Millionaires leaving UK- are you concerned?

[anonhop]

Read today that 10,800 millionaires left the UK in 2024 which is equivalent in tax take for the government to half a million average tax payers. I don't think that factors in their reduced reliance on public services either.

Do you think this is concerning in terms of investment & spending in our economy?

I understand the moral arguments for the wealthy paying more tax but if so many are leaving, will it practically leave us worse off?

Curious to see what people think

Knew it would be the Telegraph..

I think everyone knew who was going to win the July election from 6 months out.

we should all be concerned if they are Russian (multi millionaires, billionaires)

Where would you move? I moved abroad to a very wealthy country which comes on top of many living standard raking and now have an opportunity to move to a warmer country but honestly I want to return to UK ( there are many valid reasons) and I am not even originally from UK.

Warm countries are very nice to visit bit many of them have other problems like Spain with residential crisis and high unemployment, Italy far right government, Asian warm countries - some struggling with pollution, overpopulation, others have strict rules about foreigners buying properties.
Middles East is too hot, USA has so many problems. Please tell where will you live, because I have been scratching my head and can't find a decent country with decent weather.

Have you been to the UK lately? Overpopulation, a strained healthcare system, a housing crisis—and now there’s another discussion about how the country is plagued with litter. As if all that wasn’t enough, the weather is miserable too.

And then there’s the government. They spent their first few months in power talking down the economy, warning about a so-called £22 billion black hole and promising nothing but "pain"—despite the fact that, initially, the UK’s economy was growing faster than many other nations. Instead of building on that, they doubled down on the doom-mongering, then followed it up with a disastrous budget that made no economic sense.

Growth stalled, confidence collapsed, and now Labour has the audacity to blame the Tories for the very mess they just created. Don’t get me wrong, the Tories were also bad and I didn’t vote for them, but Labour have proven themselves to be simply unqualified and incompetent.

Now, their big plan to “go for growth” is… raising taxes, including signing off on huge council tax hikes, making us all poorer, and somehow expecting the economy to boom as a result. It’s just mind-boggling.

I consider myself a reasonably smart person—although I always assumed much smarter people ran the government—but frankly, I’m flabbergasted that I seem to understand what they seemingly don’t.

And yet, there are still people who can promote “giving them a chance” with a straight face.

My advice: stay where you are.

Nail on the head. Back then the experts said it would take a decade to recover from the 2008 crash to get back to where we were financially before it. Just over a decade later and covid hits, so another decade of pain just when we should finally have been recovering.

Thank you to those who have taken the time to explain what non dom actually means and the terms pre and post changes. When it’s clear it is actually startling obvious why the change is a disastrous idea.

I have a family member who stays under 40 days a year in the UK in order to avoid being taxed on the same income in 2 different countries which would patently be unfair. He has properties and income here that he pays taxes on here but would draw the line at the income he earns living and working in another country where he contributes to their system.

Wondering how this effects him.

Honestly I cringe at people coming on and posting good riddance and the like. There’s seriously short thinking or complete ignorance of the facts and ramifications. I’ve never voted Tory in my life and actually stopped voting because I couldn’t vote labour anymore after seeing things you can’t unsee and not being ideologically captured anymore. I wish we had better options and a less ideological and more pragmatic (whilst still being compassionate and understanding the social contract) governance.

It’s very different to have inherited such wealth.
I wonder though if you’d feel the same if you’d had to work all hours and take substantial risks to garner the same wealth. If perhaps you’d sacrificed time with family to make that money?
I earn £55000 a year, so a reasonably good wage, though it’s come at a lot of personal sacrifice, time and wellbeing and quite frankly, I begrudge giving even a penny of it away.
I don’t care about an equal society. I care about feeling like my hard work is paying off for me. But like you, maybe if I was gifted money, I would have the luxury of feeling differently.

@Needmilkandbread You have a point about inheritance rather than having earned it. i confess to an amount of guilt, which is part of my motivation i expect. However, as I said above, I know others - entrepreneurs working hard and investing right now - who feel the same. Indeed my own parents (brought up poor) felt similarly. They viewed taxes as a price you pay for a functioning society. Without that their enterprise would not have thrived I suppose.

I’m not offended by patrioticmillionaire.
I’m envious. That they probably will never have to experience the worries I do. The £1400 a month mortgage etc
And I’m pissed off that these people are advocating for higher taxes, for basically all of us. Whether directly or indirectly. Because whilst they can comfortably afford that tax, I cannot.

@Needmilkandbread I am absolutely not advocating for more taxes for you. I am however advocating for better public services for you paid for by the taxes of people who can definitely afford it. And a sensible conversation generally about who is going to pay and how.

I would no sooner relocate to Dubai than to the moon! And I'm not alone. I had a lovely holiday in Switzerland once, walking the Alpine passes, but wouldn't want to live there.

@NotVeryFunny Norway is a good example. Nowhere is perfect, but they seem to be grown up about realising someone has to pay for a society that works. We pussyfoot around it while our hospitals and schools crumble.

That paragraph has been written in a deliberately inflammatory way, I think.

Some people reading it will think that there are people earning £1m+ that only pay the same amount of tax as someone earning £15k. Outrageous!

But 11% of £1m is still £110k, which is more tax than most people pay. 35% is £350k. You need an awful lot of people earning, say, £50k to replace even 1 millionaire paying "just" 11% tax. Plus the person earning £1m+ is extremely unlikely to be claiming any sort of benefits, so is far more of a net monetary benefit to the country.

So even if the millionaires leaving "aren't paying proper amounts of tax", can the UK afford to lose them in large numbers?

The millionaires I know of through work are the sort that regularly give six figure sums to charities without even blinking. They mostly have their own businesses, creating jobs for others. A comment at a recent board meeting was that the conversation at their dinner parties was how every single one of them had been courted by the likes of Dubai, and the govt there was offering to pay all their business relocation costs in order to entice them over. So yes, a lot of HNW individuals will leave, and we are not talking about pensioners who are millionaires solely due to house price increases.

But yeah, sure, let's let all those pesky millionaires not paying "the right" taxes leave. Who needs them!

Thank you. I cba to explain how vastly misleading that post was.

Factor in the amount of benefits in their various forms (which the vast majority of society accesses) and the nhs and education costs each of those lower tax holders will use and the number of them required to cover the tax loss from one millionaire leaving rockets higher.

Even if you loathe the rich you can surely see that our ability to help the poor, the disabled, the elderly etc will be damaged?

I presume I am right wing now by today’s definitions.

Lots of businesses fail to compete post Brexit so they are leaving to base in the EU (very wisely) Brexit was the biggest act of self harm

Let's not forget how the government had to do deals with Olympic athletes to get them to come for the London Olympic games. A number of athletes were concerned that they'd end up taxed in the UK because of the length of time they'd be in the UK before, during and after the games, so special deals were done to exempt them.

This is a classic example of why we need to be flexible and not tax the rich "until their pips squeak" because they'll simply stay abroad!

Can you imagine the London Olympics if some of the biggest sports personalities simply said "no" and didn't come?

Of course, we'd have the same virtual signalling posters on here saying the same old tripe of "don't let the door hit you on the way out", etc., but the UK would have been overall a lot poorer in terms of image, financials, status etc., if there'd have been a scandal over the top athletes staying away due to UK tax laws!

Same with Blair/Brown's government doing "sweetheart deals" with multinational firms like Vodafone to give them special tax treatment to either encourage them to base their European offices in the UK or to keep their existing UK offices.

Tax policy is more than just about rates and thresholds - something Reeves hasn't yet understood. Behaviour is just as important.

The 2008 crash and Covid were far greater damaging events.

Everyone is far right these days I'm afraid. That's what our Glorious Leader thinks anyway. We will need to get reprogrammed.

If it comes with an overnight stay in a hotel and is fully catered I’m ok with that 😂

Norway has a tiny population though..not getting on for 72 million. There's high tax but high wages and things actually work well.

Although they are bringing in a huge amount of asylum seekers so that willingness to pay high taxes for the largesse might change.

Spot on

The tide is already majorly turning in Norway. Definitely don’t use Sweden as an example

There’s just not enough net contributors. The top 10% of earners pay 60% of income tax for starters.That was us for years, well off but not at the mega level.

4,200 in 2023, 1,600 in 2022.

Agree. Although that "black hole" (ahem) might have been filled up a bit quicker if they didn't dish out massive pay rises immediately to train drivers.

Sorry but loads of rich Norwegian left because of the wealth tax and went to Switzerland and some even to London. Norway has a small population and oil and they were putting entrepreneurs off who needed to invest in their business with the wealth tax (it is a relatively recent phenomenon).

What is annoying me is this new brand of self made Brit multimillionaire who moves abroad temporarily and then funds Reform from afar. Rather than staying and trying to get a seat at the table here. Really rich people eventually want political power because they realise that is the only way to stay rich and gain influence across generations.
Look @patrioticmillionaire - you are doing the same type of Labour signalling with your immediate reference to your kids “state” schools. You are just Labour virtue signalling, which is also a cliche. You have the old school Tories and your type and now we have the Mullins Reform type too. The rest of us are just watching the show and know that most rich people just ultimately want power as well.

I agree. It's all very short sighted.

As an example one of my friend's family have left for another country where they've set up a family office with about 10 employees. They've also had to hire new staff for the house (cook, housekeeper, driver, etc). It's not only personal tax that they're paying, they are also providing employment for at least 15 people and these people will go on the pay tax on their salaries. International school fees? The government will take a cut. Discretionary spending? The government will also take in taxes from that. They also use private healthcare so in effect the UK has lost all their tax dollars and also people who not use the NHS.

I forgot - there is now a fourth type of very rich person - called the international. They have lived and influenced in at least two countries and they are using their connections in both countries to their benefit.