Moscow-born billionaire and former F1 boss Bernie Ecclestone tops The Times’ tax list this year, but for different reasons.

Alex Gerko, the founder of algorithmic trading firm XTX Markets, paid £664.5 million to the UK Treasury last year, reportedly saying he was “happy to pay a lot of tax.”

Gerko’s contribution of £664.5 million is the highest sum ever recorded on the tax rolls and equates to more than £1.8 million in taxes a day, or £75,000 an hour. Gerko, who has renounced his Russian citizenship, has almost doubled his net worth in just one year.

Having paid more than £487 million in taxes in 2022, this is the second year that he has topped the list of the UK’s biggest taxpayers.

Next up was convicted fraudster Ecclestone, who paid £652.6 million into the Treasury last year, although he was a reluctant second-place finisher.

This came after he failed to declare assets of over £400 million in 2022 and was charged with fraud by prosecutors.

He was due to appear in court last November, but in October he confessed to the fraud. He agreed to pay more than £650 million and was sentenced to 17 months in prison, suspended for two years.

Sir Tim Martin, founder of JD Wetherspoon, paid £167.1 million in taxes last year, compared to £123.2 million the year before.

Martin, whose company currently operates 816 pubs across the country, was knighted in the New Year’s Honours List.

The times The list showed an increase in the contribution of Sir James Dyson and his family, as they paid £156 million last year, up from £93 million in 2022.

Last year it was reported that Dyson was investing £100 million in a new technology centre in the UK, as well as a new site in the Philippines and a factory in Singapore, as part of its £2.75 billion five-year investment plan.

Mike Ashley, the tycoon of the Frasers Group (formerly known as Sports Direct), which owns Jack Wills, House of Fraser, Game and now MatchesFashion, paid £139.4 million to the Treasury last year.

Last October, his group sold the Missguided brand and its intellectual property to Chinese fast-fashion giant Shein – just a year after it bought the online retailer.

The tax payments of Denise Coates, boss and co-founder of gambling giant Bet365, and John and Peter Coates fell to £375.9 million last year (2022: £460.2 million).

The bookmaker’s latest filing with Companies House for the year to March 2023 shows that while revenue soared, the company still made a £69 million loss after expanding into the US and China.

Despite the loss, Coates received £220 million for the year, making him one of the highest-paid executives in the country. Coates himself paid at least £421 million in the year to March 2020, despite a drop in sales ahead of the pandemic.

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The Times also reported that due to political pressure, Akshata Murty, the prime minister’s wife, is now paying British taxes on her dividends from Infosys, an Indian IT company that her father co-founded.

The newspaper calculated that it owes around £4.8 million in tax, but this amount is too small to justify inclusion on the list.

The one hundred individuals and families on the list paid £5.353 billion worth of taxes. The times That is three percent more than a year ago, they said.