Britain’s exodus of millionaires last year was as damaging as the UK losing half a million taxpayers, a study has claimed.
The country lost 10,800 millionaires to foreign countries last year, more than double the number who left in 2023. It means that, since Labour came to power, one millionaire left the UK every 45 minutes. The exodus was sparked by Labour’s tax raids on private schools and non-doms as well as a general collapse in business confidence after Rachel Reeves’ October Budget.
Adam Smith Institute (ASI) research, seen by The Daily Telegraph, showed that each of the millionaires who left Britain last year would have paid at least £393,957 in income tax per year.
The free market think tank said one millionaire’s tax payment is equivalent to that of 49 average taxpayers, meaning the millionaire exodus is comparable to 529,200 average taxpayers leaving the country.
Shadow business secretary Andrew Griffith said: “Our entrepreneurs and businesses are fleeing this socialist Government’s tax raid in droves.
“This research shows that Rachel Reeves’s Marxist maths has put the economy in real danger of drowning in Labour’s tepid bath of decline. Unless she changes course, every taxpayer will be getting soaked as a result.”
And Maxwell Marlow, director of research at the ASI, warned that the exodus of millionaires would have “serious implications for our wider economy and public services”.
He added: “Our findings underline the urgent need to attract more millionaires to the UK.”
The millionaire exodus has been driven by taxes, the growing dominance of the US and Asia in the global hi-tech sector, the “dwindling” importance of the London Stock Exchange and the “deteriorating” state of the health system, according to the New World Wealth (NWW) global analytics firm.
Only China lost more wealthy residents in 2024 than the UK, it found.
NMW research head Andrew Amoils said London had been one of the world’s top destinations for migrating millionaires from the 1950s to the early 2000s.
They are now leaving the British capital for places such as Paris, Dubai, Amsterdam, Monaco, Geneva, Sydney, and Singapore, he said.
In a blog, Mr Amoils said there are “multiple complex drivers” behind the UK’s wealth outflow.
He added: “Wealthy non-doms have been targeted with additional taxes, which has prompted many of them to leave the country.”
He also suggested the levels of capital gains tax and estate duty rates also deter wealthy business owners and retirees – and these taxes also have a spillover effect on the local wealth management and family office sector, which is showing signs of decline.
A Treasury spokesman said: “The Office for Budget Responsibility does not expect the non-dom reforms to negatively impact the economy, including indirect tax receipts, but do expect them to raise £33.8 billion over the next five years to help fund the public services and investment projects needed to drive growth.
“Our main capital gains tax rate is lower than any other G7 European country, and our new residence-based regime is simpler and more attractive to new arrivals than the non-dom regime it replaces.”
