Last spring, Britain’s newspapers and money-watchers promised a mass exodus of wealth. Labour’s plan to scrap the “non-dom” tax status, Henley & Partners warned, would drive high-net-worth individuals from Britain in droves. Henley, who make money selling passports to the globally mobile rich, said the scale would be historic, a fiscal catastrophe in the making. Within days, the spectre of a millionaire migration was front-page fact. Rachel Reeves’s first fiscal move as chancellor would unravel before it began.
HMRC’s new payroll data has proven otherwise. The number of top earners on PAYE, the best real-time proxy for high-income residents, has not collapsed. In fact, receipts from that group are holding up. There is no sign of the disproportionate departures Henley forecast, or the domino effect of rich following rich out of the UK. Crisis averted.
It is a small but pointed vindication for Reeves. The non-dom reform is still forecast to raise billions over the next five years. For once, the “wealth will flee” mantra collided with hard numbers and lost. Henley has now softened its claims, dropping “exodus” from its vocabulary. Yet the moment passed months ago; the initial campaign did its work, and it is much easier to plant a headline than to uproot it.
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