to ask how you would stop companies and investors leaving the UK?

[LargeDeviation]

AstraZeneca (the UK's most valuable company) has said they are thinking of delisting from the London Stock Exchange with a view to list in America. Other companies like Invidia, TUI, have also delisted. ARM is of course another one that got away.

At the same time, billionaires and centimillionaires are leaving the UK at the greatest rate ever.

Each delisting leads to redundancies or lower future growth. Each billionaire lost needs the equivalent of thousands of median income taxpayers to make up the tax lost.

What would you do to stop the rot? My solutions:

1. Incentivise listings: Allow extremely large bonuses and executive remuneration as long as they are tied to long-term performance. Remove stamp duty on shares. Bring back reduced oversight for AIM etc so small companies can easily list. Actively invest government funds in high-tech incubator companies (as long as it's done by the likes of the Vaccine Taskforce, not by idiot civil servants whose idea of good governance was to try to obstruct the OneWeb investment).

2. Incentivise share ownership in UK companies. Reduce dividend taxes. Revive the idea of the British ISA from Jeremy Hunt. Introduce low long-term capital gains tax rates (as many other countries have) to encourage long-term investing. Simply cutting Cash ISA allowances won't help.

3. Encourage entrepreneurs and the rich to come to Britian rather than leave. Reverse the non-dom changes. Large increases in IHT allowances, cut the top rate of income tax. These tax cuts can be conditional on providing a large number of jobs to British workers to make them politically palatable.

4. Cut corporation tax back to 20%. Sunak made a huge error in increasing corporation tax.

5. Ditch the Rayner changes which makes Britain even more uncompetitive.

Of course Labour won't do any of the above (or even acknowledge that companies/investors leaving the UK is a problem)...

That’s a terrible plan. Manufacturing in real terms should always be rising but as a % of GDP always contracting. This means that manufacturing is being invested in, and through automation is expanding, but also allowing people to work in other jobs that result in an ever decreasing overall share of the economy.

It is I agree. For some reason it crops up still.

Do you actually work with or know any HNW people? I can assure you that these people have been leaving in droves (with a massive acceleration post-Covid). Both Conservatives and Labour are culpable, together with vastly more competition in other jurisdictions via golden visas/investor incentives/low tax rates.

I voted Remain but don't think rejoining the EU would make a huge difference at this point. Only a small fraction of those who leave seem to go to EU countries.

I meant Invidior - not NVIDIA of course.

With AstraZeneca, I believe the vaccine plant fiasco (entirely Labour's doing) is the main reason for the breakdown with the UK.

On ARM - yes, this is on the Tories. They didn't have the vision to see the strategic national interest in ARM (or e.g. Deepmind etc when they were scaling up). The lack of (hands-off) government investment in strategic companies is a serious issue to me.

I definitely don't believe in private markets at all costs. I think the civil service should be kept a million miles away though.

Though EU exchanges are definitely more lively than London, the main competition is the US.

I think a lot of the issues are also cultural. We need more of a capital growth mindset amongst UK CEOs rather than focussing so much on dividends/buybacks.

In terms of government action - I would prioritise low long-term (10Y or 15Y+) capital gains rates on UK shares (listed or private) and low tax rates on long-term incentive related share options for employees/directors.

Yes they do, but

IRS releases tax inflation adjustments for tax year 2025 | Internal Revenue Service

Max tax rate is 37% on income over $609k pa for a single person. And there are plenty of deductions.
No IHT for estates below $13m.
Which tax regime would you prefer as a high earner?

And there are treaties with most countries which spare you from double taxation.

You have to add in the huge cost of health insurance to US levels of taxation.

& the USA has eye watering levels of debt too.

Though I disagree with many things in your post, I agree that fraud (and crime more generally) should be investigated much more vigorously.

Also I agree that with water companies in particular, the government seems unwilling to let shareholders get wiped out and bondholders take the hit. It also seems to me that the privatisation was extremely badly drafted and poorly enforced. Largely the fault of the Conservatives but Labour aren't exactly grasping the nettle.

Surely if you level out tax so that everyone pays 20% it would be a net win? Obviously remove the tax for the very low earners as it is now. But 20% of £millions is much better than 40% of £0

Or incorporate tax breaks that are linked to wages under say £50k a year with those on the lowest wage brackets creating a bigger tax break for the company. That way the company would pay less tax and the lower earners would get paid a hell of a lot more. Win win all round. The lower earners now get paid a decent wage and in turn are able to buy more goods and services putting money back into the economy.

Osborne: broadly good, though with some appalling policies on capital investment.

Sunak: middling during the pandemic. Furlough and COVID loans were far too generous. Won the argument against the final lockdown which gave a huge boost versus the alternative scenario. 25% corp tax terrible and one of the root causes of corporate exodus. Full expensing was good but only a partial mitigation.

Kwarteng: appalling, of course. Had good ideas in isolation but ignored what it would do to debt.

Hunt: Did well to stabilise after the Truss/Kwarteng disaster but didn't really have time to do much else. Pandering to Labour on non-doms was a mistake.

The state doesn't set compensation for but it can restrict/disincentivise it.

It could incentivise e.g. long-term share options and long-term capital gains via tax rates but chooses not to.

I meant Invidior. Apologies for the misspelling.

Osbourne and austerity are at the root cause of most of our problems

He failed to keep up with capital expenditure, increased borrowing, held down wages... all now coming home to roost.

Huge issues with our roads, public buildings, justice system... all on him and subsequent Tory Govt's.
Putting this right will probably never be done, no country held onto Austerity like he did, all to appease the "small state" wing of his party.

His only saving grace is he opposed an EU referendum.

Debt is irrelevant for this specific topic.

Health insurance is, but for high earners it still makes a lot of sense financially to be there rather than here (of course there are other considerations).

Even with sky high insurance costs you keep more of you money and this insurance provides you with pretty high quality service. Here you pay more but stuck with the same NHS and can't get an appointment or have much choice.

And that's the issue - if you're at a low /mid level of course it's better for you here, but if you're successful you better leave. The same applies to businesses.

The choice was between cutting public services and drastic reduction of welfare. There was no more taxes to take at that stage.

He couldn't cut welfare in that crisis.

Quantitive easening was massive mistake though.

No government ever will be able to tackle our services until they tackle welfare state. Labour will continue raising taxes until economy collapses.

The choice was between cutting public services and drastic reduction of welfare. There was no more taxes to take at that stage.

Odd that they managed to double the tax take then. As well as increasing borrowing. It was the perfect time to increase taxes because mortgage rates plummeted and people in work saw their disposable income increase exponentially unless they were canny and continued with their original mortgage payments - there were very few fixed rate products in those days.

I am not surprised. London stock exchange is dead. They need to remove the duty for stock absolutely.

"No government ever will be able to tackle our services until they tackle welfare state. Labour will continue raising taxes until economy collapses."

The Conservatives held taxes low for their chums and donors and their approach to the welfare state was to under-invest and starve vital services of funds, driving those who could afford it into the arms of the private providers of healthcare, social care, education and housing and leaving everyone else to rot.

Vital utilities such as water were allowed to be used as cash cows and loaded with debt while billions of pounds in salaries, bonuses and dividends were paid to the shareholders and their clever directors.

The Conservatives spent 14 years cutting investment in public services to the point where hospitals, schools, infrastructure, and the justice system are quite literally on the point of collapse.

is it convenient for you to forget about massive job losses? and how many businesses folded?

Most of the job losses were in the public sector caused by austerity.

I posted this on another thread which got full a couple of posts later:

Social security spending in Great Britain

In 2025 to 2026 the government is forecast to spend £316.1 billion on the social security system in Great Britain. Total GB welfare spending is forecast to be 10.6% of GDP and 23.5% of the total amount the government spends in 2025 to 2026.

Around 55% of social security expenditure goes to pensioners; in 2025 to 2026 we will spend £174.9 billion on benefits for pensioners in GB. This includes spending on the State Pension which is forecast to be £145.6 billion in 2025 to 2026.

In 2025 to 2026 we will spend £141.2 billion on working age and children welfare. This includes spending on Universal Credit and its predecessors, and non-DWP welfare spending.

In 2025 to 2026 we will spend £75.3 billion on benefits to support disabled people and people with health conditions, and £35.3 billion on housing benefits.
Guidance and methodology: Benefit expenditure and caseload tables - GOV.UK

So welfare payments are only 4.4bn less that all state pensions.

Only 35% of UC claimants are working.
Proportion of Universal Credit claimants in employment in England | LG Inform

There were 7.5 million people on Universal Credit in January 2025, up from 6.4 million people on Universal Credit in January 2024
Universal Credit statistics, 29 April 2013 to 9 January 2025 - GOV.UK

23.7 million people claimed some combination of DWP benefits in August 2024 (of the 17 benefits included in these statistics). Of these:

• 13.1 million were of State Pension Age (including those in receipt of their State Pension)
• 9.9 million were of Working Age
• 750,000 were under 16 (and in receipt of DLA as a child)

Interesting stats on PIP, incl assessment process
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Link looks strange, but it's Scottish Gov doc.
Number of disability benefits recipients in the UK is dramatically higher than in Denmark, France, Norway, Sweden - all comparable countries.
"This research has found that extra costs benefits are uncommon in other countries. Indeed, in a New Policy Institute report for the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, MacInnes et al (2014 – emphasis added) argue that, as far as they are aware: ‘no other European or OECD country […] makes such extensive use of a cash benefit to meet the additional costs of disability.’7 As a result, the sample of countries examined was necessarily constrained – including only countries with broadly comparable benefits. To this end, this report presents an examination of assessment for disability benefits in: Denmark, France, New Zealand, Norway, and Sweden. Even in countries where extra-costs disability benefits are offered, their reach is far more limited than in Scotland/UK (see Table 2)."

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If you spend so much on direct welfare payments and 25% of working age population are economically inactive, your only choice is either to cut services to the bone or to increase taxes until you bleed productive part of society dry.
Proverbial "tax the rich" doesn't work unfortunately.

Investment tax credit. If they invest their money they get reduced tax

are you deliberate?

businesses were folding all around, there were mass redundancies in private sector, my FTSE Top 10 business laid off several thousands people and we were working 70-80 hours a week for a chance to stay.

Your reply only serves to illustrate how much hate there is for high earners. Would you stay here to disproportionately support others? I doubt it.

When the overall level of wealth decreases it'll be the middle earners who'll become the next target in all probability. Will be interesting to see if people are prepared to then do what they've been clamoring for others to do.