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UK Millionaire exodus did not occur, study reveals

253 points by mooreds 1y ago

josefritzishere 1y ago
Sounds like it's safe to tax the rich.
- supportengineer 1y ago
  Always has been
- fooster 1y ago
  The rub here is the definition of rich.
  - SilverElfin 1y ago
    Yep. Rich can mean a lot of things. In Norway the wealth tax starts applying at about $150K USD of assets, which is a very low threshold. The pattern I see across countries is that over time the tax rates keep increasing and the thresholds at which apply keep coming down. And that is because governments are badly mismanaged most of the time and they rely on a tax base Ponzi scheme. When your tax base isn’t growing you have to extract more from the existing one. Rarely is efficiency or waste talked about.
    - xienze 1y ago
      > The pattern I see across countries is that over time the tax rates keep increasing and the thresholds at which apply keep coming down. And that is because governments are badly mismanaged most of the time 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.”
    - em500 1y ago
      Yup, In the Netherlands the de facto wealth tax starts applying at €58k of assets (to be lowered to €51 next year), with exemptions for primary residence, pensions and bank savings. 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).
bko 1y ago
> 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.3 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. 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.
- ratelimitsteve 1y ago
  Perhaps rather than focusing on the speaker, you could focus on their arguments and tell us what's actually incorrect?
  - 1234letshaveatw 1y ago
    Because that wasn't their intent? Perhaps you should consider that calling out the potential bias of the authors has merit?
  - bko 1y ago
    Sure! Here's a source from Adam Smith institute that shows UK millionaires / billionaires decreased during that time period and high taxes are partly to blame https://www.adamsmith.org/millionaire-tracker2024 https://www.adamsmith.org/millionaire-tracker2024
- del82 1y ago
  It's absolutely true that we should consider the source for this and any other reviews / studies / news articles etc., and be aware of their likely position. 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.)
lordnacho 1y ago
The way I think of it, if you have a business that's easy to just pick up and move to Dubai, you've already done it. It's not as if tax is on the whole some sort of cliff; people have been able to leave the UK for a long time, and there isn't some particular tax that will push out everyone if it's enacted. 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.
- supportengineer 1y ago
  The same logic applies to California. I know a wealthy guy who would save a million a year in taxes by moving to Nevada or Washington state, but he just... hasn't. He's been talking about it for years, but no action. Because when it comes right down to it, it's too much disruption/change.
  - toomuchtodo 1y ago
    Massachusetts had an increase in millionaires move there after increasing their taxes. It's all bluster that the wealthy will leave. Where will they go? Talk is cheap.
    - ghaff 1y ago
      In the specific case of Massachusetts, living in New Hampshire (no income tax or sales tax) instead is pretty practical for a lot of people. Doesn't help you that much if you commute to an MA employer but I know a lot of people who did commute in from NH and, these days, a lot of people who became officially remote workers in NH. Of course, there are lots of other reasons why out-of-staters might choose to move to MA.
      - toomuchtodo 1y ago
        So you close the gap with policy as you find folks attempting to evade it. You'll always have leakage, it's inevitable, but not an excuse to not implement progressive tax policy on the highest levels of income and wealth. Puerto Rico has very favorable income tax treatment, but outside of some crypto bros, hasn't moved the HNW or high income migration needle, for example.
dfxm12 1y ago
A millionaire exodus widely reported by news outlets around the world in 2024, and credited for the UK Labour government’s decision to weaken tax reforms, did not occur, the Tax Justice Network reveals. 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.
- KaiserPro 1y ago
  well, and that its a stats heavy pre-made easy headline that doesn't take much to write. In addition you can put any spin on it you like, to suit your agenda.
jmyeet 1y ago
The "but the millionaires will leave" trope is just propaganda to justify massive wealth transfers from the poor to the already rich. There are two big reasons why this isn't true: 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.
- Nursie 1y ago
  2 comes up in Australia a lot in regards to levying taxes on the resource sector, whose business model is digging up bits of Australia and selling it overseas. 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.
  - SilverElfin 1y ago
    It’s about opportunity cost. Just being profitable is not enough.
    - Nursie 1y ago
      Not really, no. And when the measures very occasionally pass, oh look, nobody actually packs up and leaves.
- SilverElfin 1y ago
lowkey_ 1y ago
Three notes after reading, the first one being glaringly disingenuous and weird: > 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.
- ghurtado 1y ago
  If you are going to quote half the article (that I've just read) to make your point, I'm definitely not going to make it to the end of your comment. I don't need to read it again, thank you.
  - lowkey_ 1y ago
    TL;DR: 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.
indeed30 1y ago
As long as UK taxes are flow-based and not stock-based, it seems a bit silly to base analysis on a stock-based denominator like the number of millionaires.
- renewiltord 1y ago
  Only sound comment here. 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".
ritzaco 1y ago
> Moreover, the report uses a far narrower definition of ‘millionaires’ that does not include all dollar millionaires like the standard definition (people with net worth of 1 million dollars or more), but rather only individuals with liquid assets worth 1 million dollars or more, who are thus richer and more mobile on average than a standardly defined millionaire.16 In the case of the UK, the ‘millionaires’ identified by the report represent just a fifth (20%) of the UK millionaire population.17 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-tax-receipts-h78d8tkrh https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/capital-gains-t... [1] https://archive.ph/qXcUc https://archive.ph/qXcUc
ionwake 1y ago
Yeah thats because the INCREASE in capital gains tax occured recently, so the data that matters is the 2025 cohort surely. I would bet my left squirrel nut that there is a massive outflow in 2025. If anything the 2024 concerns were prescient.
- dagaci 1y ago
  The media hysteria about a millionaire exodus happened in 2024, not 2025. 10900 articles were in 2024 not 2025 so the hysteria happened in 2024. The interesting part is: those spreading hysteria don’t need to provide evidence; they just simply repeat. 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.
  - ionwake 1y ago
    Im not trying to be difficult Im just saying that there is a mass exodus, its probably late, but getting worse so the articles were in a sense a good warning for things to come.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
xienze 1y ago
> 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. 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.”
- adamors 1y ago
  In the UK every 3rd older homeowner is essentially a millionaire https://theferret.scot/27-per-cent-pensioners-millionaires-mostly-true/ https://theferret.scot/27-per-cent-pensioners-millionaires-m...
- dagaci 1y ago
  The criteria is someone with 1 million in liquid investable wealth - homes are not investable assets or liquid. This is actually stated in the report xD
TrackerFF 1y ago
Here in Norway we have a sort of unique wealth tax, and ever since, there's been nothing but doom and gloom in the media about wealthy people exiling to Switzerland. Especially the past couple of months, in the run-up to the election. The wealth tax debate was all-consuming, and really did reach a fever pitch. 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.
- idiotsecant 1y ago
  What a delightfully sane and refreshing response. It's nice to hear that places outside the US are capable of rational discourse. I'll go back to my burning dumpster fire now.
  - 1234letshaveatw 1y ago
    Yes, there is such a dearth of "eat the rich" voices in the US. There is nowhere to buy cheeseburgers here either.
    - hermitcrab 1y ago
      "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." Steinbeck (disputed)
      - 1234letshaveatw 1y ago
        you say that like it is a bad thing...
        1y ago
AnotherGoodName 1y ago
Reminds me of some commentary on Frances new billionaire tax. "Frances riches man opposes new tax". Response: "Ok that's one vote against. Now how many for the new tax?"
- rcpt 1y ago
  Fun fact: in France the median pensioner earns more than the median worker now
  - klipt 1y ago
    Gerontocracy?
  - AnotherGoodName 1y ago
    To be clear the statement is that people of pension age earn more than others. Not that they earn more from the pension specifically. Retirement account investments have been generating huge returns for a while now and wages have been stagnating. Which is a problem but no one should read this as "Frances pension is too high" since that's not what this statement is about.
    - wagwang 1y ago
      The median person does not have a investment account so that is completely moot. The bottom 50% probably owns less than 1% of stock in aggregate.
      - AnotherGoodName 1y ago
        Not quite true everywhere. ie. The median wealth per adult in France is higher than the median wealth per adult in the USA since there's a better Gini coefficient over there.
- drstewart 1y ago
  Or the actors signing a petition for Jimmy Kimmel. Okay, 300 rich actors are for him. Now how many want him off the air?
PickledJesus 1y ago
The Henley and partners analysis isn't very good, but nor is this, both are from biased sources. It seems to amount to "that isn't a large proportion" rather than looking at the trend. 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-millionaire-migration-report-analysis/ https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/07/27/henley-partners-milliona... [2] https://www.ft.com/content/28ebf57d-af22-48a0-91b9-880e3f1fb778 https://www.ft.com/content/28ebf57d-af22-48a0-91b9-880e3f1fb... https://archive.is/w6New https://archive.is/w6New [3] https://www.ft.com/content/0a24be5e-395e-43db-a91f-4b4f02d99f1a https://www.ft.com/content/0a24be5e-395e-43db-a91f-4b4f02d99... https://archive.is/Le05V https://archive.is/Le05V
CommanderData 1y ago
Tax wealthy elite AND make it illegal for them to fund PR stories.
- Andrew_nenakhov 1y ago
  Free speech is always the first victim of socialists.
  - ghurtado 1y ago
    Yes, we've been reading a lot in the media lately about the LEFT attacking free speech with unprecedented zeal and cancelling all manner of right wing opinions, shows and pundits that don't support their dogma 100%. Wait, no. The exact opposite is happening. My bad, it's easy to get confused.
    - gadders 1y ago
      It's easy to get confused if you have amnesia and forget the previous presidential term.
    - djohnston 1y ago
      Shooting someone through the throat with a high-powered rifle during a university debate certainly seems like an attack on free speech, but maybe I don't have your nuanced understanding of the issue.
      - ghurtado 1y ago
        > I don't have your nuanced understanding of the issue. 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.
antman 1y ago
Well did their millions leave? Did the overall tax from millionaires change? The actual people count is irrelevamt, one tax was decreased humdreds of other loopholes probably exist. Omly the total tax collected counts the rest is for media consumption.
slater 1y ago
What always gets me with this kind of "millionaires will take their money away!!!" story is that, for one, they weren't paying much to begin with (thanks to tax dodges, endless tax relief due to various forms of "philanthropy", etc.), and two, we used to soak the rich six ways from Sunday up to the 50s/60s, and we got to go to the moon. Then the 70s rolled around, the hippies grew up and said "no more of that", and presto-change-oh, https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ 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
codeulike 1y ago
Its really easy to ask people "will you do X if change Y happens?" and get a Yes response (or the more loaded version "are you concerned that you will have to do X if Y happens?") and its very easy to then write news articles based on that survey. How many of those people actually follow through and do X is a very different question.
- gadders 1y ago
  See also: People that claim they will leave Country X if Person Y gets elected.
  - rhubarbtree 1y ago
    Indeed. Right now I’m hearing people will leave the UK when Reform/Farage are elected. 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.
keyme 1y ago
"The UKs 3.06 million millionaires". LOL. Every geriatric with a centrally located apartment is a "millionaire" nowdays. But I'm sure the "tax justice" network doesn't actually understand the difference.
- 0xy 1y ago
  The boomers with million pound houses are all leeching pensions too. The society is disintegrating. The young are milked like tax livestock while they import millions of people.
  - keyme 1y ago
    Indeed, as is obvious to anyone productive. Taxes come from the productive and entrepreneurial, of which of the 10k that did leave are a big portion, and that's before actually comparing the incomes as opposed to the net worth.
- teamonkey 1y ago
  That figure came from Swiss bank UBS, one of the reports that made the news making the claim that millionaires would leave if taxes were raised. https://www.ft.com/content/a578561c-05de-402b-8ba7-91f2d77c59f5 https://www.ft.com/content/a578561c-05de-402b-8ba7-91f2d77c5...
CrulesAll 1y ago
If you fail to understand the context of this farce, with the UK economy tanking, I've got a bridge to sell you. Ignoring those who have left(and completely ignoring a six figure engineer, medical doctor etc are as valuable as millionaires) you don't invest in the UK. You don't hire. You let people go. You don't increase wages. You don't take any risks, and you lower the amount of labour you supply. You get the exact economic results the UK have now. Taxing success has never and will never work. Jesus, even all the Nordic PM's had to come to Harvard to make this point. 'Tax justice' is a political group. Just stop citing such drivel as almost mathematical fact.
- rhubarbtree 1y ago
  Sir, I think you will find that the private sector have always failed to invest in the UK, and that is one of the major reasons the country is right royally screwed. 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.
walthamstow 1y ago
The original analysis piece by Henley & Partners (clue's in the name) has to be one of the most successful pieces of marketing by a financial manager in quite some time.
cs02rm0 1y ago
Strange to see this here, it's quite delayed. 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.
- metabagel 1y ago
  Not much in the way of details in your post. You're shutting down your business and moving for... reasons. 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. https://jamesberrylaw.com/news-details/no-prison-for-debt https://jamesberrylaw.com/news-details/no-prison-for-debt
  - logicchains 1y ago
    >It boggles my mind that any westerner would choose to live and work in Dubai. Their laws and rules are very different from ours. 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.
    - KaiserPro 1y ago
      > in practice Dubai is more libertarian than the UK; > 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.
tremarley 1y ago
From first hand experience, every British millionaire I grew up with or know, have left the UK for a country that treats them better. 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?
- kimixa 1y ago
  And yet none of the richer people I know have left[0], despite some of them making a lot of noise about it . 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
- rhubarbtree 1y ago
  Why would stay in Britain after the rich and powerful asset stripped the country and ran it into the ground? Good question, and I guess “to fix the mess they caused” doesn’t usually come up.
nxm 1y ago
Isn't this too short of a time window to properly gauge? It takes a while to relocate and move assets. Let's see the numbers in 5 years. I also feel the study misses the fact that it disincentives investment in the UK long term, but that's harder to objectively gauge.
- ineedaj0b 1y ago
  It does take a good deal of time. Another missed angle is how hard this group is to study: I imagine they never respond to surveys. 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.
  - CyberMacGyver 1y ago
    Delaware most likely
- skippyboxedhero 1y ago
  It isn't hard to objectively gauge. The annual tax revenue shortfall is running at nearly £10bn this year, this is despite a high levels of earnings growth due to Labour agreeing to huge pay increases for the public sector. 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).
WalterBright 1y ago
I personally know several people who left Washington state because of the recently enacted capital gains tax. The tax was targeted at Jeff Bezos, but he decamped to Florida just before it went into effect.
- seizethecheese 1y ago
  Bezos famously says that when the anecdotes conflict with the data, trust the anecdotes
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    Bezos leaving probably subtracted billions from the Washington economy.
- cloverich 1y ago
  It's an interesting one because its relatively mild; we decamped _to_ Washington from Oregon (very partially) because the tax was so much more favorable in Washington. (Washington tax here is cap gains at 7% which doesn't kick in until capital gains > 250k)
  - WalterBright 1y ago
    It was just raised to 9.9%. And the estate tax was just raised to 35%. Adding in the 40% federal estate tax, and it's 75%.
rsynnott 1y ago
Yeah, it turns out that being a tax exile is not for everyone, and indeed is not for practically anyone. This is always _vastly_ overhyped as a risk.
djohnston 1y ago
Can we get this reproduced by someone not as obviously biased as the "Tax Justice Network"? It's absurd that this organisation's findings would be taken at face value.
- anigbrowl 1y ago
  I have to ask, did you say the thing at the time the supposed exodus was getting lots of media coverage? I expressed skepticism about it at the time, although I did not pay it too much attention because I don't live int he UK. But any skepticism about such a prediction always incurs a bunch of people insisting I don't understand economics and explanation of how freely the wealthy can flee a high tax jurisdiction. 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.
  - WickyNilliams 1y ago
    The original report this article responds to was out put by a company that sells golden passports, and their study involved trawling linkedin. If there are concerns around methodology and bias, then you are absolutely right we should start there
- swarnie 1y ago
  I'm also interested in how they've come up with the 3 million millionaires in the UK figure, they only seem to cite themselves for the data. 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.
  - djohnston 1y ago
    Nan is selling her home and moving to Barcelona - another mover and shaker gone!
  - teamonkey 1y ago
    They cite Swiss bank UBS, there’s a table in the footnotes. I’m not convinced about that figure myself but they are responding to the announcement that was put out by UBS.
kragen 1y ago
0% is not a valid approximation of "0.3% per year" (the relative error is (0 - 0.3) ÷ 0 = ∞ or (0 - 0.3) ÷ 0.3 = 100%), and I note that this article is strangely silent on what fraction of the total wealth of the 3.06 million millionaires was owned by those 9500 millionaires who left in 02024. Given that the rest of the article is mostly talking about golden-passport schemes which I think typically cost about a million dollars, it would be unsurprising to find that the majority of millionaires don't have enough money to participate. 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.
ackers 1y ago
Well I know of at least 1 person that left.
webdevver 1y ago
£1M is middle-class levels of money, so its hardly surprising. most of this demographic is 50+ professionals with kids, where are they gonna go?
jt2190 1y ago
> Moreover, the [Henley] report uses a far narrower definition of ‘millionaires’ that does not include all dollar millionaires like the standard definition (people with net worth of 1 million dollars or more), but rather only individuals with liquid assets worth 1 million dollars or more, who are thus richer and more mobile on average than a standardly defined millionaire. In the case of the UK, the ‘millionaires’ identified by the report represent just a fifth (20%) of the UK millionaire population. Even then, the report is based on a small sample from within these narrowly defined millionaires and the sample is skewed towards centi-millionaires and billionaires, who are also likely to be the most easily mobile. 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.
- zipy124 1y ago
  The UK government defines wealthy as £2 million, or an income of £200k a year or more over three years. 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.
hermitcrab 1y ago
'Millionaire flight' and 'trickle down economics' are both bullshit 'theories' invented by lackeys of the rich to explain which the rich shouldn't pay their fair of taxes. 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.
hermitcrab 1y ago
Brian Klass wrote an excellent article on this topic. However it is behind a paywall: https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/does-taxing-the-rich-cause-millionaires https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/does-taxing-the-rich-cause-mil... (I subscribe to his substack)
JdeBP 1y ago
In case dang is watching, at least one past discussion two months ago: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44623091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44623091
coldtea 1y ago
Why would it be? 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.
rich_sasha 1y ago
The real test of this pudding will be income tax receipts, maybe luxury VAT. 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...

253 points by mooreds 1y ago

josefritzishere 1y ago

Sounds like it's safe to tax the rich.

supportengineer 1y ago
Always has been
fooster 1y ago
The rub here is the definition of rich.
- SilverElfin 1y ago
  Yep. Rich can mean a lot of things. In Norway the wealth tax starts applying at about $150K USD of assets, which is a very low threshold. The pattern I see across countries is that over time the tax rates keep increasing and the thresholds at which apply keep coming down. And that is because governments are badly mismanaged most of the time and they rely on a tax base Ponzi scheme. When your tax base isn’t growing you have to extract more from the existing one. Rarely is efficiency or waste talked about.
  - xienze 1y ago
    > The pattern I see across countries is that over time the tax rates keep increasing and the thresholds at which apply keep coming down. And that is because governments are badly mismanaged most of the time 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.”
  - em500 1y ago
    Yup, In the Netherlands the de facto wealth tax starts applying at €58k of assets (to be lowered to €51 next year), with exemptions for primary residence, pensions and bank savings. 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).

bko 1y ago

> 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.3 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. 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.

ratelimitsteve 1y ago
Perhaps rather than focusing on the speaker, you could focus on their arguments and tell us what's actually incorrect?
- 1234letshaveatw 1y ago
  Because that wasn't their intent? Perhaps you should consider that calling out the potential bias of the authors has merit?
- bko 1y ago
  Sure! Here's a source from Adam Smith institute that shows UK millionaires / billionaires decreased during that time period and high taxes are partly to blame https://www.adamsmith.org/millionaire-tracker2024 https://www.adamsmith.org/millionaire-tracker2024
del82 1y ago
It's absolutely true that we should consider the source for this and any other reviews / studies / news articles etc., and be aware of their likely position. 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.)

lordnacho 1y ago

The way I think of it, if you have a business that's easy to just pick up and move to Dubai, you've already done it. It's not as if tax is on the whole some sort of cliff; people have been able to leave the UK for a long time, and there isn't some particular tax that will push out everyone if it's enacted. 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.

supportengineer 1y ago
The same logic applies to California. I know a wealthy guy who would save a million a year in taxes by moving to Nevada or Washington state, but he just... hasn't. He's been talking about it for years, but no action. Because when it comes right down to it, it's too much disruption/change.
- toomuchtodo 1y ago
  Massachusetts had an increase in millionaires move there after increasing their taxes. It's all bluster that the wealthy will leave. Where will they go? Talk is cheap.
  - ghaff 1y ago
    In the specific case of Massachusetts, living in New Hampshire (no income tax or sales tax) instead is pretty practical for a lot of people. Doesn't help you that much if you commute to an MA employer but I know a lot of people who did commute in from NH and, these days, a lot of people who became officially remote workers in NH. Of course, there are lots of other reasons why out-of-staters might choose to move to MA.
    - toomuchtodo 1y ago
      So you close the gap with policy as you find folks attempting to evade it. You'll always have leakage, it's inevitable, but not an excuse to not implement progressive tax policy on the highest levels of income and wealth. Puerto Rico has very favorable income tax treatment, but outside of some crypto bros, hasn't moved the HNW or high income migration needle, for example.

dfxm12 1y ago

A millionaire exodus widely reported by news outlets around the world in 2024, and credited for the UK Labour government’s decision to weaken tax reforms, did not occur, the Tax Justice Network reveals. 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.

KaiserPro 1y ago
well, and that its a stats heavy pre-made easy headline that doesn't take much to write. In addition you can put any spin on it you like, to suit your agenda.

jmyeet 1y ago

The "but the millionaires will leave" trope is just propaganda to justify massive wealth transfers from the poor to the already rich. There are two big reasons why this isn't true: 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.

Nursie 1y ago
2 comes up in Australia a lot in regards to levying taxes on the resource sector, whose business model is digging up bits of Australia and selling it overseas. 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.
- SilverElfin 1y ago
  It’s about opportunity cost. Just being profitable is not enough.
  - Nursie 1y ago
    Not really, no. And when the measures very occasionally pass, oh look, nobody actually packs up and leaves.
SilverElfin 1y ago

lowkey_ 1y ago

Three notes after reading, the first one being glaringly disingenuous and weird: > 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.

ghurtado 1y ago
If you are going to quote half the article (that I've just read) to make your point, I'm definitely not going to make it to the end of your comment. I don't need to read it again, thank you.
- lowkey_ 1y ago
  TL;DR: 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.

indeed30 1y ago

As long as UK taxes are flow-based and not stock-based, it seems a bit silly to base analysis on a stock-based denominator like the number of millionaires.

renewiltord 1y ago
Only sound comment here. 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".

ritzaco 1y ago

> Moreover, the report uses a far narrower definition of ‘millionaires’ that does not include all dollar millionaires like the standard definition (people with net worth of 1 million dollars or more), but rather only individuals with liquid assets worth 1 million dollars or more, who are thus richer and more mobile on average than a standardly defined millionaire.16 In the case of the UK, the ‘millionaires’ identified by the report represent just a fifth (20%) of the UK millionaire population.17 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-tax-receipts-h78d8tkrh https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/capital-gains-t... [1] https://archive.ph/qXcUc https://archive.ph/qXcUc

ionwake 1y ago

Yeah thats because the INCREASE in capital gains tax occured recently, so the data that matters is the 2025 cohort surely. I would bet my left squirrel nut that there is a massive outflow in 2025. If anything the 2024 concerns were prescient.

dagaci 1y ago
The media hysteria about a millionaire exodus happened in 2024, not 2025. 10900 articles were in 2024 not 2025 so the hysteria happened in 2024. The interesting part is: those spreading hysteria don’t need to provide evidence; they just simply repeat. 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.
- ionwake 1y ago
  Im not trying to be difficult Im just saying that there is a mass exodus, its probably late, but getting worse so the articles were in a sense a good warning for things to come.
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]

xienze 1y ago

> 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. 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.”

adamors 1y ago
In the UK every 3rd older homeowner is essentially a millionaire https://theferret.scot/27-per-cent-pensioners-millionaires-mostly-true/ https://theferret.scot/27-per-cent-pensioners-millionaires-m...
dagaci 1y ago
The criteria is someone with 1 million in liquid investable wealth - homes are not investable assets or liquid. This is actually stated in the report xD

TrackerFF 1y ago

Here in Norway we have a sort of unique wealth tax, and ever since, there's been nothing but doom and gloom in the media about wealthy people exiling to Switzerland. Especially the past couple of months, in the run-up to the election. The wealth tax debate was all-consuming, and really did reach a fever pitch. 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.

idiotsecant 1y ago
What a delightfully sane and refreshing response. It's nice to hear that places outside the US are capable of rational discourse. I'll go back to my burning dumpster fire now.
- 1234letshaveatw 1y ago
  Yes, there is such a dearth of "eat the rich" voices in the US. There is nowhere to buy cheeseburgers here either.
  - hermitcrab 1y ago
    "Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires." Steinbeck (disputed)
    - 1234letshaveatw 1y ago
      you say that like it is a bad thing...
      - 1y ago

AnotherGoodName 1y ago

Reminds me of some commentary on Frances new billionaire tax. "Frances riches man opposes new tax". Response: "Ok that's one vote against. Now how many for the new tax?"

rcpt 1y ago
Fun fact: in France the median pensioner earns more than the median worker now
- klipt 1y ago
  Gerontocracy?
- AnotherGoodName 1y ago
  To be clear the statement is that people of pension age earn more than others. Not that they earn more from the pension specifically. Retirement account investments have been generating huge returns for a while now and wages have been stagnating. Which is a problem but no one should read this as "Frances pension is too high" since that's not what this statement is about.
  - wagwang 1y ago
    The median person does not have a investment account so that is completely moot. The bottom 50% probably owns less than 1% of stock in aggregate.
    - AnotherGoodName 1y ago
      Not quite true everywhere. ie. The median wealth per adult in France is higher than the median wealth per adult in the USA since there's a better Gini coefficient over there.
drstewart 1y ago
Or the actors signing a petition for Jimmy Kimmel. Okay, 300 rich actors are for him. Now how many want him off the air?

PickledJesus 1y ago

The Henley and partners analysis isn't very good, but nor is this, both are from biased sources. It seems to amount to "that isn't a large proportion" rather than looking at the trend. 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-millionaire-migration-report-analysis/ https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/07/27/henley-partners-milliona... [2] https://www.ft.com/content/28ebf57d-af22-48a0-91b9-880e3f1fb778 https://www.ft.com/content/28ebf57d-af22-48a0-91b9-880e3f1fb... https://archive.is/w6New https://archive.is/w6New [3] https://www.ft.com/content/0a24be5e-395e-43db-a91f-4b4f02d99f1a https://www.ft.com/content/0a24be5e-395e-43db-a91f-4b4f02d99... https://archive.is/Le05V https://archive.is/Le05V

CommanderData 1y ago

Tax wealthy elite AND make it illegal for them to fund PR stories.

Andrew_nenakhov 1y ago
Free speech is always the first victim of socialists.
- ghurtado 1y ago
  Yes, we've been reading a lot in the media lately about the LEFT attacking free speech with unprecedented zeal and cancelling all manner of right wing opinions, shows and pundits that don't support their dogma 100%. Wait, no. The exact opposite is happening. My bad, it's easy to get confused.
  - gadders 1y ago
    It's easy to get confused if you have amnesia and forget the previous presidential term.
  - djohnston 1y ago
    Shooting someone through the throat with a high-powered rifle during a university debate certainly seems like an attack on free speech, but maybe I don't have your nuanced understanding of the issue.
    - ghurtado 1y ago
      > I don't have your nuanced understanding of the issue. 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.

antman 1y ago

Well did their millions leave? Did the overall tax from millionaires change? The actual people count is irrelevamt, one tax was decreased humdreds of other loopholes probably exist. Omly the total tax collected counts the rest is for media consumption.

slater 1y ago

What always gets me with this kind of "millionaires will take their money away!!!" story is that, for one, they weren't paying much to begin with (thanks to tax dodges, endless tax relief due to various forms of "philanthropy", etc.), and two, we used to soak the rich six ways from Sunday up to the 50s/60s, and we got to go to the moon. Then the 70s rolled around, the hippies grew up and said "no more of that", and presto-change-oh, https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ 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

codeulike 1y ago

Its really easy to ask people "will you do X if change Y happens?" and get a Yes response (or the more loaded version "are you concerned that you will have to do X if Y happens?") and its very easy to then write news articles based on that survey. How many of those people actually follow through and do X is a very different question.

gadders 1y ago
See also: People that claim they will leave Country X if Person Y gets elected.
- rhubarbtree 1y ago
  Indeed. Right now I’m hearing people will leave the UK when Reform/Farage are elected. 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.

keyme 1y ago

"The UKs 3.06 million millionaires". LOL. Every geriatric with a centrally located apartment is a "millionaire" nowdays. But I'm sure the "tax justice" network doesn't actually understand the difference.

0xy 1y ago
The boomers with million pound houses are all leeching pensions too. The society is disintegrating. The young are milked like tax livestock while they import millions of people.
- keyme 1y ago
  Indeed, as is obvious to anyone productive. Taxes come from the productive and entrepreneurial, of which of the 10k that did leave are a big portion, and that's before actually comparing the incomes as opposed to the net worth.
teamonkey 1y ago
That figure came from Swiss bank UBS, one of the reports that made the news making the claim that millionaires would leave if taxes were raised. https://www.ft.com/content/a578561c-05de-402b-8ba7-91f2d77c59f5 https://www.ft.com/content/a578561c-05de-402b-8ba7-91f2d77c5...

CrulesAll 1y ago

If you fail to understand the context of this farce, with the UK economy tanking, I've got a bridge to sell you. Ignoring those who have left(and completely ignoring a six figure engineer, medical doctor etc are as valuable as millionaires) you don't invest in the UK. You don't hire. You let people go. You don't increase wages. You don't take any risks, and you lower the amount of labour you supply. You get the exact economic results the UK have now. Taxing success has never and will never work. Jesus, even all the Nordic PM's had to come to Harvard to make this point. 'Tax justice' is a political group. Just stop citing such drivel as almost mathematical fact.

rhubarbtree 1y ago
Sir, I think you will find that the private sector have always failed to invest in the UK, and that is one of the major reasons the country is right royally screwed. 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.

walthamstow 1y ago

The original analysis piece by Henley & Partners (clue's in the name) has to be one of the most successful pieces of marketing by a financial manager in quite some time.

cs02rm0 1y ago

Strange to see this here, it's quite delayed. 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.

metabagel 1y ago
Not much in the way of details in your post. You're shutting down your business and moving for... reasons. 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. https://jamesberrylaw.com/news-details/no-prison-for-debt https://jamesberrylaw.com/news-details/no-prison-for-debt
- logicchains 1y ago
  >It boggles my mind that any westerner would choose to live and work in Dubai. Their laws and rules are very different from ours. 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.
  - KaiserPro 1y ago
    > in practice Dubai is more libertarian than the UK; > 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.

tremarley 1y ago

From first hand experience, every British millionaire I grew up with or know, have left the UK for a country that treats them better. 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?

kimixa 1y ago
And yet none of the richer people I know have left[0], despite some of them making a lot of noise about it . 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
rhubarbtree 1y ago
Why would stay in Britain after the rich and powerful asset stripped the country and ran it into the ground? Good question, and I guess “to fix the mess they caused” doesn’t usually come up.

nxm 1y ago

Isn't this too short of a time window to properly gauge? It takes a while to relocate and move assets. Let's see the numbers in 5 years. I also feel the study misses the fact that it disincentives investment in the UK long term, but that's harder to objectively gauge.

ineedaj0b 1y ago
It does take a good deal of time. Another missed angle is how hard this group is to study: I imagine they never respond to surveys. 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.
- CyberMacGyver 1y ago
  Delaware most likely
skippyboxedhero 1y ago
It isn't hard to objectively gauge. The annual tax revenue shortfall is running at nearly £10bn this year, this is despite a high levels of earnings growth due to Labour agreeing to huge pay increases for the public sector. 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).

WalterBright 1y ago

I personally know several people who left Washington state because of the recently enacted capital gains tax. The tax was targeted at Jeff Bezos, but he decamped to Florida just before it went into effect.

seizethecheese 1y ago
Bezos famously says that when the anecdotes conflict with the data, trust the anecdotes
- WalterBright 1y ago
  Bezos leaving probably subtracted billions from the Washington economy.
cloverich 1y ago
It's an interesting one because its relatively mild; we decamped _to_ Washington from Oregon (very partially) because the tax was so much more favorable in Washington. (Washington tax here is cap gains at 7% which doesn't kick in until capital gains > 250k)
- WalterBright 1y ago
  It was just raised to 9.9%. And the estate tax was just raised to 35%. Adding in the 40% federal estate tax, and it's 75%.

rsynnott 1y ago

Yeah, it turns out that being a tax exile is not for everyone, and indeed is not for practically anyone. This is always _vastly_ overhyped as a risk.

djohnston 1y ago

Can we get this reproduced by someone not as obviously biased as the "Tax Justice Network"? It's absurd that this organisation's findings would be taken at face value.

anigbrowl 1y ago
I have to ask, did you say the thing at the time the supposed exodus was getting lots of media coverage? I expressed skepticism about it at the time, although I did not pay it too much attention because I don't live int he UK. But any skepticism about such a prediction always incurs a bunch of people insisting I don't understand economics and explanation of how freely the wealthy can flee a high tax jurisdiction. 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.
- WickyNilliams 1y ago
  The original report this article responds to was out put by a company that sells golden passports, and their study involved trawling linkedin. If there are concerns around methodology and bias, then you are absolutely right we should start there
swarnie 1y ago
I'm also interested in how they've come up with the 3 million millionaires in the UK figure, they only seem to cite themselves for the data. 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.
- djohnston 1y ago
  Nan is selling her home and moving to Barcelona - another mover and shaker gone!
- teamonkey 1y ago
  They cite Swiss bank UBS, there’s a table in the footnotes. I’m not convinced about that figure myself but they are responding to the announcement that was put out by UBS.

kragen 1y ago

0% is not a valid approximation of "0.3% per year" (the relative error is (0 - 0.3) ÷ 0 = ∞ or (0 - 0.3) ÷ 0.3 = 100%), and I note that this article is strangely silent on what fraction of the total wealth of the 3.06 million millionaires was owned by those 9500 millionaires who left in 02024. Given that the rest of the article is mostly talking about golden-passport schemes which I think typically cost about a million dollars, it would be unsurprising to find that the majority of millionaires don't have enough money to participate. 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.

ackers 1y ago

Well I know of at least 1 person that left.

webdevver 1y ago

£1M is middle-class levels of money, so its hardly surprising. most of this demographic is 50+ professionals with kids, where are they gonna go?

jt2190 1y ago

> Moreover, the [Henley] report uses a far narrower definition of ‘millionaires’ that does not include all dollar millionaires like the standard definition (people with net worth of 1 million dollars or more), but rather only individuals with liquid assets worth 1 million dollars or more, who are thus richer and more mobile on average than a standardly defined millionaire. In the case of the UK, the ‘millionaires’ identified by the report represent just a fifth (20%) of the UK millionaire population. Even then, the report is based on a small sample from within these narrowly defined millionaires and the sample is skewed towards centi-millionaires and billionaires, who are also likely to be the most easily mobile. 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.

zipy124 1y ago
The UK government defines wealthy as £2 million, or an income of £200k a year or more over three years. 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.

hermitcrab 1y ago

'Millionaire flight' and 'trickle down economics' are both bullshit 'theories' invented by lackeys of the rich to explain which the rich shouldn't pay their fair of taxes. 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.

hermitcrab 1y ago

Brian Klass wrote an excellent article on this topic. However it is behind a paywall: https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/does-taxing-the-rich-cause-millionaires https://www.forkingpaths.co/p/does-taxing-the-rich-cause-mil... (I subscribe to his substack)

JdeBP 1y ago

In case dang is watching, at least one past discussion two months ago: * https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44623091 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44623091

coldtea 1y ago

Why would it be? 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.

rich_sasha 1y ago

The real test of this pudding will be income tax receipts, maybe luxury VAT. 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...