“The Great Millionaire Migration (That Mostly Didn't Happen)”

It was a Saturday morning and Barry, a bloke whose hobbies included arguing with strangers online and pretending he understood tax policy, opened his laptop and cracked his knuckles with purpose.

“Time to tell the people what they don’t want to hear,” he muttered dramatically, like a budget Batman. “It’s time… to talk about taxing the rich.”

Immediately, a distant thunderclap rolled across the skies, and somewhere in Kent, Old Git—a fabulously wealthy man with a shooting jacket, three estates, and a permanent state of mild outrage—sneezed into his Fortnum & Mason napkin and declared, “It begins.”

Old Git was the very model of a panic-prone plutocrat. He split his time between a converted abbey in Kent and a rambling, wind-battered Scottish estate with scores of servants and a rotating squad of highly trained gun dogs who answered only to obscure Highland whistles. He’d once claimed to be allergic to socialism and insisted on capitalising the word "Market" in casual conversation.

He was exactly the sort of man who believed taxing the rich would cause the collapse of the economy, the House of Lords, and possibly British cheese exports.

Barry, meanwhile, had recently attended a talk by Arun Advani, a gentle genius from Warwick University who knew so much about tax he could predict your inheritance just by watching how you stir your tea.

Arun had access to the kind of data most pundits can only dream of: real, anonymised HMRC tax return data. Not hearsay. Not yacht-club gossip. Actual f**king numbers.

And those numbers told a story that would’ve made Old Git spill his grouse consommé in horror.

The great “Millionaire Exodus”? Mostly fiction mate.

Yes, Arun explained, there was a brief blip in non-dom departures after a tax rule change—but the trend snapped right back to normal. In fact, some years even saw fewer departures. Most who left were probably going anyway—possibly to avoid attending Tarquin’s interpretive dance version of Julius Caesar.

“But what about the investment they bring?” Old Git bellowed from his drawing room, while a footman tried to coax a spaniel off a velvet chaise longue.

Arun, ever calm, pointed out that non-doms don’t really invest in the UK, because our tax regime actively punishes them for doing so. “They’d be mad to put money here,” he said. “The system basically begs them to invest anywhere else.”

Barry raised an eyebrow. “So we’re handing them Ferrero Rocher at the ambassador’s reception, but asking them to shop local in Paraguay?”

“Exactly,” said Arun.

By now, Old Git was pacing the library of his Scottish estate, his four Labradors and two springers trailing loyally behind, sensing financial doom. "They’ll all flee to Dubai!" he wailed.

Arun might have replied, “Sir, they don’t live in Dubai. They *dabble* in Dubai. They bottomless brunch there. They sweat there. But they don’t tuck their kids in there.”

Barry grinned. “So they’re not leaving forever. They’re just… briefly avoiding the taxman and Tarquin’s cello recital?”

“That’s the gist.”

Even factoring in the minor flurry of movers, the outcome? An additional £311 million in tax revenue.

Back in Kent, Old Git sat by his Aga, surrounded by obedient gun dogs and silent servants, muttering, “This country’s going to hell in a handbasket. I might have to sell the lake.”

Back online, Barry posted his findings. Reactions came thick and fast:

One user posted a meme of a goose wearing a cravat shouting “TAXATION IS FEUDALISM!”

Another claimed their friend “spoke to Old Git’s gardener’s niece,” and he was “already en route to the Cayman Islands by way of a private dirigible.”

In truth, Old Git was still in his tartan dressing gown, sulking because his butler had served him marmalade from Waitrose.

And so, Barry logged off, satisfied. Because millionaires weren’t migrating—they were calendar-sneaking, rule-bending, and mostly still here.

Because when push comes to tax shove, the only exodus is Old Git leaving the dinner table early to avoid a conversation about VAT—closely followed by six dogs, two spaniels, and a cocker who probably understands the tax code better than some lobbyists.

ThE eND

Posted By: Tombs on June 28th 2025 at 13:19:23

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