The rich have deserted Britain. In response to The Telegraph, “one millionaire leaves Britain each 45 minutes below Labour”. The Unbiased dutifully echoed that “Britain misplaced a web 10,800 millionaires final 12 months”, blaming the Chancellor’s non-dom tax plans for the“exodus”. What was often called the Night Normal warned of “the world’s largest” flight of millionaires below Labour tax plans. In 2024, practically 11,000 articles – roughly 30 tales every day – mourned the millionaire apocalypse. The peril appears clear: if the wealthy flee, the tax take collapses, capital dries up, and Rachel Reeves shall be pressured to impound the final remaining yacht in Dover.
There is only one small downside: no such exodus occurred. Most reviews traced again to the identical supply: Henley & Companions, an funding migration consultancy, and its information associate New World Wealth. Henley – who earn a living advertising “golden passports” and residence visas – printed a report in mid-2024 claiming huge millionaire outflows. Henley’s enterprise mannequin thrives on rich shoppers fearing their nation is financially uninhabitable – an incentive to border millionaire migration as a sizzling development du jour. Few items talked about that Henley & Companions had a direct stake in amplifying fears of a fleeing millionaire class.
However allow us to take its report at face worth. The extensively cited determine claimed an estimated 9,500 high-net-worth people (usually rounded as much as ‘over’ 10,000) had left Britain in 2024. That sounds massive. But the UK is residence to over 3 million millionaires. As Tax Justice UK identified, 9,500 represents solely 0.3% of the UK’s millionaire inhabitants. At that glacial price it could take greater than three centuries for all millionaires to trickle out, and that’s assuming no new ones are created or immigrate within the meantime.
If something, this modest outflow has been a very long time coming. Henley’s personal information present that the UK has been steadily shedding high-net-worth people since not less than 2017, with Brexit marking an inflection level. Their 2023 report painted an image not of tax-induced flight however of long-term reputational rot, pushed by political instability, a decaying public realm, and a way that London’s edge as a monetary centre is dulling. Even Peter Ferrigno, tax director at Henley, admitted the “exodus” was about broader decline: the truth being extra about “perceptions of declining alternative and social cohesion” than any explicit fiscal measure.
Certainly, their estimates of millionaire actions weren’t primarily based on any official tax information, airline information, or direct surveys of the people. Primarily as a result of these don’t exist in an accessible method: if you wish to know whether or not millionaires are leaving the nation, you first should know who the millionaires are. However we now have little thought who truly owns what within the UK, not to mention who might need fled. Corporations Home stays peppered with shell buildings and nominee administrators – together with names like Darth Vader—with no proactive verification of useful house owners. Property doesn’t fare any higher, as even regulation enforcement lacks correct data for tens of hundreds of properties, including as much as effectively over £60 billion in hidden UK property wealth.
So, as an alternative, Henley’s associate New World Wealth trawled “public sources… together with LinkedIn and different enterprise portals” to deduce the place rich individuals say they’re working or residing. In apply, this implies “migration” comes right down to modifications in individuals’s on-line profiles – somebody updating their LinkedIn location from “London” to “Dubai” may be counted as a millionaire who left the UK, even when they nonetheless spend most of their time in Mayfair. This isn’t surprising given New World Wealth – grandly described as a “wealth intelligence” outfit – seem to have a headcount of 1, and has by no means made its underlying information public.
What’s the hurt is one exaggerated story? The Henley story broke in 2024 simply as momentum was constructing globally for curbing outlandish wealth: Oxfam known as for a 2% international tax on excessive fortunes and on the G20 Brazil tabled plans for a coordinated levy on the ultra-rich. However as millionaire-flight hysteria mounted, reviews emerged that Labour was getting chilly toes on a non-dom crackdown. Whereas rubbing shoulders at Davos, Rachel Reeves reportedly indicated she’d “soften” the crackdown. By that month’s finish, retailers had been treating it as accepted knowledge that Reeves’ non-dom tax plan had “backfired” and wanted revision, on the premise of the ten,000 determine. The implication was clear: push these individuals too exhausting on tax and so they’ll vanish, taking their cash with them.
Besides they gained’t. Even when the ultra-wealthy needed to decamp en masse, an enormous chunk of British wealth isn’t significantly cell. Over 40% of family wealth within the UK is held in residential property, rising to over 50% for the highest decile. Not like money or crypto, property doesn’t to migrate. It simply sits there, appreciating quietly in Clapham whereas its proprietor information a LinkedIn location replace from Monaco. A lot of the remainder of the UK’s family wealth is tied up in pensions and enterprise fairness—belongings which can be both immovable or contingent on UK infrastructure, clients, and authorized stability. The “exodus” narrative hinges on individuals packing up their passports slightly than their portfolios.
After all, the financial influence of exits isn’t strictly proportional to headcount. The very richest do pay much more taxes. However even right here, the information is skinny and contradictory. HMRC information exhibits little proof of great wealth emigration after prior reforms. Many wealthy persons are not itching to abscond – fairly the alternative. A latest ballot of UK millionaires discovered 85% would assist a modest wealth tax (2% on belongings over £10 million) to assist fund public providers. These are hardly the feelings of a category plotting escape.
The non-dom panic is only a gown rehearsal. As wealth turns into more and more inherited slightly than earned, debates over taxation will shift from revenue to belongings, and from international millionaires to home dysfunction. The so-called Financial institution of Mum and Dad is now the ninth largest mortgage lender within the UK, with over half of first-time patrons receiving household assist to get on the ladder. The Decision Basis estimates that round 63% of family wealth is held by these aged 55 and over, the majority of it in property and personal pensions. Inheritance Tax, lengthy handled as politically poisonous, is being pulled into the body by necessity: HMRC is wanting to usher in £15bn from it by the early 2030s.
So when tax exile threats are deployed towards modest modifications to non-dom standing, this isn’t restricted to Britain’s rich transferring abroad. It’s about making ready the bottom to dam any future settlement that touches the hoarded, housed wealth of UK’s upper-middle lessons, a lot of whom would slightly preserve their Soho Opera than save just a few kilos within the Caymans. Taxing wealth correctly is technically troublesome — however not unattainable. What’s unattainable is designing good coverage whereas scare tales are trotted out by wealth administration’s PR machine desperately making an attempt to save lots of its pores and skin and frighten governments off progressive taxation. This authorities is at risk of falling for it – hook, line, and sinker.
[Further reading: Let the non doms leave]