UK Millionaire exodus did not occur, study reveals
taxjustice.net
taxjustice.net
So whatever exodus occurs will be on the margin, where a few people throw up their hands and go "oh I've had enough".
At the same time, you have plenty of things tying people down: friends and family, business opportunities, kids in school.
Of course, there are lots of other reasons why out-of-staters might choose to move to MA.
NY sources taxes to the employer's office location in NY if a worker works remotely under certain circumstances, for example [1]. If geography can be used to shift or avoid tax exposure to income, I see no problem with using the law to prevent that, depending on the target outcome. My global income is subject to US federal taxes, regardless of my residency (although foreign exclusions apply under a reasonable income threshold, ~$120k/year, under the assumption I am paying taxes where I reside outside the US) [2].
[1] https://www.anchin.com/articles/remote-workers-and-the-conve...
[2] https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore...
I'm not sure how you reasonably allocate state/local taxes other than by physical presence. Any reasonably large company has an economic nexus in many states and even countries.
I wouldn’t call moving to another place to pay less in taxes a virtue.
Are you talking about the very generous pensions for government officials?
If you have say 4 million USD and invest in stocks expecting say 7% per year you will pay 103k USD in cap gain tax and then 44k in wealth tax for a grand total of almost 150k/year.
That's enough to fund Switzerland lifestyle let alone life in multiple other countries that levy 0 or close to 0 cap gain tax for long term gains. It's difference between comfortable retirement and having to work.
Maybe it doesn't make much difference if you're very wealthy but for those who just managed to get financial independence it's huge.
That’s only on realised gains, surely?
And if that’s the case, it’s likely cheaper than having worked for that income.
>>And if that’s the case, it’s likely cheaper than having worked for that income.
How is that relevant? You are investing money already heavily taxed as income before. Anyway, I am just pointing out it makes a significant difference for someone who struck a bit of gold and gained financial independence but is not yet rich.
Because income is income.
That's pretty neat if you ask me
I've come to realize the answer is nearly always NO. They want (and believe they need) more.
But I don't really understand why they spend it on useless baubles. If you spend £50m on a fancy London house, a yacht and a some super cars, most people (British people anyway) will think you are a wanker. But if you spent some of that money on schools and hospitals in a poor country, you would probably be treated like a minor god in that country.
Which according to economists is the wrong way around: it's better to have taxes on land (because it doesn't discourage land existing - land is fixed) than to have taxes on work income (which on the margin, discourages working)
Anyone, residential or commercial, with a mortgage would simultaneously find a massive amount of their net value erased while stuck with huge monthly payments on top of massively increased tax bills, unable to sell assuming the higher taxes drive down property prices.
In a state with fully implemented LVT, you would expect most people in dense cities to be living in multilevel housing that makes more efficient use of land. Eg if your condo building has 5 floors, you're splitting your land tax 5 ways.
Sprawling single level houses would be a relative luxury.
It's not difficult conceptually to come up with schemes to tax wealth which doesn't unduly harm non-wealthy individuals (however you would define that level for these purposes). It's just that for one reason or another these schemes are not implemented, and one of those reasons is (plausibly) the political influence of wealthy individuals
Nimbyism would become even more extreme.
You're gonna fight hard against your neighbor adding a Duplex, triplex, fourplex, etc. because with an LVT your taxes very likely go up as a result.
Imagine the uproar when a developer comes in and converts some of the SFHs next to granny's house into a 4-plex and now granny's social security doesn't cover her taxes and she has to move to the old folks home. Sure she can theoretically take out a mortgage or second mortgage against the theoretical increased land value but now you're forcing granny into debt.
How are you proposing to calculate land value?
Land is worth money because of improvements or detrimental choices. Manhattan and Staten Island have dramatically different valuations because of what’s there.
California needs a sane taxation system that doesn’t allow squatters to pay nothing for property taxes, but harshly punishes new homeowners.
It's worth money because of what's around the land. Otherwise identical houses in different locations would sell for the same price.
Improvements represent applications of labor and capital that produce value.
Is a 1 acre empty lot in Palo Alto worth the same as a 1 acre empty lot in Mobile, Alabama? No improvements on either one so they should go for the same price, right?
That land wasn’t valuable when it was orange groves. The improvements make the place.
He could move and supposedly save money (no income tax in WA, but there are some Capital Gains taxes).
The people who actually act on this stuff are usually not really wealthy, mostly just retirees finding themselves with a windfall of time and cash, who usually don’t math well.
The moving will absolutely happen, and it isn't all or nothing. If you're very wealthy the CA tax board already tracks the number of days you spend in CA so the choice will be to spend fewer.
If you look at Detroit which was a manufacturing hub for a long time, it would be difficult to imagine a world in which they were irrelevant. All these people built lives there and there was all this specialization and industry there. And it worked well until it didn't.
Once a place loses its dynamism and people have had enough, it'll be very hard to get them back
Note also that while the factories moved to China, the wealthy stayed right here in the US, & didn't go where their money was spent.
Different scale, different consequences.
It shouldn't surprise anyone that wealthier folk aren't moving to different countries over a tax that is smaller to them, in relative terms, than carbon taxes are to the poor. What is money for, after all, if not to enable you to live the life you want to live? If you need to move to Dubai to avoid taxes, how can you consider yourself wealthy?
The removal of this non-domiciled status is clearly far more significant than a normal tax increase. The UK was a uniquely attractive destination for the super-rich, because they could enjoy all the amenities of living in London with no real concerns about the tax implications. It is plausible that many of those people will decide to pay UK tax rather than move abroad, but we are talking about an exceptionally highly-mobile group who have already made the decision to move country, many primarily or solely for tax reasons.
indeed thats why to have accountants and lawyers, the issue here is that non-dom meant that you could avoid paying tax on stuff you earnt outside of the UK. for example if you have a lot of income being generated in the USA, then being a non-dom meant that you could avoid paying tax here in the UK at the same time.
For US citizens its a bit harder, as you're liable for tax on all income, regardless of source. I'm not sure how they get round that, debt financing or something similar I imagine
I, as a rich techbro, but not an Uber rich techbro, have to pay ~46% of my income in tax. (even though the majority comes from the US in USD) Don't get me wrong, I earn a fucking kings ransom, and I don't mind paying that amount of tax.
but. If I was earning maybe 4x that amount, I could probably avoid a whole bunch of tax. It doesn't seem correct that the richer you get, the more optional tax is.
In the US many people falsely believe illegal immigrants do exactly that, and that lie has contributed to a lot of outrage, so obviously people perceive the system you're proposing as unjust.
That's a part of why there was a lot of hubub about ICE searching the IRS's databases for potential targets. There are a lot of people who are probably working in the US paying income taxes without authorization to stay or work in the US. The IRS generally doesn't care about your immigration status, it just cares about collecting taxes.
An illegal / undocumented worker working a standard W-2 paycheck job is going to have taxes withheld and sent in by the employer, even if they never file their own tax return.
Yeah so tax their presence: land, resources usage, consumption. If you insist on taxing their whole world wide revenue don't be surprised when someone living across multiple countries choose one that isn't yours and then you get 0 taxes.
I live across 4-5 countries spending a few months here and there. Fair system would tax me for my presence/consumption/resource usage accordingly. That tax might be progressive (bigger house taxed at higher rate, luxury consumption taxes at higher rate etc.) but shouldn't belong to one country if you care about fairness.
The first is paying your fair share of taxes for enabling the system of rule of law, financial protection, courts, stability provided by national defense, etc. that help you earn that money in the first place. This argues for paying taxes in the country where the money is earned.
The second is the principle of progressive taxation that funds the entire social system where you live -- roads, schools, parks, police, health care, retirement. The richer you are, the higher the rate you can and should give back. Thus it doesn't matter whether you make your money at home or abroad -- it counts toward the taxes you're morally obligated to pay for where you reside and/or are a citizen of.
Because these conflict, the US allows for Americans to let taxes paid abroad count against their US taxes, so they're not double-taxed. Which is one form of a reasonable compromise. There are many other forms you could imagine.
>>Thus it doesn't matter whether you make your money at home or abroad -- it counts toward the taxes you're morally obligated to pay for where you reside and/or are a citizen of.
What about all other countries that were stable and nice enough and allowed me to make money? Why should I be "morally obliged" to pay taxes in a country I didn't choose, that was shitty to me and didn't help me much if at all? I used very little resources there (now I finally moved). It would feel even more unfair if they followed me abroad and required even more taxes.
>>There are many other forms you could imagine.
Yeah, like paying proportionally (or progressively) for resources you use in a country or for business you do in that country. It seems really unfair that my country gets all my taxes for providing very little to me while all other countries that gave me business opportunities got close to nothing (some VAT in EU countries but that's it).
Do you not get police and fire protection? Health care? Rule of law? Urban and rural infrastructure? National defense? Some level of education? Courts that enforce property protection? And so forth?
We often don't see all the benefits our government provides because we take it for granted. But if you ever go visit somewhere where you need to hire bodyguards so that you're not kidnapped while driving, security forces around your compound to prevent it from being looted, and pay constant protection money to the local crime boss so he specifically doesn't kill you and take your stuff... you might realize your taxes pay for a whole lot more than you think.
Obviously every country can do more. But in a democracy that's why we try to vote in candidates who will improve things. And you can always try to move to a better country, if they'll let you. But that's up to them.
(If you live in a dictatorship, then obviously you have more reason to be able to complain since you don't have any legal ability to work for change from within the system.)
I got some of that although I got robbed 3 times in my life and police has done nothing. The point is I got those services at the level of any other citizen. What I really benefited from are other countries than mine which I paid 0 taxes to. It would be fair if I paid proportionally to those at the price they see fit for me doing business there. As it is my (shitty) country got all the taxes how does it make sense?
>>We often don't see all the benefits our government provides because we take it for granted.
My point is that the country gets all my taxes and I pay disproportionally even though it's real other countries (the one I sell to) that made it possible for me to do well. When I spend a few months per year in Spain I don't pay taxes there eithre. I think it's unfair. It would be better if I paid proportionally to my resources usage/time there.
There's your answer. I was in exactly the same position (felt what the country had to offer me was piss-poor, so I left).
Whilst I lived in that country however, _I paid taxes_. A country has costs, just like a household. There's the obvious things like police and other civil servants, but there are also countless invisible costs that go to holding a country together. To say "well I didn't choose to be here anyway" is childish.
It's so easy to say "moral" but I struggle to see the moral principle at play. I understand paying proportionally to resources/wealth in that country. I understand paying progressively for those or income in that country but why pay in proportion to what you have already build in another place?
It is proportional to the resources you use in every case where that is possible. It is nonsensical to say "Well, you used only 2% of police time this year, so that's how much police-tax you'll be paying", not least because it is impossible to put a "usage" on the benefit of having police in the first place. Where it is possible, like how much land you own, you are taxed proportionately.
This is analogous to asking why should software be priced on value delivered, vs priced on costs incurred in producing. Value pricing is much more common.
The value you derive from living in the country of your residence is higher that your poorer neighbors; hence you are charged more.
E.g. Lakshmi Mittal, one of the richest persons in the UK, was rumored to consider moving to the UAE because of the non-dom rule changes.[1] To me it's ridiculous that a person this rich feels such weak control over where they should live. And it's not like moving from the UK to the UAE is like moving from Switzerland to Austria. It's a humongous upset by most measures.
[1] https://www.cityam.com/steel-billionaire-lakshmi-mittal-to-d...
It's the necessities that people will continue to buy (or at least replace with close substitutes), regardless of what happens to the price.
Obviously, in this case it worked out much differently, but no, in general you can't say the wealthy people don't respond to price changes due to their wealth.
You’re living there like everyone else yet using this niche status to avoid paying tax.
"If you are a non-dom ... and you choose not to pay tax in the UK on your overseas earnings, you must pay:
£30,000 if you've been here for at least seven of the previous nine tax years
£60,000 for at least 12 of the previous 14 tax years"
It's a great big tax dodge and the rest of the UK population was pretty sick of it.
In any case the super-rich are only taxed on income they take out of their businesses. That also limits the benefits of both attracting them, and of exempting them.
I do not see any evidence that there was a net benefit from this exemption.
This is a problem. The UK is experiencing what the US is experiencing so I hope you don't mind.
I'm all invested in the US. My citizenship, my family ties, my finances, and my language. Immigrating to a five-eyes nation would be far easier for me (racism aside).
There's no going back for me and my family, unless I want to immigrate out and start from the very bottom with absolutely nothing.
Because I'm a naturalized US citizen and I'm not white, I also harbor no illusions: There's every reason to believe that if this administration and its extremists continue down its trajectory, I and my family will eventually be subject to the worst.
I'm also not wealthy: So it's in my best interest to be a moderating voice, fight for the values that define my home, be seen giving back/paying it forward, and push for the best outcome for my home.
I'm not sure how to quantify the value add of this, and the wealthy transnationals who distinctly take without being a net positive--because they can so easily relocate--are a large part of the problem.
> The UK is experiencing what the US is experiencing so I hope you don't mind.
Depends in what way? Economically, in some ways. Socially and politically not.
> I'm all invested in the US. My citizenship, my family ties, my finances, and my language
I assume you are saying that to agree with me, in that the super-rich are never invested in one country the same way.
However, I meant invested literally, not metaphorically. Where you invest your money.
> I'm not sure how to quantify the value add of this, and the wealthy transnationals who distinctly take without being a net positive--because they can so easily relocate
Wealthy individuals can relocate. Businesses can relocate some things, but their actual operations are tied to physical assets and to where their employees live.
> I assume you are saying that to agree with me, in that the super-rich are never invested in one country the same way. Yes. In the US and 100 years ago, FDR was called a traitor to his kind. I believe this disconnect remains true today.
> I assume you are saying that to agree with me, in that the super-rich are never invested in one country the same way. Mostly to have a conversation and grumble. I used to work for a UK firm many years ago and so I still have a fondness and soft-spot for (presumably) your country.
> However, I meant invested literally, not metaphorically. Where you invest your money.
Okay, that's certainly easier to measure then. If I recall in the greater London area, the most obvious problem stems from the wealthy parking their wealth in real estate, driving up the cost and lowering the supply for residents? Likewise with other services and products that have started to target only these wealth, making said services out of reach of everyone else.
Not to mention it concentrates the wealth and economy into one or two saturated areas.
Is that a correct summary of the issue at hand?
In so far as its people being dissatisfied with the current state of things, politics dominated big parties that do not want to change things, and the influence of big business lobbies.
I think the problem with drawing a parallel with Brexit is that the EU also has these problems.
> Mostly to have a conversation and grumble.
I can sympathise with that. There is much to grumble about :(
> I used to work for a UK firm many years ago and so I still have a fondness and soft-spot for (presumably) your country.
Nice to know. i am British and Sri Lankan in terms of citizenship, mostly British culturally. I do not say "origin" because that is a bit more complicated.
> Okay, that's certainly easier to measure then. If I recall in the greater London area, the most obvious problem stems from the wealthy parking their wealth in real estate, driving up the cost and lowering the supply for residents?
Yes, definitely, and pretty much nationally.
> Not to mention it concentrates the wealth and economy into one or two saturated areas.
I would say a small group of people rather than areas.
Boo hoo, let them move to some remote tax haven then, and live there next to their money and incorporation documents.
https://www.westminster.gov.uk/council-tax/council-tax-bands...
So where did you get £300K/year from? Or are you saying that is what it should be?
All this talk of "oh but all the rich people will leave and investment will dry up" is really cover for "but my friends don't want to pay tax". We lose nothing (good) by them leaving, if indeed they would anyway.
Yes, it's called the Laffer Curve. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve
Yes a tax environment can be oppressive and make hiring unattractive, but that's not what is relevant to those "cut taxes and I'll hire more people" debates. It's pure nonsense. A drop from 42% to 40% top marginal tax rate is not going to kick off a hiring boom.
How many of those people actually follow through and do X is a very different question.
But countries much closer to fascism (eg turkey, USA) are not seeing a mass exodus.
I think family is the main reason. If it weren’t for my family, I would have left England a long time ago.
I notice you don't identify any particular investigative shortcomings or fallacies in the report; you just think it's absurd to even consider the viewpoint of an organization that argues the wealthy are undertaxed.
4.5% of the entire country are millionaires? On paper or in home equity + pension maybe... But those aren't the people we're concerned about leaving.
Based on the small sample that I have had contact with - I'm quite happy to see them go.
>google “Happy Valley” if you’d like to see the 100 years-ago version of this.
In Kenya?
From what I know from a friend in that type of group London is no longer the place to park money. Not sure where it’s switched to.
There is an obsession on the left in the UK with the media being allowed to publish things that, as of the last election, disagree with the government narrative. Part of this is the construction of narratives that will focus on specific pieces of information that are misleading, as evidence that all associated claims are wrong.
This happens so consistently and often on almost every issue.
The UK has economic problems, lobbying groups have significant power in the UK, this lobbyist is part of the group saying that taxes aren't high enough and that if we just tax more then we will become a wealthy nation, they have been saying this since they were founded, tax revenue has gone up a lot and they are still saying it (because, as ever, it just hasn't been tried the right way).
To cut through the nonsense: we are taxing more and it doesn't appear to be working, tax revenue has gone up significantly over the past five years and we got poorer, the political requirement for more tax revenue is significantly outpacing the ability of the few paying tax to earn those amounts (there is a £50bn "black hole"...not deficit, just the shortfall that has opened up in the past year or so caused by the weak economy...senior Labour MPs/ministers are still pushing for welfare spending to increase significantly), and there is no limitless source of money that can be endlessly extracted from to generate revenue...we know this because the UK has devolved governments with higher income tax rates, these rates raise less revenue not more.
Btw, I will also add a general point that isn't acknowledged as a unfortunate result of recent events: the massive shortfall is based on numbers that are wildly optimistic. OBR growth forecasts were much higher than the market after Labour's election, they made no sense. OBR often produces numbers that are very helpful for the incumbent government, they did this for the Tories. Unsurprisingly, the OBR is now slashing forecasts and it is all going wrong...but this was all predictable from the start, it isn't hard, it is very obvious, it just requires being able to separate reality from motivated thinking (i.e. impossible for most people, let alone politicians who are simian in their capacity to see reality). The OP talks about the media...almost no-one covered these crooked numbers, no-one is covering it now, no-one will cover it because it disagrees with the political narrative of the "right-wing" media.
None of this is hard to objectively gauge, it is very easy to gauge because you just talk to people and look at the incentives they face. Labour and their associated lobbyists do not live on the same planet as normal people, they should not be taken as evidence of any kind of reality (lobbyists generally...you would think this would be obvious but politics is so embedded in life in the UK that they are the main source of reality).
The way to get this to happen is to stamp on age discrimination, provide more retraining, improve pension incentives, and tightening sick benefits sharply.
However, I don't think the point is an economic one anyway: age discrimination is terrible, retraining is great, etc.
Generally, I don't think the issue is as simple as sickness benefits. Fifteen years ago, that would have worked. The problem is a very systemic one of allocating massive amount of economic resources to unproductive activity. For example, the massive growth in public sector employment has created this economy of skills that have no function in any capitalist society. It is far more systemic, aging will make this worse but we are nowhere near that point and there are so many easy ways to improve growth. The ultimate issue is that the UK is a low-skill economy, and there are massive incentives for this to never change.
Apart from "That isn't the case" (great point there) I don't understand how any part of this paragraph refutes what I wrote.
But hey, belief beats stats every time I guess.
They weren’t huge pay rises they were in line with inflation
Much of the issue with government finances relates to Hunt introducing NI cuts that weren’t affordable, the Tories giving billions to the mates during Covid, reduced GBP from Brexit and a huge hangover from the financial crisis where the public as still paying for the bankers failures
The Henley data was poor, but this criticism was too. I don't think we have the data and I fear the Henley data actually underestimates the reality.
FWIW, anecdotally my peers with the means are all looking at leaving and some have gone. I've closed down my business, my wife is looking at keeping hers running remotely because of the staff in it.
And I'm typing this from a Dubai hotel room while I spend a couple of months seeing if I can set something new up that I can do from here. I don't relish saying that, but the UK is not in a good place and there's no light at the end of the tunnel.
It boggles my mind that any westerner would choose to live and work in Dubai. Their laws and rules are very different from ours.
I do see that they have made some steps toward reform of their debtors prisons. I'm very glad to see that, but I still do not consider Dubai to be a safe place to even visit, let alone live there.
As long as you're not borrowing money from local entities, you're almost certainly not going to run into any trouble like that in Dubai. In practice Dubai is more libertarian than the UK; the government generally doesn't bother you or care what you're doing, as long as you don't get on the bad side of someone well-connected.
> as long as you don't get on the bad side of someone well-connected.
Thats a huge fucking caveat. given that the law is very much stacked in the favour of citizens, then if you do get into trouble, you're in deep shit fast.
You really aren't selling it.
Even for women?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_the_United_Arab_Emira...
Dubai is a bit of a trigger for some people. Others I know are going/gone to Portugal, Malta, Cyprus, the US, Aus, Can, NZ, Singapore, France. Your mileage may vary - people leaving can generally give you similar lists of why, but where they go seems varied.
I used to live in Saudi for a time (25+ years ago), and actually really liked much about it then and it had changed markedly when I've been back more recently. I've visited Iraq, I've been detained in Oman under suspicion of espionage and still see virtues in the place. Dubai is positively liberal by comparison and becoming more liberal, while the UK is becoming more authoritarian and despite the official crime statistics, I'm not sure it's as safe as it once was.
On the bright side, the weather in Dubai is much better than the UK's.
Looks unhealthy unless one has air conditioning a lot of the year.
this goes over the data. But in short its super patchy, based on a very small dataset, and a whole lot of vibes.
> UK is not in a good place
That may be, but dubai is basically farage's wet dream.
And Dubai is?
But my intuition is, that on balance I can give my kids a substantially better life in Dubai. Safer, more sports, more languages, better school facilities. With parents less stressed but more motivated to work.
Are you ok with living in a country where the state has turned a blind eye to widespread grooming gangs?
Nowhere is perfect, to say the least. And my presence or absence has little affect on that. Labourers in the UAE are paid less than they would be in the UK, but more than they would be in their country of origin. And let's face it, the UK isn't giving them jobs. Is it better to give them low paid work as the UAE does, or better not to give them any work at all as the UK does? I don't think these ethical issues are simple, neither do I think there's one right answer.
Don't believe everything Elon Musk says.
I think the authorities were slow to go after some of these groups, perhaps in case they were perceived as being racist. But I'm not sure 'turning a blind eye' is accurate. People have gone to prison.
The tax was targeted at Jeff Bezos, but he decamped to Florida just before it went into effect.
(Washington tax here is cap gains at 7% which doesn't kick in until capital gains > 250k)
Adding in the 40% federal estate tax, and it's 75%.
Dan Neidle[1] and the FT[2] have already done much better debunking of it, although that doesn't mean there isn't truth to it, just that Henley and Partners's report doesn't prove anything.
Chris Giles at the FT did a good summary[3]
[1] https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/07/27/henley-partners-milliona... [2] https://www.ft.com/content/28ebf57d-af22-48a0-91b9-880e3f1fb... https://archive.is/w6New [3] https://www.ft.com/content/0a24be5e-395e-43db-a91f-4b4f02d99... https://archive.is/Le05V
So the first report said people with liquid money chose to move it out of the UK. This report says actually anyone with a largish paid off house in a good area should be counted, and as they didn't sell their house and move, there's no problem.
I appreciate that they point out the biases of the first article, but I still find the 'liquid millionaire' a more interesting stat. The Times also reported that the UK collected less tax revenue after trying to tax the ultra rich more [0][1].
So at the moment I'd say both people are stating their side too strongly and the truth is maybe somewhere in the middle but I'm still leaning towards 'rich people are leaving the UK if they can' based on what I've read.
[0] https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/capital-gains-t... [1] https://archive.ph/qXcUc
Not to excuse Labour's part in this, but this is a side effect of most news outlets being consolidated and owned by relatively few rich people.
In addition you can put any spin on it you like, to suit your agenda.
Turns out, of course, that some of the rich folks that did move to Switzerland, were funding PR and social media campaigns on this topic.
It was so omnipresent, that even high school kids had "wealth tax" as one of their most important topics.
EDIT: Personally, I think their strategy kind of backfired. There was just too much talk about wealth tax, which doesn't seriously affect too many here. They did try to angle it as "If all the billionaires leave, who's gonna create jobs for the rest?" - but it still didn't resonate too much with the average citizen.
edit: it does appear that 150,000 is correct, but it is an additional 0.1% tax on wealth above 150,000 euros.
Still basically nothing for the overwhelming majority of people. An additional $1,000 a year for every $1,000,000 you are worth.
Some municipalities also have a separate property tax which iirc is usually an order of magnitude lower than the wealth tax.
If you've owned a house for a decade you typically have like 15 or 20 years left on your mortgage and are in debt. The tax worth of the house is some fraction of the sale price, so for a house that one might sell today for €500k the tax value could be like €50k. At the same time, typical debt after only ten years is probably almost half the house price (assuming you had some savings before buying the house). And with debt, that's what your earnings go to... I as an above-median earning Norwegian with house (and thus very negative worth) will probably have decades before getting anywhere near the threshold. And even then you only pay for what's over the threshold, so if you're At the threshold you pay nothing.
I can't wait for Ed Sheeran to follow him - clearly we need to more to make those pips squeak.
It’s sold as a “tax on the rich,” but in reality it’s a 2.1% annual tax on businesses. The companies have to cover these costs, and the result is that everyone — rich or poor — ends up paying for it. The only winner here is the state, which wastes the money on useless projects and subsidies.
It gets even dumber: businesses that invest in emergency preparedness — like storing gravel or materials for war or disaster scenarios — actually get punished by the wealth tax. Imagine paying 2.1% tax every year on a gravel pile. No, this is not a joke: link: https://www.dn.no/innlegg/beredskap/sikkerhetspolitikk/formu...
The consequences are clear: more than half of the 400 wealthiest people in Norway have already left the country. There’s no risk capital left for startups, and outside the oil and gas sector, businesses are struggling. Plenty of smart young engineers fresh out of university can’t find work, and hiring of junior software developers has basically stopped.
When we talk about taxes, we should be talking about incentives and motivation. If you tax people so hard that they lose the drive to work and create, then you’ve got a real problem.
If I had the chance, I’d move to Sweden or Switzerland immediately. But I can’t, because I’ve got a family to take care of here.
Obviously the impact depends on the level of taxation, but it is instructive to compare it with inflation. Typical wealth taxes are in the region of 1% per year; a 1% (additional) annual rate of inflation would have the same impact on wealth as the tax and not be considered disastrous for any business except those with very marginal profitability.
Or to put it another way: a 50% rise in the "normal" level of inflation (assuming 2% target that most countries target). Moreover this is a bad comparison because most rich people don't keep their wealth in cash, they invest it which mostly shields it from inflation. You end up overstating the current costs that capital owners are paying.
The reason I used the comparison between wealth tax and inflation is to illustrate that modest wealth taxes in the order of 1% are not more onerous than many other influences on wealth.
False.
All assets can be valued in currency, but most are not denominated in currency (and even more are not denominated in whichever specific currency it is that you are trying to hedge against inflation in.) Debt instruments are usually denominated in some currency, but stocks are a claim on a particular share of the assets of a corporation at dissolution, not denominated in a particular currency.
A stock of a physical commodity is denominated in the physical commodity, not a currency.
Inflation affects the value of all assets whose value is frequently traded using currency (which is most of stock markets, property, etc). To argue otherwise would be to deny the seriously negative impact high inflation can have on all aspects of the economy.
There are assets whose value is mostly not financial, e.g. physical, social, intellectual, or otherwise. These retain their value despite inflation.
Nevertheless, I aimed to show that a modest 1% tax is not onerous compared to other impacts on accumulated wealth.
Affects them all, sure, but it doesn't affect them all in the same way, even on a broad qualitative level.
They should use that to reduce other taxes instead. Especially income taxes.
> If you tax people so hard that they lose the drive to work and create
That a bigger problem for income taxes. If the top marginal rate is over 40% people will prefer chilling out instead of working hard for the next promotion.
> more than half of the 400 wealthiest people in Norway have already left the country
Did they take their money too? And their factories and land and patents and other assets? Does it matter that they're not physically present in the country?
> There’s no risk capital left for startups
Was Norway previously known for having a lot of capital for startups? I thought Europe was generally bad for startup funding.
> hiring of junior software developers has basically stopped
You've described the entire world in 2025.
The better question is the impact on future investment. Once a factory is in place, it's a sunk cost and it won't make sense to move it unless the political situation is dire. The same can't be said for investments that haven't been made yet.
> I thought Europe was generally bad for startup funding.
I wonder why that'd be the case...
We can debate counterfactuals all day long. People invest when there are profits to be made and refrain when there aren't. Everything else is bullshit.
> I wonder why that'd be the case...
Definitely not wealth taxes because most European countries don't have them. It might be because they don't have the world's reserve currency. Or the million other reasons commentators and economists have written about elsewhere.
It's not really a counterfactual. My point was that deployed capital is less subject to flight, so using that as a measure for a policy's impact is incomplete and short sighted.
>People invest when there are profits to be made and refrain when there aren't. Everything else is bullshit.
This is also incomplete. People also seek the highest returns. That's why the magnificent 7 tech companies (which happen to be all American) have seen their valuations skyrocket, whereas the appetite for Volkswagen is tepid, despite it turning a profit. That's not to say there's no investment in Europe, but based on startup funding and IPOs, it's pretty clear that the US is the favored place to invest.
>Definitely not wealth taxes because most European countries don't have them.
My point is that europe is generally business-hostile. Wealth taxes is only one of the factors. There's also high taxes and onerous regulations.
This is correct, I called out high income taxes as a problem in my original post. There's no point in working harder when more than half the gain is taken away.
Wealth taxes != income taxes.
> onerous regulations
When I wrote "the million other reasons" - this is one of them.
I think this study is a bit misleading. If the UK truly has 3M millionaires I strongly suspect a large majority of them are regular people with OK jobs that are “millionaires” by virtue of owning a house and having retirement savings. The vast majority of these people are likely making decent but not remarkable incomes and likely can’t afford to relocate to another country. Without breaking this down into income groups, this article seems fairly misleading. But that’s par for the course I guess, since media and politicians a) frequently conflate wealth with income and b) are counting on people thinking a net worth of a million (dollars|pounds) makes a person “rich.”
https://theferret.scot/27-per-cent-pensioners-millionaires-m...
This is actually stated in the report xD
I know as a whole, budget is undershooting massively - small few 10s of £B - but I don't know if it's specifically this.
Meanwhile, anecdotally, I know so many people who left recently I'm not sure where to start. They mostly work in finance, so are well off but not "super rich" (not my friends anyway). Ok the flip side, this is the social stratum that actually pays taxes...
Then those locked into the X-rinse-and-repeat-loop echo the same hysteria, as if they’ve just discovered some kind of wisdom when they have simply been overtrained.
It's still as secure as a tax haven (if not more so) outside of the EU, and all of the actual changes supposed to be done as part of Brexit were effectively reversed by the following administrations.
The threat of their exodus was just blackmail.
You can usually tell message board prevalent politics by seeing which stuff gets demands for rigor and which stuff is accepted as-is.
It's a progressive organization releasing a "study".
Are "people with net worth of 1 million dollars or more" considered very wealthy in the U.K. these days? In the U.S. there are many many homeowners who are millionaires by this definition, and that's not a population that would be likely to have the means to buy their way into another country.
But also your average UK home isn't worth $1 million.The average house is £269k, so a house worth a million dollars is worth 3 average houses.
My take is that, despite the ersatz news headline "...study reveals", this is a propaganda piece tailored to promote a predetermined conclusion by selective reporting of only the evidence that supports that predetermined conclusion, just like the marketing piece from Henley it is criticizing.
https://www.ft.com/content/a578561c-05de-402b-8ba7-91f2d77c5...
"Frances riches man opposes new tax".
Response: "Ok that's one vote against. Now how many for the new tax?"
> The Tax Justice Network’s review – co-published with Patriotic Millionaires UK and Tax Justice UK – of the Henley report finds that the number of millionaires claimed by Henley & Partners to be leaving countries in “exodus” in 2024 represented near-0% of those countries’ millionaire populations. For example, the 9500 millionaires widely reported to be leaving the UK in 2024 represented 0.3% of the UK’s 3.06 million millionaires.
#1: The data is completely arbitrary, incorrectly compared, and adds no new insights.
The tax changes, AFAIK, are specifically aimed at generating more tax revenue from the foreign millionaires who have been using the UK's non-dom tax advantages, by getting rid of that status.
The counter rhetoric was "if even a fraction of those millionaires leave, the UK will actually lose tax revenue instead."
This article does not report on any actual adjusted numbers to the 9500 millionaires reported leaving, it just says "guys we have a lot more millionaires" — vast majority of whom are not foreign / dom-status, and therefore will not be affected anyways. No new tax revenue from them by eliminating non-dom status. It's apples-to-oranges.
Basically, they're not even using the correct denominator (foreign millionaires).
#2: This was written by an organization seeking to end tax havens, which doesn't really acknowledge that, while calling out the bias of the original report by the organization that helps secure golden visas.
#3: "credited for the UK Labour government’s decision to weaken tax reforms" — it sounds like the original government decision wasn't even passed, though I'm not sure about this, it would mean that you can't say "X didn't cause Y as was predicted" when X didn't actually occur in full.
I don't need to read it again, thank you.
They're using the wrong denominator, comparing apples-to-oranges. They aren't actually revealing that an exodus didn't occur, they aren't debating any numbers or adding any new data.
I added context for people who aren't familiar with the UK non-dom status, or the original intention of the legislation.
They're also a very biased organization, same as the organization behind the original report apparently.
From a quick search:
>> Patriotic Millionaires UK is a nonpartisan network of wealthy individuals in the UK who publicly advocate for higher taxes on the rich and progressive economic reform.
>> Tax Justice UK is a non-profit, politically non-aligned campaigning and advocacy organization working to ensure that everyone benefits from a fair and effective tax system. The group focuses on building a movement for progressive tax reform, pushing for policies that tax wealth and excessive corporate profits at higher rates in order to better fund public services and redistribute wealth
I'm sorry but if someone posts a study conducted by NRA on gun violence, most would view it with suspicion. I think we should probably view this study with suspicion as well given the groups that were conducting it.
We should also recognize that, for all but the most mainstream possible questions or topics, most of the study is going to come from interest groups-- they're the ones who are interested enough to do the work to look at the data and publish their results!
If we dismiss reviews like this out-of-hand simply because they are created by an interest group, then we'll miss out on a lot of information and opportunity for reasonable discourse.
(Note that I'm not saying the parent comment is advocating this, but it did raise the point in my mind.)
Source? I'd imagine for public policy think thanks and government agencies make up a significant chunk as well.
A peer reviewed study, with published data and methodology. (it might even be accurate, unless you're a sociologist)
then there is a "study" created by a think tank, PR firm pretending to be a think tank, or a dipshit company pushing something or other.
The latter a good for seeing which rich prick, or group of pricks has the time and money to push a specific agenda. and not much else.
Speaking of - why don’t government services just charge transparent rates for the services they’re providing like any business? Everyone else figures out how to charge for a product or service. A lot of waste is normalized and hidden in the vague sums thrown at agencies, with no competition to drive prices down since it’s a government service. Taxpayers could get better outcomes by pushing for better governance instead of more unjust redistribution continually.
Donald Trump is already president of the US. You are not going to beat him at the "stupid questions about the government" game, so I would just sit back and let him show you how it's done.
Also, the NRA has a long history of suppressing gun violence research in general (through their lobbying efforts of the CDC and NIH, the Dickey Amendment, etc.). This would contribute more to suspicion than anything else.
In this instance there are copious footnotes and citations of data backing up the argument. If they’re falsified, yes, we should disregard the study. But they don’t seem to be.
It was written by one guy in South Africa who didn’t really do any valid research
However I am uncomfortable by the use of the term 'near 0%' twice in the article. What the hell does that mean? One of the footnotes says:
"The total number of millionaires reported on the Henley & Partners website to have migrated every year since 2013 to 2023 consistently represented around 0.2% of millionaires annually. "
So why not say 0.2% per year? 'near 0%' just seems slippery and dishonest.
The only ones that haven’t moved, are those who are considering it, can’t move cause their business is dependant on the UK, or their family/kids need them in the UK.
If your income doesn’t require you to stay in the UK, why would you stay there?
Sometimes an anecdote is just an anecdote I guess.
[0] or at least haven't spent any less time in the UK, and are still resident, as some already spend a lot of time in a number of different countries
Good question, and I guess “to fix the mess they caused” doesn’t usually come up.
Sort of, but it goes back to the overwhelming size of government budgets. In the US for example, even if all of the assets of the wealthiest individuals could be converted 1:1 into cash (it can’t) and the government took 100% of it, congratulations, we’ve fully funded the government for perhaps one year. There’s nowhere to go at that point except to revise the definition of “rich.”
It started off at 1.2% about 2 decades ago (legislated as a 30% rate on a deemed 4% return), but has increased to 2.1% last year (36% rate on deemed 5.88% return), and in the current government budget proposal is set to increase to 2.8% next year (36% rate on deemed 7.78% return).
https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/does-taxing-the-rich-cause-mil...
(I subscribe to his substack)
Oh and three, for all the warnings and blackmailing, as the studies show, they never actually go through with their threats. MACO - Millionaires Always Chicken Out? /s
Wait, no. The exact opposite is happening. My bad, it's easy to get confused.
Let me help unconfuse you, then:
- government swiftly, immediately and directly cancelling a show from a private company because someone said something that's not good for "the party": attack on free speech.
- murder of Charlie Kirk: politically motivated murder by a deranged psycho, which is immediately exploited to AMPLIFY right wing views and cancel left wing ones.
So tell me again, based on what one is currently allowed to say about this very topic: what ideas is the right no longer able to express openly and loudly as a result of this murder?
Don't say "Charlie Kirk": I've heard more of his ideas in recent weeks than I would have if he hadn't been shot.
"Left ones" being, celebrating murder? Assuming you weren't living under a rock for the past decade, do you think celebrating murder is less severe than right-wing views (critical of BLM, critical of feminism, critical of pro-choice) that were routinely cancelled by left-wing institutions (social media, university) over this time frame?
Furthermore, celebrating murder is still free speech. For example, we've had to endure years of jokes about the murders of George Floyd and Trayvon Martin, the flame continuously stoked by Charlie Kirk and his colleagues.
Kirk was ultimately "cancelled" by the same society that he fomented. He was against empathy, used his platform to disparage and attack vulnerable groups, against gun control, and literally said that gun deaths are a worthy price for the 2nd amendment. He was a victim of a violent society he actively encouraged and campaigned for. Pointing this out is not celebrating murder.
This is, of course, a lie. By omitting important context you present it as a political point for what you perceive to be your side.
In fact, strict gun control does not prevent political assassinations. It didn't prevent it in Russia, in Japan, nowhere. So all arguments that "he wouldn't get assassinated if we didn't have 2nd amendment" are simply not valid and proven wrong.
Since I think you didn't really read into the full text of a quote in question, I'll provide you a link [0].
[0]: https://cleverjourneys.com/2025/09/15/full-text-of-charlie-k...
"You will never live in a society when you have an armed citizenry and you won’t have a single gun death. That is nonsense. It’s drivel. But I am, I, I — I think it’s worth it. I think it’s worth it to have a cost of, unfortunately, some gun deaths every single year so that we can have the Second Amendment to protect our other God-given rights."
That's his point of view. He became a victim of gun violence which he said is worth the cost.
> This is, of course, a lie. By omitting important context you present it as a political point for what you perceive to be your side.
Thanks for projecting! Try to focus on what we're discussing instead of descending into ad hominem.
> strict gun control does not prevent political assassinations. It didn't prevent it in Russia, in Japan, nowhere
I'm not discussing political assassinations, and neither was Kirk. I'm discussing Kirk's own views on gun violence in the United States and the "cost" of unrestricted access to firearms, of which he himself was a victim. Political assassinations are a small subset of this "cost." Would you like to compare the number of mass shooting events in these countries, or is it too inconvenient that the US is #1 in mass/school shootings?
You are lying again. He became a victim of a targeted political assassination. Such assassinations happen in every society, whether they have the 2nd amendment or not.
His opponents argued that restricting access to guns would reduce gun violence — as in school shootings, etc — and that might be true, at the cost of having no protection from the tyranny of the government. But such restrictions would not help prevent Kirk's own assassination, as evidenced by thousands of political assassinations everywhere around the world where access to guns is restricted, and this makes your statement a lie. This is nothing more than a rather distasteful attempt to score some political points.
> Kirk was ultimately "cancelled" by the same society that he fomented. He was against empathy, used his platform to disparage and attack vulnerable groups, against gun control, and literally said that gun deaths are a worthy price for the 2nd amendment. He was a victim of a violent society he actively encouraged and campaigned for.
I am talking about the kind of society that Charlie Kirk wanted. One without empathy, where vulnerable people are attacked, and there are no guardrails on access to firearms, which he encouraged. Yes, political assassinations exist, but that doesn't change the fact that Charlie Kirk died because he encouraged a violent society; one that ultimately made him a victim.
You've decided to focus on one aspect of what I said, creating a strawman claiming that it's my entire argument, and continue to engage in ad hominem. Please use more critical thinking skills, as I'm tiring of you projecting your own insecurities and motivations onto me. I suggest reading more books from experts in their fields, instead of right-wing blogs like the one you linked (focus on sociology and anthropology may help with this specific topic). A course on formal logic may also help, along with introductory philosophy.
You seem to think I'm trying to "score points" in some kind of game here. I don't consider this a game at all and it says a lot that you do.
That appears to be a false statement. Private company made that decision on their own after public pressured it to.
A fitting quote by no other but Mr Kimmel himself, who said this in a very similar situation:
I want to say kudos to my bosses at ABC for doing the right thing and canceling Roseanne’s show today. It’s not an easy thing to do when a show is successful, but it’s the right thing.
Nice of them to prove my point, I guess.
Now, when they are getting some slight taste of their own medicine and act very very upset: they can't to that to us!!!
Personally I would ban unattributed PR. If Larry Ellison want to buy a thousand billboard and write: "Don't taxe me or I will leave. I am Larry and endorse this message" that's ok.
But if he use a PR firm to shift the public opinion with unattributed advertisement and paid-for journal articles that should not be acceptable.
Alas the US Supreme Court decied otherwise in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission...
[1] https://fee.org/articles/were-the-nazis-really-socialists-it...
Socialism is ecinomic system where state ("workers") control the means of production. Nazi Germany fully controlled all production in Germany, in full accordance with this definition.
'Tax justice' is a political group. Just stop citing such drivel as almost mathematical fact.
Of all the systemic failures of uk government and industry, “taxing the rich” is so far down the list it’s a rounding error.
More free market capitalism on the bonfire of free market capitalism is unlikely to rescue Britain from the ashes.
1. Physical assets, particularly real estate, can't leave. You can't pick up parts of Manhattan and move them elsewhere. Likewise, resource assets like mines, farms and oil wells can't move either; and
2. As long as there's profit to be made, companies won't leave regardless of tax rates. This one comes up a lot with the rent-seeking pharma companies in the US who will sell something here for $1000 but sell it in France for $10. What you have to remember is that if selling for $10 in France wasn't profitable, they wouldn't do it.
The one thing we need to clamp down is allowing people to avoid paying for the society that makes wealth possible. Want to own property in the US? Great. Your worldwide income is now taxable. Want to avoid tax by transferring your "IP" to an Irish subsidiary and then paying royalty payments? Yeah, let's stop that.
We need to stop people getting the benefits of owning assets in a society while avoiding all the obligations.
Any/all attempts to levy more taxes on their vast profits are met with claims that they’ll just pack up and leave, even though the activity would still be profitable.
It never really made sense, but they always manage to drum up enough fear to scupper any plans.
How does society make this wealth possible? Things like roads or schooling or electricity are deserving of a fee for the service provided. Not a perpetual share of your wealth. Imagine if every business you purchase from did the same thing. It doesn’t make sense.
As an example, nothing SF does (as a government) causes it to be a good place to build companies. That’s just network effects between VCs and founders and others. If the ecosystem were elsewhere it would still function just as well.
You're kidding right? A stable society is necessary for wealth to exist. A lot goes into creating a stable society. Education, law and order, roads, access to food and drinking water, affordable shelter and giving people hope for their futures.
War and revolution are the ultimate forms of wealth redistribution. It's why the descendants of the descendants of monarchs and wealthy families don't control all the wealth today.
Leftists (of which I include myself) are demonized by neofeudal serfs who have replaced Catholicism with Capitalism but all we're trying to do is avoid the outcome we're hurtling towards where the heads of the wealthy end up on spikes outside the city walls and we have land reforms.
Unfortunately, you are not going to reach this kind of "temporarily embarrassed millionaire" with logic.
These people think that "wealth" is some kind of magical golden poop that millionaires produce every day from their golden toilets, for the betterment of society. "trickle down" economics I believe they call it.
How do you even begin to talk to someone like that?
It’s just impossible to engage with polarised people. Either you’re open minded and humble, and able to learn, or you’re certain you’re correct and angry about it.
This is social media’s bequest to humanity. I don’t know how people can work for those companies.
Social media was the death of nuance, critical thinking, and self-reflection.
You should take your revolutionary business ideas and make a business with them.
Anyway, I'm gonna go pay my power bill.
This reminds of silly lines like “all tax is theft”.
It’s hard to even counter such absurdities.
I think you’ll find education, infrastructure, the financial system - those small things governments create and maintain - are somewhat essential to having a society that enables companies to exist. I don’t really know what else to say.
The correct way to handle that is a Land Value Tax but nobody is ready for that conversation.
The way to make it sane is to tax local assets, local consumption and doing business at specific location (IP protection revenue based taxes for example). If you attempt to tax world wide assets you will always get a situation when people choose another country to tax them. You can't claim it's exactly your country that deserves all the tax.