The UK is losing its millionaires, even if it’s not sure how many

Passengers queue to check in bags at Heathrow's Terminal 5. PA Wire

One of the hidden traps in dealing with British markets is that the basic set-up is seldom as straightforward as it appears.

That is becoming more apparent every day in the fraught debate over a reported billionaire exodus. This phenomenon was first triggered by Brexit, compounded by the Ukraine war and then moved into overdrive by the targeting of non-domiciled tax residents, followed by the abolition of the advantageous status altogether.

There are no good figures in this trend. Where there are statistics, these are overlapping and incomplete.

In recent weeks, a number of analysts have started to conclude that the rush to the exits is overblown and quite possibly largely bunkum. Something is definitely going on that appears to sum up the UK’s decline as an attractive economy, but its impact may not be that easy to properly gauge.

The golden passport firm Henley and Partners predicted that 16,500 people would quit the UK this year alone. The non-domiciled population in the UK was 74,000 when the advantageous status was abolished. Official budget planners expected a quarter of that number to quit the UK as a result of the changes, which is just over 18,000. Surveys then suggested that this exodus was being boosted by a large chunk of the country’s dollar millionaires.

Prominent leavers reportedly included Nassef Sawiris, the Egyptian tycoon; Shravin Bharti Mittal, the Indian businessman; John Fredriksen, the Cypriot shipping magnate; and Richard Gnodde, the South African-born vice president of Goldman Sachs. Mr Fredriksen, who told a Norwegian newspaper that Britain had “gone to hell”, was said to be putting his £250 million ($332 million) Chelsea mansion – The Old Rectory – on the market.

Dubai's millionaires double as London drops down wealth list

01:16

In truth, the “hell” that matters is the budget deficit. Much like US President Donald Trump and his tariffs raid, the UK government is searching for novel areas to tax in order to make up the fiscal gap.

The governing Labour party has clearly decided that a form of wealth taxation is its way of plugging a shortfall that seems only likely to widen as AI is brought into the economy. The missing figure that Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves appears to be aiming for is $45 billion annually.

A modern, mobile population has options. They can move themselves, their asset base and ultimately their investment income out of the country.

The report for Henley and Partners faced debunking last week from the lawyer Dan Neidle, for putting the total number of UK dollar millionaires at about 578,000. Its figures relied on the scraping of social media and other inventive data capture techniques to get the numbers it reported.

However, the UK’s Office for National Statistics suggests that the number in its surveys is about 300,000. And that is part of the problem: the state is using surveys, too. The UK system has no way of knowing how many millionaires are in the country. The government cannot peer even into every bank account let alone estimate any other holdings.

When a viral video went around recently suggesting that the UK was triggering checks on people leaving the country, the suggestion was that authorities were rattled by the exodus and going to turn the taxman’s gaze on the richer in this way. But no such checks are possible for the reasons above. And in any case, the UK does not record when people fly out, only when they enter the country.

In truth, the 'hell' that matters is the budget deficit

But wait, there is more. Beauchamp Estates, the very high-end property broker active in places like Knightsbridge, Mayfair and Belgravia, says that there’s been a twist in the saga. In the first half of this year, it confirms that those involved in the 27 sales of properties were former non-doms and the majority of those left to relocate to Dubai as their prime primary residence.

It noted that the market has speeded up since March. It also said that there is a clear trend of “house-swapping” where people selling to move to the UAE are selling to buyers from the Gulf. Alongside buyers from North America, these two groups make up more than half the market in London. Some of the buyers in the pipeline are willing to pay up to £150 million.

Experts suggest that what is really hurting the UK government in its wealth tax drive is the imposition of inheritance tax on the estates of the wealthy. That is an emotional issue that even saw Mr Trump give Prime Minister Keir Starmer a lecture on the “death tax” when they met in Scotland last week.

Pragmatic consideration should now force a rethink. The UK government won’t, in the end, be able to tax what is no longer there. The figure for the number of people moving in this trend are, as we see, highly uncertain. But the high-profile examples given above tell a tale.

Before it is too late, the Chancellor should recognise what Beauchamps detects; that the UK market has real and enduring appeal. Dislocation happens every now and then in a market that is deep and liquid. It is not too late to find more subtle ways to manage upwards the tax take from a dynamic economy that is popular with wealth creators. London, for example, is still a platform for global wealth.

For her part, Ms Reeves is trying to make investing in the UK even more attractive. Starving the supply of sensational headlines about the exodus of the rich, when something more nuanced is actually taking place, would be a good place to start.