Will Reform’s Britannia Card tax plan win back the super-rich?

A Robin Hood-style scheme to give low-income families the fees paid by non-doms seems attractive at first glance, says Sean O’Grady. But will it win back any generous billionaires?

In its latest stab at policymaking, Reform UK has come up with the “Britannia Card”. It sounds like a kitsch gimmick from a building society, but it is actually the party’s attempt to recast tax policy to attract “wealth creators” to the UK.

The policy supposedly offers a bonus to workers with the lowest incomes in the country, funded entirely from the one-off fees charged to non-doms – billed fancifully as a kind of Robin Hood tax.

What’s the deal with the Britannia Card?

It is not completely clear, and much depends on how many very rich people come to Britain in response to the offer. In principle, it works a bit like this: someone very rich pays HM Revenue and Customs a one-off “landing fee” of some £250,000. For that modest (to them) sum, they are free of all UK tax on their income and wealth from overseas. That means no income tax, dividend taxes, and no capital gains taxes on such foreign income, indefinitely. As well as that, they get a “Britannia residency permit” that gives free entry and exit from the UK, renewable every 10 years – but not automatic UK citizenship (this is Reform UK, after all).

This new breed of “non-dom” - they’d no longer have to prove even a tenuous previous family or business link to the UK – would only have to pay tax on their UK income, such as it is, and their spending – stamp duty on their estates and mansions, VAT and other tax on luxury cars, employers’ national insurance for the butler, that sort of thing.

Where does the Britannia money go?

To the poor! All of it! That’s the magic – the lowest 10 per cent of all full-time workers would get a payment directly from the HMRC, depending on how many Britannia cards are sold per annum. Reform UK suggests that if 10,000 plutocrats decided to relocate to Britain every year, this policy would raise £2.5bn annually, equivalent to £1,000 per lower-paid worker.

Sounds great. Are there any catches?

Yes. One is that Reform’s calculations ignore that some of the sought-after wealthy would actually lose out under its non-dom system compared to the current Labour regime; for example highly-paid professionals with savings back home are currently free of UK income tax for the first four years they’re in the UK and only have to lay a fee of £30,000 or £60,000 a year. Under the Reform policy, they’d be whacked with a £250,000 fee immediately, plus full tax on any UK income.

What would Reform’s cost?

A great deal. The Britannia Card scheme suffers from a common economic phenomenon called the “free rider” effect. Thus it represents a huge tax cut for the mega-rich who are already here and plan and wish to stay here even under the changes the previous Labour and Tory administrations brought in, and whatever Rachel Reeves ends up doing. For them, £250,000 will be a windfall. Of course, some others may be attracted, on the same grounds, but HMRC would still lose out. Tax experts put it at £34bn over five years. It would make Kensington (in London, not Liverpool) even more expensive but not that much would trickle down. That means more spending cuts or borrowings to pay for a tax cut predominantly destined for some of the wealthiest people on earth.

Any other benefits?

Reform says it would mean “wealth creators” would come and start businesses and revitalise the UK economy. Their policy paper contains impressive looking numbers about how much these types’ “investments in the UK” amount to – some in the tens of billions. However, how much of this is simply expensive real estate, collections of art and classic cars, shares in foreign companies listed in London, and US Treasury bonds is less clear. Super-rich non-doms might splash cash on lawyers, estate agents and tax advisers but their wealth-creating benefits for the nation can be exaggerated. They’re not about to finance a new blast furnace for Port Talbot.

Aren’t we losing wealth and talent?

Yes, but not necessarily enough to lose the benefit of a tougher FIG tax regime. Reeves and HMRC seem acutely aware of the trends in multi-millionaires and billionaires moving to Dubai or America, and have already started to ease some of the changes she made in her first budget, such as on trusts used to avoid inheritance tax.

Will it work?

The quirky old non-dom regime – unique to the UK and Ireland and not to be confused with “non-resident” tax status – miraculously managed to survive for a century before it was seriously reformed, and now the tax system for the top echelons of society is much more changeable, and undeniably less attractive, to the footloose global rich.

Reform says it can make its Britannia Card a contractual arrangement, protected from such political interference, but the fact is all governments love to mess about with the tax system, and no parliament can bind its successors. The costly Britannia Card rules could be abolished by an act of parliament passed in a day, and would probably have to be.