Ian H
Squire
I know what it is, but that's the impression I get, especially at avatar-size. Seems appropriate though.
Starmer's vision quest
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I know what it is, but that's the impression I get, especially at avatar-size. Seems appropriate though.
briantrumpet
Über Member
Maybe a useful thread on Henley & Partners' 'report':
https://bsky.app/profile/sebastiansalek.com/post/3ltejiqeg5c2p
https://bsky.app/profile/sebastiansalek.com/post/3ltejiqeg5c2p
16,500 millionaires will leave Britain? Total rubbish. Yet leading figures of the right have fallen for it, including the Shadow Home Secretary! It takes just 30 seconds to expose the truth:
Look at who’s repeating this line with absolutely no fact checking. None of them thought to ask the most important question: Who’s behind the story, and why?
The company pushing this figure is Henley & Partners. It helps rich people flee abroad to avoid paying tax. So it’s like asking a car salesman if you need a new car. That’d be fine if their approach were sound. Sadly, that’s not the case.
The research doesn’t actually track where millionaires live. It just looks at *where they say they work* on LinkedIn. So if you change your office location, you’ve ‘moved countries’. Things get even more misleading when you see who they’re tracking – and who they’re not.
Henley only tracks millionaires with >$1m in liquid assets (like cash and stocks). That’s only 20% of UK millionaires, so it’s heavily skewed towards the most mobile ones. But the biggest problem is that the 16,500 figure is a *forecast*. How are they seeing the future?
There’s a lengthy section on Henley’s website explaining their methodology. What do they say about how they get to the 16,500 figure: nothing. Let’s be generous and assume it’s accurate. Even then, it’s a very underwhelming stat.
16,500 is only 0.63% of millionaires. That’s less than 1 in 100. If 100 people are at a party, and one person leaves, would you call that an exodus? And there’s one final killer detail.
The number of UK millionaires has grown 10x faster than those leaving! Since 2017, we’ve gained 435,000 millionaires while allegedly losing 41,400. So is Britain losing all its millionaires? No. Literally the opposite is true.
CXRAndy
Legendary Member
Many millionaires have become through property. They are not cash rich, or generate wealth.
The fact remains a small percentage of very wealthy individuals pay a huge percentage of tax to the revenue.
If you lose a small number from this already small demographic then the financial impact is substantial.
Labour have done this time and time again. Famously in the 60s, all the rich musicians and actors left Tax Exiles became a famous title. Embarrassing the Labour government
Those that stayed used tax avoidance to mitigate the high tax regime.
If you drive away the entrepreneurs you lose more than just tax revenue
The fact remains a small percentage of very wealthy individuals pay a huge percentage of tax to the revenue.
If you lose a small number from this already small demographic then the financial impact is substantial.
Labour have done this time and time again. Famously in the 60s, all the rich musicians and actors left Tax Exiles became a famous title. Embarrassing the Labour government
Those that stayed used tax avoidance to mitigate the high tax regime.
If you drive away the entrepreneurs you lose more than just tax revenue
bobzmyunkle
Über Member
Henley only tracks millionaires with >$1m in liquid assets (like cash and stocks).
Ok it's a bit more than spare change, but 'millionaire' doesn't seem to refer to the sort of incomprehensible riches it did when I was a lad.
Ok it's a bit more than spare change, but 'millionaire' doesn't seem to refer to the sort of incomprehensible riches it did when I was a lad.
briantrumpet
Über Member
I suspect that if you include property, several forumites would be classed as 'millionaires'. It's a vaguely meaningless term these days, whereas once, when my parents bought their house for £2000 (1960), it signified unimaginable wealth.
