Will the non doms squeak under the Osborne squeeze?

Team Osborne (regular, if anonymous Coffee House visitors) call to take issue with my earlier blog. I am not right to say non doms will pay more than 50% tax rate, they say, because the £100k average annual earning figure does not include offshore earnings. They estimate the de facto tax rate will be much lower. (They don’t specify, but I get the feeling they mean 20% or so)

Previous “what if” studies on milking the non doms, have estimated that 20% would leave after a crackdown. Crucially, Osborne calculates his tax is benign enough that no one will actually do so. Non doms, he says, believe that £25k is a price worth paying for an assurance that the tax man will not hunt down their worldwide income. They assume some will come onshore rather than pay the £25k charge. They also estimate that there are 150,000 non doms, up from 112,000 in 2004/05.