From haven to exit: The great wealth flight from Britain
Critics of the government claim that the steady departure of the very wealthy will turn into a rout which will inflict a heavy blow on the nation’s economy
[LONDON] Is Britain’s centre-left government, with its fondness for higher taxes, scaring off the super-rich? A spate of high-profile departures certainly points in this direction.
Christopher Rokos, a British billionaire hedge fund manager and philanthropist, recently announced that he was switching his tax residence from Britain to Greece. Alan Howard, another hedge fund billionaire, has already decamped to Switzerland.
And many of the world’s wealthiest who previously made the British capital their home – people like finance mogul Kurt Bjorklund, steel billionaire Lakshmi Mittal and Egyptian industrialist Nassef Sawiris – have also recently moved their main residence to other countries.
Ask any member of London’s vast ecosystem of tax advisers, wealth managers and real estate agents for their response, and you will get the same complaint: Business is down because the world’s rich are leaving.
London’s prime housing market is also affected. While top residential prices in cities like Shanghai, Paris, Singapore and Beijing rose by an average of 22 per cent over the past 10 years and those in the Spanish capital of Madrid and in the Gulf city of Dubai jumped by a whopping 80 per cent, London top residential prices declined by around 11 per cent over the same period, according to data compiled by Savills, one of Britain’s largest real estate companies.
The British government refuses to be alarmed. “The UK is a great place to live in, to found and grow a business,” Work and Pensions Minister Pat McFadden claimed recently.
“The UK remains an attractive destination for talent and investment, with a competitive and stable tax system, deep capital markets, world-class universities and a highly skilled workforce,” added a government policy statement.
But critics of the government claim that the steady departure of the very wealthy will turn into a rout which will inflict a heavy blow on the nation’s economy. “Wealth creators leaving the UK means fewer opportunities for young people and leaves the rest of us paying more,” said Andrew Griffith, the shadow finance minister for the opposition centre-right Conservatives.
The economic impact of such an exodus is not in doubt. Rokos alone is estimated to have paid £330 million (US$436 million) in British tax in 2025, making him the country’s third-largest individual taxpayer; this is equivalent to the combined tax bills of 21,000 average British households.
A lack of figures
The snag, however, is that both the British government and its critics lack accurate figures about the scale of the exodus. And for political reasons, neither is particularly interested in clarifying the matter. So, the entire British debate is conducted with slogans rather than facts.
The statistic most regularly quoted by the government’s critics is that in 2025 alone, 16,500 people worth at least £1 million each allegedly left the UK.
Yet quite apart from the fact that, if true, such a figure would represent one of the biggest capital flights in modern history, the data was compiled by Henley & Partners – a consultancy which sells residence and citizenship programmes to the internationally mobile – drawing on data from a small South African consultancy, New World Wealth.
The methodology used to arrive at these figures has never been properly explained, and the Henley consultancy itself appears to have stopped referring to the statistic.
But official British government statistics are equally unhelpful. According to the country’s tax authority’s annual reports, the recorded number of the very wealthy who are registered to pay UK tax fell by barely 1 per cent, while their combined tax receipts rose 9 per cent to £13.6 billion, the highest such level since 2017. So according to the government, Britain’s very wealthy are a cohort which stays put and pays its taxes.
Sadly, these figures only record tax contributions during the previous year, well before the current Labour government imposed new measures on the rich. And the fact that tax receipts from the very wealthy have risen may indicate exactly the opposite to what the British government claims: that far from staying, the ultra-rich may be preparing to leave by selling assets and settling their tax affairs. Capital gains tax receipts, for instance, have jumped by 58 per cent, a hint of precisely such a trend.
Losing its charm for the rich
Britain offered a number of key advantages to the very affluent. The country enjoyed political stability and a track record of not only respecting private property, but also of a judicial system which jealously defended and asserted property rights.
Britain’s privacy laws also allowed the ultra-wealthy to shield their status from prying eyes. To this day, it is near-impossible to identify the ultimate beneficiaries of real estate properties in London without a specific court order and a great deal of expensive investigation.
And then, there was the favourable tax regime, including the famous non-domiciled or “non-dom” status, which allowed people based in the UK to pay taxes only on money earned in Britain, and not on wealth they may possess outside the UK. This presented the opportunity for significant – and entirely legal – savings.
Most of these privileges are now gone. The non-dom status was abolished in 2025, replaced by a far less favourable scheme. Stamp duty fees on the purchase of property have skyrocketed. A “mansion tax” levied yearly on any residential property worth more than £2 million is to be introduced from 2028. And a new “wealth tax” may come in when the current government unveils its budget proposals later in October.
With a top tax rate of 45 per cent on income above £125,140, a 24 per cent capital gains levy and a 40 per cent inheritance tax on any estate worth more than £325,000, it is not surprising that Britain is no longer a magnet for the wealthy.
Rivals in the race for wealth
The competition is heating up with new entrants into the race to beat Britain. Greece, the country to which billionaire Rokos has now relocated, charges a fixed foreign income tax of just 100,000 euros (US$112,000) a year for the first 15 years.
Farther up on the shores of the Mediterranean, Italy wants 300,000 euros for the same arrangement.
And traditional boltholes for the super wealthy know that they have to remain competitive. Last November, the people of Switzerland voted in a referendum to reject a proposed 50 per cent tax on inheritances.
In defence of their policies, British ministers claim that, with the country’s finances in a precarious state and national debts sky-high, the government needs to expand its tax base.
But the finances of Greece and Italy are in a worse position than Britain’s, and that did not prevent the two nations from offering tax incentives to the world’s rich.
The reality is that Britain’s current rulers are engaged in what they believe is a risk-free culture war, whipping up popular hostility to the ultra-rich. Meanwhile, their opponents know that defending tax concessions to the wealthy is hardly a popular cause, so they criticise the government without offering alternatives.
That’s why both sides in this debate are not particularly keen to collect – let alone debate – on the basis of accurate statistics.
And that’s also why Britain’s wealthiest will continue to move their wealth to sunnier locations. THE STRAITS TIMES
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