I’D NEVER BE A TAX EXILE, SAYS MURRAY

ANDY MURRAY has taken late action to vote in the election and says he will not be joining other leading British sports stars by moving abroad for tax reasons. The 30-year-old Scot, who plays today in the French Open quarter final, is too firmly rooted at his Surrey home to go elsewhere. ‘No, because I like living at home,’ said Murray, whose wealth was recently estimated in the Sunday Times Rich List at £77million. ‘The only chance of me living somewhere else is if I had a bunch of friends or some of my family were living elsewhere and I would move to spend time with them. ‘But I wouldn’t want to go and live somewhere not to pay any tax and not to have any of my family and friends around me. I wouldn’t do that.’ Murray, who has lived in London since his teenage years and is now in Surrey’s stockbroker belt, is going to some lengths to make sure he votes, on the assumption that he will still be in Paris after his match against Japan’s Kei Nishikori. Murray, wife Kim and daughter Sophia live in the Conservative seat of Esher and Walton, where Tory MP Dominic Raab enjoyed a majority of 28,600 votes in 2015. ‘Me and Kim, we are actually getting our (postal votes) brought out. And then it will be taken back,’ said the world No 1, who has been closely following the TV debates. ‘We’ve watched pretty much all of them. With the team, we watched Sky News — did Paxman do the Sky News one? I think he did. We didn’t watch the ITV debate, which didn’t have Corbyn or Theresa May. Then we watched the BBC one. So I’ve tried to keep up with it.’ Murray is an exception among many top British sportspeople in basing himself in the UK, although he does train in Miami. Lewis Hamilton, Justin Rose, Rory McIlroy and Chris Froome are among those who live in lower-tax environments.