A £393m payday... but tycoon Lakshmi Mittal won't be taxed on it here as he's a 'non-dom'

Britain's richest man is £393.9million better off today after paying himself a huge dividend from his company, safe in the knowledge that as a "non-dom" he will not pay tax on it here.

Indian tycoon Lakshmi Mittal, 57, is the world's fifth wealthiest man, worth more than £19billion.

But his big payout comes as the debate over the non-domiciled status of 117,000 foreigners living in Britain reaches fever pitch.

These so-called non-doms, who claim their main home is in another country, pay no tax on earnings made outside Britain.

From April, the Chancellor Alistair Darling plans to impose a £30,000-a-year levy on anyone who has claimed non-domiciled status for seven of the last ten years.

But he has dropped a requirement for them to reveal offshore holdings.

Mr Darling was this week accused of a climbdown as the Treasury "clarified" its plans, saying it did not want to "snoop" on rich foreigners' financial affairs.

The way in which wealthy non-doms such as Mr Mittal and Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich, who is Russian, have been able to bypass paying British taxes while living here has come in for increasing criticism.

Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said last night: "I take a fairly hard line on this whole issue.

"I think it's a scandal that long-standing residents are able to take advantage of loopholes in the non-domicile rules to avoid paying tax.

"The Darling poll tax on these guys is not going to make any difference.

"A £30,000 charge is a fleabite in terms of the billions of regular income they get from business and capital gains."

Mr Mittal, who is named after Lakshmi, the Hindu goddess of wealth, is thought to pay a modest amount of tax to Britain.

His massive dividend payout came from ArcelorMittal, the world's biggest steel group, which is based in the tax haven of Luxembourg.

He owns 43 per cent of the firm, which employs 320,000 people in 60 countries.

Mr Mittal, who moved to London in 1995, has an Indian passport.

Born into poverty in 1950, he lived in a modest house with 20 members of his family.

He has said: "It was a very poor, very hard place. There was no electricity or running water."

Now, he uses chauffeur-driven limousines, a private jet and a couple of yachts to travel between homes in London, Delhi and St Moritz.

His Kensington mansion in one of London's most exclusive postcodes set new records when he bought it for a reputed £65.2million in 2004.

The lavish property has garage space for 20 cars and is adorned with marble taken from the same quarry as that for the Taj Mahal.

He also famously splashed out £30million on his daughter's wedding in 2004.

Mr Mittal's deep pockets have not gone unnoticed at Westminster.

Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been accused of doing favours for the Indian billionaire, who has given £4million to Labour since 2001.

Mr Mittal was at the centre of one of the party's biggest financial controversies in 2001, when the then Prime Minister Tony Blair allegedly intervened to help him buy a steelworks in Romania not long after he made a £125,000 donation to Labour.

He was recently in the news for buying a 20 per cent stake in Queen's Park Rangers FC, where he joins other wealthy co-owners Bernie Ecclestone, the Formula One boss, and Flavio Briatore, Renault F1 team manager.

ArcelorMittal made £53.6billion last year, up nearly 20 per cent from 2006.

That was when the Indian tycoon's firm Mittal Steel won its takeover bid for Arcelor SA, combining the No.1 and No.2 steelmakers to create a steel titan three times bigger than its closest rival and with ten per cent of the world's steel output.