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

If I were a millionaire, I wouldn't stay here either!

For what it’s worth, pre Corbyn election it was mostly those nearing retirement who were leaving (in terms of my clients). Now it’s almost exclusively those below 50, and mostly in their 30s and 40s. I don’t see many clients in their 20s as they’ve rarely amassed enough wealth to instruct me, but the children of the millionaires who I advise are already spending most of their time out of the UK and are non resident for non tax reasons, because they have the family wealth to allow them to be wherever they like.

LOL, what polls, sunshine ?

Thanks, that's interesting. Where are a majority heading to? I guess Dubai/SE Asia are high on the lists?

So technically you have to have left the UK for 20years before death if you’ve lived here all your life.

Which surely is much more of a bigger deal for UK residents in terms of leaving.
As an aside who exactly in the UK tax departments would know if you’ve died anyway.
I imagine this policy will be very hard to manage

Here you go, Sunshine
https://www.politico.eu/article/nigel-farage-reform-uk-point-behind-labour-poll/

Sunshine 🤣. That would be nice...we don't get that up here in the red wall!!

It's not going to be Labour obvs.

You've just said it won't be Conservative.

Lib Dems no chance.

So it will be Reform. Inevitable. Based on today's relaxation of immigration rules Labour have made that even more likely.

Have a look at all recent polls (any I suggest to you you will probably claim are biased) and see which one you fancy. Reform are a new party too. And it's entirely the fault of Labour and Conservative Party.

Italy and Switzerland. In Italy non doms pay a flat fee of £200,000/year no matter their wealth. Can't think of a nicer place really!!

What does it matter? It’s the non-doms. They weren’t paying any tax to begin with.

You could make that amount of money because of the huge number of people supporting the economy who are really poorly paid.

Do you understand that Non Dom's still pay income tax don't you?

They don't have some magical exemption.

And generally, if they hold non dom status, they earn A LOT of income in the uk.

How does that number compare with the number of people that became millionaires that year due to inflation and house price rises?

Be interesting to see it as a % though. Twice as many may have left as in 2023, but how many more are there overall? While the col is hitting a lot of people hard, people at the other end are getting wealthier.

I recently visited a friend in Dubai - she lives in one of those glitzy apartment buildings with everything on site. Swimming pools, tennis courts, restaurants, etc etc. She said she sometimes goes a month without leaving the complex as she can WFH.

It looks nice from outside but I cannot imagine living there. For all it's faults, I would rather pay a bit more tax and live in a real city, leave my house and interact with real people.

You have no idea how they made that money.

Why assume it’s as a result of others being poorly paid?

Name changed as don’t want to be recognized.

My husband just had his bonus announced and the yearly stipend reviewed. This year (2025) on paper he earns £1.2m. We just bought a large home, paid £3m in cash, so are both asset and cash rich. All the people we know (through my children at private school) are in the same situation, I’d say we are almost the poorest there. My husband’s take-home stipend is half of the above due to taxes. We stay because of the children, but some of the families at school have already relocated, so I think saying ‘good riddance’ is very shortsighted. I wonder how many people it takes to pay close to £600k in taxes.

Fewer idiots in 4x4's on the roads

Bring it on!!

Well I suppose thanks to Rachel Reeves there will be less farmers and Ed Milliband less farm land so you may be right.

I think a lot of rich people are leaving - I read somewhere that each of those 10,800 was paying around 400k each per year in taxes.
However, we also have a LOT of rich Chinese people arriving and Hong Kong and now maybe also a lot of rich from the US. So time will tell what the ultimate bank balance to team GB will be. We desperately need the tax.
There are people paying 60 per cent plus tax in marginal rates and I read somewhere that for certain groups with kids in private schools it’s now 70 per cent. The private school VAT is also a stealth wealth tax. None of this is sustainable long term because a lot of successful people are mobile. People only stay if quality of life is worth it. If things deteriorate further, the whole house crumbles. It’s really about whether quality of life and take home pay in other countries is better or not.

I don't think that is really relevant? We need actual wealth creation rather than inflation. If the wealth creators are leaving & inflation goes up it doesn't make it any better!

This is why stats can be so misleading....

you can be a millionaire who stays in the uk /leaves the uk and impact is minimal. If your money is in property and ISAs or whatever and you arent earning and you are paying minimal tax.

OR the majority might be like the 2 people i know who "left" (they still have uk homes and families but due to their companies relocating their HQs they are now residents in different countries) Both of them are mega high earners and maxed out their pensions in mids 30/by 40s (ie hit lifetime contribution limit!?) 🤯 and are PAYE employees making over 500k gross pa... our country needs this revenue... that amount of tax loss over even just one decade is a huge tax loss for the government...

Not all millionaires are created equal

I could have typed your post word for word!

I can't remember who it was who said something along the lines of

"It's fine to live in a low taxation society, but you just have to accept that when you leave your house it's not very nice"

I love living in London, we have a great life, pay shedloads of tax and that's how it should be, we still have plenty left for our needs.

Just to re-emphasise: I am formally a millionaire and could leave the UK quite easily if I sold up. My last tax bill was, er, a rebate of £400. I’m a pensioner, and my income is relatively modest (less than £20K). The UK government really wouldn’t miss my tax contribution.
As someone else said earlier, most of the millionaires leaving the country are probably retired folk like me.

3 of my actuary clients have relocated to Australia or New Zealand.

Most of my IT consultant clients have gone to Canada or Dubai.

OK, byeeee! Enjoy Dubai.