The wealthy have abandoned Britain. According to the Telegraph, “one millionaire leaves Britain every 45 minutes under Labour”. The Independent dutifully echoed that “Britain lost a net 10,800 millionaires last year”, blaming the Chancellor’s non-dom tax plans for the “exodus”. What used to be known as the Evening Standard warned of the “world’s biggest” flight of millionaires under Labour tax plans. In 2024, nearly 11,000 articles mourned the millionaire apocalypse. The peril seems clear: if the rich flee, the tax take collapses, capital dries up, and Rachel Reeves will be forced to impound the last remaining yacht in Dover.
There is just one small problem in that no such exodus happened. Most reports traced back to the same source: Henley & Partners. The investment migration consultancy, and its data partner New World Wealth. Henley – who make money marketing “golden passports” and residence visas – published a report in mid-2024 claiming vast millionaire outflows. Henley’s business model thrives on wealthy clients fearing their country is financially uninhabitable – an incentive to frame millionaire migration as a hot trend du jour. Few pieces mentioned that Henley & Partners had a stake in amplifying fears of a fleeing millionaire class.
But let us take its report at face value. The cited figure claimed an estimated 9,500 millionaires were expected to leave Britain in 2024. That sounds large. Yet the UK is home to over three million millionaires. As Tax Justice UK pointed out, 9,500 represents only 0.3 per cent of the UK’s millionaire population. At that glacial rate it would take more than three centuries for all millionaires to trickle out, and that’s assuming no new ones are created or immigrate in the meantime.
If anything, this modest outflow has been a long time coming. Henley’s data suggests that the UK has been steadily losing high-net-worth individuals since at least 2017, with Brexit marking an inflection point. Their 2023 report painted a picture not of tax-induced flight but of long-term reputational rot, driven by political instability, a decaying public realm, and a sense that London’s edge as a financial centre is dulling. Even Peter Ferrigno, tax director at Henley, admitted the “exodus” was about broader decline: the reality being more about perceptions of declining opportunity and social cohesion than any particular fiscal measure.
Indeed, their estimates of millionaire movements weren’t based on official tax records, airline data, or direct surveys of the individuals, primarily because these do not exist in an accessible way. If you want to know whether millionaires are leaving the country, you first have to know who the millionaires are. But we have little idea who actually owns what in the UK, let alone who might have fled. Companies House remains peppered with shell structures and nominee directors with no proactive verification of beneficial owners. Property doesn’t fare any better, as even law enforcement lacks accurate info for tens of thousands of homes, adding up to well over £60bn in hidden UK property wealth.
So, instead, Henley’s partner New World Wealth trawled “public sources… including LinkedIn and other business portals” to infer where wealthy people say they are working or living. In practice, this means “migration” can come down to changes in people’s online profiles – someone updating their LinkedIn location from “London” to “Dubai” might be counted as a millionaire who left the UK, even if they still spend most of their time in Mayfair. This is not shocking given New World Wealth appear to have a headcount of one, and has never made its underlying data public.
What’s the harm is one exaggerated story? The Henley story broke in 2024 just as momentum was building globally for curbing outlandish wealth: Oxfam called for a 2 per cent global tax on extreme fortunes and at the G20 Brazil tabled plans for a coordinated levy on the ultra-rich. But as millionaire-flight hysteria mounted, reports emerged that Labour was getting cold feet on a non-dom crackdown. While rubbing shoulders at Davos, Rachel Reeves reportedly indicated she’d “soften” the crackdown. By that month’s end, outlets were treating it as accepted wisdom that Reeves’ non-dom tax plan had “backfired” and needed revision The implication was clear: push these people too hard on tax and they’ll vanish, taking their money with them.
Except they won’t. Even if the ultra-wealthy wanted to decamp en masse, a vast chunk of British wealth isn’t particularly mobile. Roughly 40 per cent of household wealth in the UK is held in residential property. Unlike cash or crypto, property does not emigrate. It just sits there, appreciating quietly in Clapham while its owner files a LinkedIn location update from Monaco. Much of the rest of the UK’s household wealth is tied up in pensions and business equity – assets that are either immovable or contingent on UK infrastructure, customers, and legal stability. The “exodus” narrative hinges on people packing up their passports rather than their portfolios.
Of course, the economic impact of departures isn’t strictly proportional to headcount. The very richest do pay far more taxes. But even here, the data is thin and contradictory. HMRC data shows little evidence of significant wealth emigration after prior reforms. Many rich people are not itching to abscond – quite the opposite. A recent poll of UK millionaires found 85 per cent would support a modest wealth tax (2 per cent on assets over £10m) to help fund public services. Those are hardly the sentiments of a class plotting escape.
The non-dom panic is just a dress rehearsal. As wealth becomes increasingly inherited rather than earned, debates over taxation will shift from income to assets, and from foreign millionaires to domestic dysfunction. The so-called Bank of Mum and Dad is now the ninth largest mortgage lender in the UK. The Resolution Foundation estimates that around 63 per cent of household wealth is held by those aged 55 and over, the bulk of it in property and private pensions. Inheritance tax, long treated as politically toxic, is being pulled into the frame by necessity: HMRC is looking to bring in £15bn from it by the early 2030s.
So when tax exile threats are deployed against modest changes to non-dom status, this isn’t limited to Britain’s wealthy moving overseas. It’s about preparing the ground to block any future settlement that touches the hoarded, housed wealth of UK’s upper-middle classes, many of whom would rather keep their Soho Opera than save a few pounds in the Caymans. Taxing wealth properly is technically difficult, but not impossible. What is impossible is designing good policy while scare stories are trotted out by wealth management’s PR machine desperately trying to save its skin and frighten governments off progressive taxation. This government is in danger of falling for it – hook, line and sinker.
[See also: Let the non doms leave]
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