The myth of Britain’s fleeing non-doms

According to popular imagination, the skies over Britain have been full these past few months of fleets of private jets carrying their non-dom owners to fiscally safer climes. According to your point of view, this has either rid the country of parasites or denied us investment and trickle-down wealth. Two glossy reports pumped out by financial companies in the past month seemed to promote the idea and were immediately leapt upon by those who oppose the abolition of non-dom status.

First, there was the UBS Global Wealth Report 2024, which predicted that the number of dollar millionaires living in Britain will plunge by 17 per cent between 2023 and 2028. Then Henley and Partners, which helps the rich shift themselves and their piles of money around the world, published its Private Wealth Migration Report, making a similar sort of claim. During 2024, it claimed, Britain will lose a net 9,500 dollar millionaires, more than any country other than China.