bet365's latest published accounts, for the year to March 2018, showed pre-tax profits of US870 m on turnover of US3.8 bn. Denise Coates earned US350 m – a salary of US290 m and half of a US120 m dividend – and she is reported to be the best paid female executive in the world.

The top 10 in the Tax List, which includes Sir James Dyson and Ineos chief executive Jim Ratcliffe, paid more than US1.3 bn in taxes. Robert Watts, who compiled the Tax List, said: “It’s hard to deny that the Panama Papers, Paradise Papers and other high-profile scandals have given the impression that none of Britain’s wealthy elite contributes a penny to our public finances. “But our inaugural Sunday Times Tax List shows which of the super-rich are contributing many of millions of pounds a year. “These are large sums of money – the size that does not merely pay for a nurse, but pays to build the hospital in which they work.”