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

@Araminta1003 this is a great point. Government incentivising businesses to move to other cities around the UK and improving public transport into those cities could be a game changer.
Immigration is obviously the other huge pressure on housing so they need a plan for that too!

I've been saying this for years. Government needs to reverse the centralisation of everything into London and a few other big cities. It's been disastrous for the regions, smaller cities and towns and rural areas. Not only in terms of "local" lack of employment opportunities, but also in terms of fragmentation of families and family support, i.e. kids not returning to their home towns after graduating so no one to "care" and support their parents in old age etc. The current "plan" of relocating the unemployed and immigrants into run down areas such as ex-industrial towns and ex-seaside resorts is awful and is causing those run down areas to deteriorate further as there are still no jobs, so just an increase in unemployment and anti social behaviour.

It's only a few decades ago that virtually every town had a tax office, multiple bank branches (with back office and managers), multiple insurance brokers, loads of professional offices, warehouses, factories, breweries, print works, etc. Now those same towns have nothing but charity and betting shops and dodgy convenience stores. A town near us had the head office of a large insurance firm - employed hundreds of locals in good jobs who in turn spent in the local economy. It got taken over and closed down - all centralised in the new owner's London office - virtually everyone made redundant other than the few who agreed to relocating hundreds of miles away!

And no, the usual "grants" don't work - a run down area with lots of social problems and high unemployment really doesn't benefit from a pedestrianised High street or an artwork on a roundabout! It would benefit far more by grants being used to encourage firms to relocate there and give the locals some jobs!

I don't think we should have a scattergun approach to moving jobs all around, but targeting only a couple of cities such as Birmingham, Manchester and Oxford makes some sense to me. You need to have centres where people feel confident they can move and not be dependent on the one big employer that was artificially moved to that area, if you want to convince people to move out of London.

With that said, the allocation of housing within London is bonkers. There essentially should not be zone 1 social housing, or it should have special conditions such as being only employment-linked housing for NHS doctors or something.

I hope desperately that enough people my age will stay but the brain drain risk is very real. Not just "brain" drain but "effort" brain... Not sure how to word this, but we are losing the kind of people who want to work hard and invest in their country and contribute to helping others - it's a cultural loss as well as an intellectual loss, it's not only millionaires and high earning professionals but normal hard-working kids who see a better life doing, say, nursing in Australia than here.

@Hoppingabout it's such an easy sell. We'll tax someone else and give you more.

And now shrinking private sector, lack of growth leading to decreased public spending

It was entirely foreseeable. Except by anyone to do with Labour.

The north east used to be in the sights of the "levelling up" agenda. It is now instead experiencing a huge increase in asylum seeker/ low skilled immigration. With no jobs for them. In a very impoverished region. But one far from London so doesn't matter much to Westminster.

It's probably more accurate to say that it does matter quite a bit to the London/Westminster bubble - it makes it even less likely that they'd dream of moving there!

I have seen that the “tax the rich” brigade have gone quiet. Taxing people into oblivion means they leave and change behaviour. Who knew? Starting to dawn on people that less tax = redundancies in the state and welfare/spending cuts. Oh dear. Only so much of other people’s money you can vote for before they decide enough is enough.

Early noises being made that RR could be getting replaced sooner rather than later.

It's beyond comprehension how this government has messed up the Astra Zeneca deal which was brokered under the previous government to build a new plant in Liverpool for vaccine development.

The deal was agreed. Labour changed the funding agreed. AZ are now not investing in the plant and I believe are moving it to Ireland. Ireland want their development and investment in their location, we apparently don't.

And RR and her cronies talk about growth. It would be laughable if it wasn't so tragic.

Housing is much more than a London issue or an availability of local jobs issue.

In many parts of the country especially those popular with tourists the lack of jobs isn’t the biggest barrier. Its second homes, holiday lets etc creating a shortage of housing and driving prices up. Local families just needing a home simply can’t compete with ‘investors’.

The Housing Bill won’t go far enough but I look forward to the MN thread of irate landlords and second home owners complaining about a rise in taxes.

Rising taxes won’t solve the housing crisis but neither will doing nothing.

And not addressing the housing crisis will do nothing to lift people out of poverty or retain the middle class graduates who understandably want at least as good a standard of living as their parents. (Though whether they enjoy the ME may depend on how they feel about human rights, modern slavery and homophobia embedded in legislation).

The lack of social mobility is being felt across the piece. Being employed is no longer any guarantee of not being in poverty.

I’m genuinely interested in how this improves because ‘creating jobs’ and ‘building houses’ alone isn't going to do it.

Of course it's very expensive to do this. The scholarships still leave a lot to be paid. More expensive than UK uni. Just worth bearing that in mind.

I know someone who is moving to Italy temporarily to sell their company. Apparently your only taxed a max amount per year so in a multi millions deal this is a considerable saving.

They are planning to come back to UK after a time period has elapsed which makes it legal.

@Decisionsdecisions1 - having a small proportion of holiday homes that are then sufficiently taxed in the country is not necessarily a bad thing, if it is properly planend and supports a local tourist industry. In fact, encouraging people to holiday in their own country is good for the economy. The problem in our country is lack of foresight and planning. So for example, if you had a good system you would have a local authority that responds very promptly and permission would have to be given for holiday lets.
Right now we have legislation going through which disincentives small landlords further and is most likely to cause a further spike in renting costs, due to supply issues. You cannot just tax without appropriate planning.

Also local planners have made things worse. Eg I have a client in the Lake District who bought an old farm with barns etc to develop as housing. The local council refused planning permission for permanent dwellings and instead imposed a condition on the PP that they could ONLY be temporary holiday lets. Makes no sense at all when local people can't get homes for the council to make that kind of ruling that potential new homes for locals can only be bought by investors for renting out, or for richer people to have a "second home" for their own holidays. It took a few appeals and cost tens of thousands to get it overturned so that they could be sold for proper permanent housing!

The football kid is from a single parent household, with several other children so I’d be surprised if they are having to/able to contribute much. Maybe it depends how much they want them at their school! He’s a clever boy as well as being sporty.

I know several excellent sports players who have gone down this route. All of them are paying more a year despite great scholarships. It's really not a cheap option. And of course not all US schools are any good.

Oh yes, this as well! Just finished reading AZ article and was going to post it here! (sorry can't share token)

The inside story of Britain’s failure to clinch £450mn AstraZeneca deal

This is beyond any comprehension really! and not only this, NHS won't purchase advanced medication for cancer and many other advanced drugs because of costs. I wonder where all these bns of taxes going to

The NHS drug spend is not directed into buying the best new drugs but into the cheapest possible off-patent broad spectrum generics, especially antibiotics.

Anecdata.... this last fortnight the whole family have had RSV. DS, who was really poorly, was prescribed two simultaneous antibiotic courses, and neither really made a dent. I was Rx'd one course of one of the same drugs, but took some doxycycline that was bought OTC which did more in 48 hours than five days x two of DS's. All the meds were suggested for upper respiratory infections.

I know. Many so called developing world countries have way much better provisioning of medication than we have it here. We use antibiotics invented in WWI, civilised countries don't use them anymore.

The decision not to subsidise AZ on Merseyside to develop the next generation of pharmaceuticals here is another Treasury own goal. I sometimes wonder whether there's anyone working in the Treasury who grasps the basic concept of investing for future success.

I know someone who works for AZ. She said the word is that this investment will now be going to the USA.
Well done Labour, slow hand clap

@TheNuthatch , I have read that the investment is going to RoI, but yes, very slow hand clap. The tragedy is that the UK is/was so highly rated for the qulity of its clinical trials. A superb legacy being pissed away by bureaucrats who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

It really is tragic. And RR was still lauding Astra Zeneca only last week as an example of growth within the Uk.

I could weep at the ineptitude of this government.

Tragedy is the right word if the UK's largest company doesn't want to invest here.

Big Pharma had plans to leave to the UK long before Labour. Boris Johnson started that ball rolling because all the money he promised never materialised and the vaccine hubs research centres closed.

Boris blew hot air but never delivered. The car industry was destroyed by leaving the EU, our space ventures have stalled because the investment has vanished and now Musk rules the show and we bet a lot on Branson and he's out of the race.

Cambridgeshire still has a lot going for it, Pharmacy and IT are booming still but the problem is what we do North of Northamptonshire....it's a mess and there's no easy solution.

Antibiotics are used extensively everywhere