The FT has this headline this morning:
The article says:
UK wealth managers have reported a surge in enquiries from affluent customers after weeks of uncertainty over a potential wealth tax, prompting some to halt their investment decisions and draw up plans to leave Britain.
Chancellor Rachel Reeves has refused to rule out a possible wealth tax in the October Budget, after former Labour leader Lord Neil Kinnock suggested applying an annual levy of 2 per cent on assets above £10mn.
Let's be candid and note that a wealth tax is very unlikely.
Let's also be clear that unless Rachel Reeves increases taxes paid by the wealthy, she is going to be in deep trouble on many fronts.
So, the wealthy are worried. But, as I have explained in the wealth series, the wealthy are always paranoid about maintaining their wealth, and so there is nothing new there.
And 99% of them won't leave. I will get to that issue very soon.
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A useable definition of being wealthy is “while you may prefer not to, are you capable of leaving”. Having set that as definition, and in light of your prediction, I advance a counter prediction – the likelihood of a wealth tax is high, and more than 1% will leave. I think emigration runs at close to 1% a year anyway across all the population. It wouldn’t take much to shift it above 1% for the wealthy.
Who9 cares if 1% leave?
Or 2%?
There is a video coming on this.
And your definition is fatuos: the people using emigrating are never wealthy. I suggest you pay attention to the news.
Capital flight. Where to?
e.g. Belgium? Nope, from Dec 2025 – there will be a tax on capital gains (did not have one before then for assets such as shares held for over a year (I have simplified for brevity).
USM(aga) – Swaziland – seriously? As some guys in Goldman Sachs remarked to a friend who moved to the USA (2016) – if you have $90m we could do something (in terms of protecting the assets) but it ain’t worth it for less than that.
But as you (& others) have noted – most wealthy/very wealthy people won’t leave – London has a social life orientated towards the very rich – nice place to live if you have money (& like that kind of socialising). In other blogs Col Smithers has outlined the social circuit (circus?) of the wealthy – why would they drop that? Go to UAE/Dubai? – have you seen the pollution? etc. Nah, they will stay here. & moan & lobby and pay up.
Agreed, entirely
Mike…of course. Something I’d not considered before. Moving wealth must attract administrative and professional costs and if the cut-off is circa $90million then it would not be viable for, I imagine, quite a large cohort.
I agree with your thoughts. These stories usually come across as advisors pitching for work, and helping the FT fill the Monday newspaper after a quiet weekend. It may be my imagination but stories about wealth people leaving usually appear on a Monday and often have a dubious survey mentioned as part of them.
I think for the media this is more of a propaganda weapon than based on any real factual evidence to support it.
Often, the “evidence” for the rich leaving tends to come from financial organisations, or “think tanks” that want their business, or have their own political agenda. The right wing media then jump on it as evidence that higher taxes results in an exodus. There is very little questioning of the evidence.
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2025/07/the-british-wealth-exodus-is-a-big-fat-myth
They also want to use it as propaganda to say that the next tax increase will inevitably hit everyone else.
It tends to happen more when there is a Labour govt, than Tory one, although there is little to suggest the former really go after the rich. If they were doing that, even on a very small level, there would be no need for the winter fuel payments to pensioners and PIP fiasco.
Much to agree with
I have always doubted that the billionaire class would up and leave the Uk, uprooting their children from school, leaving the cultural life they enjoy in London. The tax they were threatened with would have to be much more substantial than what is proposed to cause them to make such self harming moves, and especially now in an era of Trump and Climate change there are reasons for more to want to come here. They should expect to support the society from which they derive a lot of benefit. If I am in fact wrong and there is an exodus from Prime London Property, well that might have a ripple down effect, which would be no bad thing. Time to call their bluff.
I wish more ultra-wealthy people understood the damage their growing wealth and the system that enables it does. I wish they saw humanity as a whole and appreciated that they benefit from the relative safety and peace of living in the UK. Have the post-war top tax rates become part of the folklore for families of great wealth? Who can enter their bubble and talk with the worried wealthy? Is this a job for ‘patriotic millionaires’ ?
Worth asking them…
the first 35 seconds of this I think is also an important angle, the fear of an uprising – get the pitchforks out already!
https://x.com/Graeber_social/status/1950284770732085452