Seriously thinking about leaving the UK - AIBU?

[HonoraBridge]

I love the UK in many ways but it has been going downhill for at least 20 years and it feels as if the speed of the decline is accelerating. I no longer see a happy, or particularly safe, future here. For the first time in my life, I am very seriously thinking about leaving the UK and that feeling gets stronger day by day. When I mention this to friends, many are feeling the same way. YANBU - you are right to think seriously about leaving the UK. YABU - the UK is a still a great country to live in and you are being unreasonable to want to leave.

Also, wealth taxes already include: IHT, CGT, dividends, stamp duty, council tax etc, and this is a double-tax (on money that has already been taxed).

Capital gains is a tax payed on a gain & most IHT is due to property gains. How has that money already been taxed?

@Jaz111 have we ever had a time where we had a a small number of net recipients?

Exactly this. @ThymeScent the pure hypocrisy and frankly stupidity of your statement is breathtaking. No one wants your kids to take their populations for mugs! You can keep them.

I am not assuming that I can “stroll off” and I definitely do not “despise” the UK - I love the UK. I am hope that things will start to get better but that doesn’t feel realistic right now.

Perhaps we have a different view of language. I disagree that being a net recipient means ‘contributing nothing’ because that implies laziness. Perhaps you don’t mean to imply that. There are plenty of very hard working net recipients.

According to the government’s Spring Statement Briefing here https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/spring-statement-2025-document/spring-statement-2025-html#:~:text=The%20indirect%20effects%20of%20government,9.9%20billion%20in%202029%E2%80%9130. the OBR is saying that there will be a surplus. Maybe I am misunderstanding it.

Some of the things you describe as wealth taxes or double taxation I would not describe in such terms:

• CGT and dividends are taxes on gains, not wealth. The gain has not been taxed previously. Neither are earned income and so in my view should be taxed at a higher rate than earned income.
• Stamp duty is a consumption tax. Don’t move house, don’t pay the tax.

Council Tax isn’t strictly a wealth tax because it’s paid by occupiers regardless of wealth. That could do with being changed.

I agree entirely about IHT though. Definitely a bad tax, mainly because of double taxation, and I’d abolish it tomorrow. I’d replace it though with a tax on recipients of inheritances, levied at their marginal rate.

Of course rebates shouldn’t go to those who lose wealth. Gains are taxed so that whilst the gainers profit the most, all of society shares the profit.

I still don’t understand your £1.5m. Even if they received £1.5m in benefits (which at £30kpa would take 50 years) they wouldn’t be ‘worth’ £1.5m. They’d be worth whatever was left after expenditure. Again you’re conflating income and wealth.

I wondered if people thought my feelings were unreadable.

@MrsBennetsPoorNerves · Today 21:03
I will definitely leave if Farage wins the next election. Otherwise I'm staying put

If he won the next election but then lost the one after that, would you come back again?

Where would you go to?

USA...Trump wants to rule the world, or
Russia...Putin too, or
China, or
Korea? 🤣

Hard to say. Probably not, but never say never.

@Jaz111 my parents house is about 2m but they paid 60k for it. I can inherit 1m before I pay 40% on the rest which I think is fair enough. How did my parents earn that? How did I earn that? My in-laws recently sold a 2nd inherited property & paid 150k in capital
gains due to it soaring in value. How did they earn it the 600k plus they banked?

No, I am not a sneaky journalist. I am just busy! I haven’t seen this thread since I posted originally. I haven’t decided where I’d go and it wouldn’t only be my decision.

I don’t buy the double taxation argument apart from for IHT.

On CGT it’s only the gain that is taxed. So it’s not double taxation. To suggest otherwise would surely open the door to arguing that all taxes except income tax are double taxation, no? I am taxed on my income, but then when I spend the remainder I pay VAT, fuel duty etc. So is that not double taxation?

People move countries all the time, why would it be unreasonable for you to do so?

Agreed, there are many wonderful things about the UK.

”Unreasonable” not “unreadable”!

I am taxed on my income, but then when I spend the remainder I pay VAT, fuel duty etc. So is that not double taxation?

quite

Thank you so much. You too.

Seriously what’s wrong with Canada?

Thanks. A useful comment.

Completely correct...

The UK is now a country where 28 million private sector workers are expected to support nine million who are economically inactive, six million public sector staff and 13 million state pensioners. Where the top 1 per cent of earners pay 29 per cent of income tax and the top 10 per cent pay nearly two-thirds, and are then pilloried for failing to pay their “fair share”. No wonder we are all getting poorer.

Add to this the vastly out of proportion sex and other criminality carried out by many of those coming here, the UK is not the place it once was.

@Jaz111 so what is wrong with me paying 40% tax on anything over 1m?