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‘Harry Potter’ Star Ordered to Pay $2.3M in Back Taxes

Rupert Grint, who starred as Ron Weasley, lost his legal battle against the British tax-collecting agency.

Rupert Grint, famous for playing Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter films, has been ordered to pay the equivalent of around $2.3 million in back taxes, according to The Times. He had been originally ordered to pay the sum in 2019, after HMRC, the British tax-collecting agency, investigated his returns from the 2011 to 2012 tax year. A payment of about $5.7 million to Grint from a company that managed his business affairs for “consideration for rights, records and goodwill” for his work had raised investigators’ eyebrows because it was listed as a capital asset. HMRC, though, determined that it was actually income and should have been subject to a greater tax. Although Grint had attempted to fight the verdict in court, Judge Harriet Morgan decided against him, finding that “derived substantially the whole of its value from the ­activities of” Grint, meaning that it should have been taxed as income. Grint, who starred in all eight of the hit wizardry films between 2001 and 2011, earned around $30 million for his work with the franchise, per The Times.