Britannia card would be a license to tax dodge

Greedy vested interests defending the super rich are well-resourced and well-aware their aims aren’t popular.

That’s why the news this week has been filled with bogus broadcasts, scaremongering statistics and deceptive policy proposals. They’re trying to shut down, frustrate and derail the growing calls to tax the rich fairly. 

Reform's no rules (for rich) Britannia card

On Monday 23 June, Nigel Farage and his Reform party unveiled a new tax policy, capitalising on a surging public appetite for wealth redistribution. 

On the surface, it looks like a visceral answer to inequality— taking money directly from the rich and putting it in the pockets of the poor. But scratch below the surface and it’s a trojan horse; a massive giveaway for billionaire grifters, rather than a gift for “hardworking grafters”.

A study by Tax Policy Associates shows Farage’s plan would result in a £34 billion giveaway to the ultra-wealthy, robbing the rest of us of much-needed funding for our schools, hospitals and communities. Far from a “Robin Hood” tax as many news outlets dubbed it, it’s a hoodwink.

The so-called “Britannia Card” is a license to dodge taxes. It would reinstate the super rich’s access to legalised tax dodging through the “Non-dom” regime— which the government finally legislated to abolish last year but is being pressured to water down. 

Non-Doms are typically those who live in the UK but, by claiming another domicile (usually in a tax haven) as their permanent home, avoid paying UK taxes like the rest of us. Reform’s new policy would further entrench a two tier tax system— one for the super-rich, and one for everyone else— by introducing an official access fee. 

For a one-off payment of £250,000, the super-rich would get a carte blanche to hoard their wealth offshore, and exempt themselves from paying their taxes for at least a decade. In reality, this would be a bargain for billionaires whose tax liabilities are much, much higher. 

In this context, it’s clear that the £600-£1000 cash payment to be distributed to Britain’s lowest-earning 10% of full-time workers would in reality be shortchanging the marginalised, whilst stuffing the pockets of the powerful. 

Questioning the premise

It’s no coincidence Reform’s announcement came the day before the release of a new report from Henley & Partners, once again sensationalising thoroughly unsensational statistics about millionaire migration. 

Reform’s policy and others like it are usually justified as a means of making the UK “more attractive”, in order to ensure wealthy investors stay put. But all the evidence from world-leading universities, academics and from very wealthy people themselves, tells us millionaires have no plans to move.

Even Henley & Partners’ own report, with its questionable methodologies, draws its conclusion by focusing on the 0.6% of millionaires who they claim moved, and ignoring the 99.4% who are happy to continue calling the UK their home.

Our friends at Tax Justice Network were quick to point out that the number of millionaires in the UK has actually grown over the timeframe the report cites, contradicting their findings.

But predictably, news outlets have still picked up the story pushed by these well-resourced and well-connected vested interests, and printed scaremongering headlines about millionaires fleeing the UK. 

Thanks to our exposé on their last report, they’ve at least been forced, in a rather funny admission, to stop calling it an “exodus”. 

The truth is like most of us, millionaires have deep connections to the places they live. Most are proud to pay taxes, contribute to this country and support the most marginalised. 

Make or break for Starmer’s Labour

Tax breaks for the rich are not an economic necessity, but a political choice. 

A choice that means harming the most marginalised. Next week’s critical vote in the commons, on plans to cut support for disabled people, will be a watershed moment for this government. 

The government is now facing a major rebellion on its shameful and reckless cuts to social security. 108 Labour MPs have put their name to an amendment that would halt the government’s ‘welfare reform bill’. 

MPs up and down the country need to feel the pressure to act, stop the cuts, and tax the super-rich instead.