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

That depends on what work the corporate lawyer is involved in.

Who ultimately pays the wages of the teachers and everyone employed by the state? The private sector. Where does the "private sector" come from? The main bulk come from people running SMEs.

Millionaires are often people who are just really good at running a business and making lots of money which is then taxed. The tax they pay is more than the average person and therefore buys more teachers than the average person.

Everyone knows all this though. To rail against people making really good money in this country is typical Labour self-defeating contradictory rubbish. We have ended up with more people living off the state than paying in as we don't have enough productive workers. And to scare off people who provide jobs for thousands, as if to get rid of the payers and leave us left with just the takers, is a moral thing to do, is madness.

But madness is what we have for the next five years.

Nail on the head.

That is a silly distinction though, when we are taking about how the taxes from corporate lawyers funds lots of good in society such as education.

It’s like saying: which carries more people, the train carriages or the engine?

But madness is what we have for the next five years.
😆😆😆

Since the opposite under the Tories worked sooo well. Cheers Kemi.

I actually think it's worse now. As amazing as that sounds. Worse than the Conservatives!! Who would have thought that was even possible.

I absolutely can't agree with that! I think it's worth looking at what Labour have achieved rather than assuming it's all bad.

Ok I am open minded on this. Although I would never vote Labour (and am a bit politically homeless at the moment) I do want this country to succeed and I would like to feel more positive. What would you say the successes are? And we can discuss what the implications are. Because at the moment it seems to me that every decision that Labour make, the opposite decision would have been better.

Ok I am open minded on this. Although I would never vote Labour

Slight contradiction there that makes me feel disinclined to explain.

Actually if you really think Kemi's responses are better then I'm doubly disinclined. We have a different view of better, I think.

Why? That's so odd of you. Labour are my government even though I would never vote for them. Why won't you list their successes?

Because you've made it clear you're not open minded and you already think the appalling things Badenoch has said are better. So we have a different plumbline. And I start work in 2 mins so no point wasting my time.

Ok. It was just that you said it was worth looking at Labour's successes and when I agreed and asked you to list them you wouldn't.

I expect you have time before you need to go to work in 1 minute. Let's face it. It won't be a long list. But that's just my current view and I want to know yours. We don't live in an echo chamber I hope.

The reality is we can no longer afford to be a tax efficient investment vehicle for the uber wealthy.

If these are genuine business owners who would prefer to pay less tax elsewhere, we can't afford them. They will already have been using every avenue available to avoid paying tax.
Including buying up property as investments via off shore companies, decimating the housing market.
Including using overseas call centres instead of creating jobs in the UK.
Including paying out dividends to shareholders instead of increasing benefits for employees or increasing headcount.

The majority of the population are dis-benefited by many of the regulations that are making the very wealthy even wealthier.

They cannot be relied on to create (permanent, viable) jobs that pay a living wage.
There is no trickle down of wealth.
Social mobility has stagnated then gone backwards for years.

The reality is if the uber wealthy minority are throwing their toys out of the pram then we're probably doing something that benefits the majority.

That's a topsy turvy view of the world. For example what do yoi think your pension fund (if you have a private pension) invests in?

Who do you think should be providing the jobs instead out of interest if not the successful business people that are actually good at it and good at earning money?

And if you want the successful business owners to employ UK people you should create a favourable eco system. For example (off the top of my head) make sure its cost effective to employ UK people by reducing Employers NI?

“The reality is we can no longer afford to be a tax efficient investment vehicle for the uber wealthy.”

It is not really about ideology though is it? Ultimately we simply compete with other countries for assets and people and investment. So if Italy goes right wing and attracts tons of millionaires because they realised their economy is down and they have a massively ageing population, and then as a result, they suddenly seem to be doing better economically, because 200000k euros in tax per year is better than no tax, we simply cannot sit back and put off a ton of rich people and inward investment.
Facts are the downward trajectory of the pound post Brexit etc.
We were always only going to survive long term in a successful way if we become a sort of social Singapore on Thames. So we need the Oxford/Cambridge AI corridor and we need more controlled housing etc, but we ALSO need to attract the rich. I give no hoots if some uber millionaire is paying some tax and investing in our country, if overall, it is going to be better than having no investment.

And quite frankly it seems to be that Starmer and Reeves would agree with me but because they have a massive majority and a ton of other Leftist in their party who do not agree, they had to go far left first with some insane policies to prove to those in their own party that this far left shite does not work. So the farmer inheritance tax, VAT on school fees, trying to tax non doms 10 years back - all these policies won’t help the country long term, do not raise more money and simply result in the complete opposite. The NI on employers - no idea how they will backtrack on that one or sort that out given the OBR in a month. It is virtually cross your hands and pray that other countries do worse politically, so we look like a good stable investment relatively speaking. Given what is going on globally, we might actually end up being OK but that will be down to shenanigans elsewhere, not any policy decisions made.

Increasing unemployment, increasing inflation/COL, etc doesn't benefit the majority!

It's not the best idea if you have bet the house on growth

Reeves didn't think it would be an issue pre GE, but subsequently does

Which is incredibly slow on the uptake, not just that but all the policies harming growth and the private sector

Essentially, we are a service economy with great levels of education, especially higher education, no expensive minerals to speak etc - all we have is our talented people and our wits about us. Plenty of people are in complete denial about this, it seems. It is faith in our people and our skills and growing the service economy via new technologies and educating our own and importing the best (and only the best), that will keep us growing. Matters not what ideology you have, that needs to be put to one side. There is plenty of opportunity out there if people do not get distracted by the fundamentals.

It's been proved time and time again that you want the millionaires residing in the country to pay their wedge of tax because the wedge they pay is large.

Their wedge normally equates to thousands of other individual yearly tax receipts multiplied together.

So put simply, every time you lose one of your millionaires to another country abroad (who will still be charging the millionaire tax but at a more acceptable rate) you have to find many somebody elses to fill that gap.

Or you have to recognise that you don't have as much money to spend so will have to reduce your spend on other things.

It is the opposite of growth by driving away your millionaires. It is the opposite of growth by hampering your businesses up and down the country from taking on new staff, giving pay rises, not investing in their business for the future and driving certain companies to operate from other shores.

I think the non dom tax topic is just another example of where Labour ideology fails to see the secondary impacts of their policies.

For example:

"There are a whole of multi millionaires not paying their fair share in tax because of the non dom tax loophole , so let's get rid of it". In reality this means that large numbers of net tax contributors leave the country leaving the government (and everyone else) financially worse off.

"it's outrageous that pensioners with high incomes/ pensions should be entitled to claim the WFA". In reality this means large numbers of pensioners who previously didn't bother to or didn't know to apply for Pension Credits. Thus leaving Government finances worse off by this measure.

"Let's buy off a train driver's strike by giving them a backdated pay rise"
But by not changing their terms and conditions this means that Sunday services are being cancelled due to lack of drivers as Sunday work is voluntary and the drivers now don't need the additional income.

Etc etc

I sometimes feel like I'm the token conservative pub bore on these threads but I somewhat agree with this.

I would reframe it though because it's not a question of "the uber-wealthy" vs "the majority" where those are distinct categories. There are gradations. I think the UK is actually not a terrible place if you're a billionaire with a network of family trusts and offshore accounts and a family office dedicated to tax minimisation.

The UK is a terrible place if you're one of the "lower millionaires" or the tier below that - high-earning professionals or SME owners etc. Unlike some other countries it's actually quite difficult to avoid tax if you're employed by one company - even "partners" at professional services firms are often essentially employees and can't defer taxes or charge at company tax rates etc, so nearly 50% of their income goes unavoidably to tax. SMEs who only operate in the UK have a bit more flexibility, but don't have the same ability as say Amazon for moving their tax liabilities around the world via transfer schemes. And we all have heard of the hassles that, say, GPs and consultants go through with pensions where they actually lose money for working an extra shift.

Realistically we'll always have billionaires dodging tax but they're a tiny group - we could be doing a lot more for the second group I mentioned as this is a group which is in one sense a "broader" and more stable tax base than true billionaires but also one which is already either moving or cutting down hours because the pressure is just too much for less and less return.

I completely agree. Ideology never takes into account secondary impacts. We don't live in an ideal world.

Failing to see the knock on effect of ideological policies (and there always are knock on effects) is stunningly naive.

Agree on secondary impacts

What a way to learn huh, in the top two jobs in gov