Rupert Grint, best known for playing Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter franchise, owes £1.8 million ($2.3 million) to the United Kingdom’s Hmrc tax agency.

The actor’s residual earnings from the wizarding series were incorrectly classified as capital assets instead of income, leading to a significant tax bill.

Grint attempted to reduce his taxable income in 2011 by establishing Clay 10 Limited, a company to which he sold his residual rights as capital. Despite this strategy, Judge Harriet Morgan ruled in favor of Hmrc, stating that the residuals — primarily from TV and DVD sales of the Harry Potter films — are income and not capital.

Clay 10 currently holds over £27 million ($34 million) in equity, according to a December 2023 filing.

Using the so-called “Beatles clause,” a similar tax avoidance strategy employed by the Beatles in the 1960s, Hmrc claimed that Grint sought to pay a lower capital gains tax instead of income tax by selling his rights to the company.