An entrepreneur who lives in Penn and runs a very successful software company in Marlow has once again appeared in the Sunday Times Rich list.

Peter Kelly, 66, who owns the very well-known tech business Softcat, which is situated in Fieldhouse Lane within the town, is 18th after putting £66.9m  into the nation’s coffers in just 12 months.

This is £10m more than this time last year.

The sixth edition of the Tax List — released as millions of people race to meet the self-assessment deadline — features figures from the worlds of music and arts, high finance and the high street, as well as billionaire aristocrats and rags-to-riches entrepreneurs. 

Robert Watts, the compiler of The Sunday Times Tax List, said: “This has been the highest taxing government since the Second World War and although the total tax take is up – it is only by 3.3 per cent.

"Bernie Ecclestone seems to have saved Jeremy Hunt's blushes.

“The total tax found in this year's research would have been a wedge lower were it not for the vast sum shelled out by the Formula One tycoon to settle a long-running investigation.

"If you look at the bottom 98 in this year's list they paid £4.0335 billion, £200 million less than last year. That’s the amount the government pledged to the NHS to boost winter resilience.

"Two thirds of the wealthy individuals in 2023's Tax List were found to have paid less tax this year.

“That was usually because their businesses have reported lower profits. But lower tax receipts from the UK's richest people may raise more than the odd eyebrow at a time when the public finances remain stretched and there is talk of budget giveaways in the air.”

Who is Peter Kelly?

Mr Kelly appeared in 168th place in The Sunday Times Rich List of the most wealthy people living in the UK published in June 2022, when his fortune had reportedly hit £1.065billion.

He earned his fortune through IT company Softcat, which he founded in 1993.

It started as a software catalogue he is said to have run from his garden shed to get the business off the ground.

The company now employs more than 700 people is now regularly voted among the top places to work and is worth £2billion.

Mr Kelly stepped down from his role as non-executive director of Softcat in October 2015.

Before he created Softcat, Mr Kelly, who has previously described himself as a “weird and eccentric entrepreneur”, dropped out of college and started out in sales at Xerox, according to a profile on Forbes.

A profile in The Business Magazine adds that after joining Rank Xerox in 1981, he went on to set up a recruitment company in 1987, before an Apple dealership in 1988.