Why Are High Earners Leaving the UK? The Wealth Exodus Data

There is a moment, for many high earners, when the spreadsheet stops making sense. You have built something — a business, a portfolio, a career. You pay your taxes. And then you look at what you're keeping, versus what you could keep somewhere else, and the arithmetic becomes uncomfortable.

In 2024, approximately 10,800 individuals with $1 million or more in liquid investable assets made that calculation and chose to leave the United Kingdom. According to Henley & Partners' annual Private Wealth Migration Report, only China saw a higher outflow. This is not a marginal statistical blip. It is the continuation of a trend that has been accelerating since 2017 — and which intensified sharply following the October 2024 Autumn Budget.

The Data: How Many Are Leaving and Where

Henley & Partners tracks millionaire migration using a combination of immigration data, residency permit applications, and proprietary network intelligence from wealth management professionals in over 90 countries. Their figures represent net migration — arrivals minus departures — for individuals with $1 million or more in liquid investable assets.

The UK's net loss of 10,800 HNWIs in 2024 compares to a loss of approximately 4,200 in 2019. The pandemic years saw temporary reversals, but the trend line since 2017 has been consistently negative. The Institute for Fiscal Studies notes that the top 1% of income taxpayers — those earning above roughly £130,000 — contribute approximately 28% of all income tax receipts. The departure of even a small fraction of this group has disproportionate fiscal consequences.

New Wealth Frontiers data (cited in the Henley report) estimates that the UK lost approximately £37 billion in wealth to emigration in 2024, accounting for business assets, investment portfolios, and property disposals linked to permanent departures.

Top destinations for departing UK HNWIs, with headline personal tax comparison:

What's Driving the Decision

High earner emigration is rarely a single-event decision. Wealth managers who advise HNWIs describe a tipping-point model: clients track their cumulative tax position over a rolling five-year forecast, and when the projected retention rate — the share of income and capital appreciation they actually keep — falls below a threshold, relocation moves from hypothetical to planned.

Surveys conducted by the British Chambers of Commerce and the Confederation of British Industry in 2024 identified the following as the most commonly cited factors among business owners and senior executives considering or having completed a move:

• CGT rate increases (18%/24%) — immediately increased the cost of exiting a business or investment portfolio built over decades
• Abolition of the non-domicile regime — removed a long-standing mechanism that had attracted internationally mobile wealth to the UK
• Employer NI increase to 15% — directly raised the cost of employing staff for business owners, compressing margins
• Frozen income tax thresholds — pushing more high earners into 45% through fiscal drag, with no announced reversal date
• Uncertainty about future wealth or IHT reform — particularly the announced inclusion of pension pots in IHT from 2027

The Tax Tipping Points

The OBR's October 2024 Economic and Fiscal Outlook confirmed that the UK's tax-to-GDP ratio was on a trajectory toward 38.3% by 2029 — the highest sustained level since the 1940s. For high earners, the marginal rates have compounded in ways that aggregate data can obscure.

Consider a business owner who sells a company for £2 million in profit. Under 2022/23 rules, with a £12,300 annual CGT exemption and the 10% Business Asset Disposal Relief rate on the first £1 million, their total CGT liability was approximately £197,700. Under 2024/25 rules — with only a £3,000 exemption and BADR rate now at 14% (rising to 18% by 2026) — the same disposal generates approximately £297,000 in CGT. An additional £99,000 in tax on a single transaction.

For the highest earners, the combined marginal rate of income tax (45%), National Insurance (2% above upper earnings limit), student loan repayments (where applicable), and the gradual withdrawal of the personal allowance between £100,000 and £125,140 creates an effective marginal rate of 63.25% on income in that band. This is not a marginal analysis — it is the actual rate applied to each additional pound of earnings in that range, per HMRC's own guidance.

What We Lose When They Go

The fiscal arithmetic of HNWI emigration is straightforward but often understated in public debate. HMRC data shows that in 2022/23, the top 1% of income taxpayers — approximately 350,000 individuals earning above £130,000 — paid £74 billion in income tax, representing 28% of all income tax receipts. The top 5% paid 50% of all income tax.

When a single individual earning £400,000 per year relocates from the UK to Dubai, the direct income tax loss to HMRC is approximately £175,000 per year. Add employer NI (if they operated through a business), CGT on future disposals, and IHT on eventual estate — and the lifetime fiscal value of a single high-earning, asset-holding individual to the UK Treasury can exceed £3–5 million.

The IFS noted in its 2024 Annual Lecture that the behavioural response to high marginal rates — including emigration — is one of the most economically significant but hardest to model variables in tax policy. Their central estimate suggests a 10% reduction in the number of top earners would reduce income tax receipts by approximately 2.5–3%, equating to £6–7 billion per year.

Is This a Problem?

The public policy debate is genuinely contested. Some economists, including those at the Resolution Foundation, argue that high-earner emigration is overstated in press coverage, that many declared emigrations are partial (maintaining UK ties and returning), and that the tax system should be evaluated on its overall distributional effects rather than its effect on any one group.

The counter-argument — made forcefully by the Centre for Policy Studies and others — is that the UK competes in a global market for mobile capital and talent, and that signals matter: a reputation for an unstable or punitive tax environment deters not just existing HNWIs but inward investment, entrepreneurship, and the decisions of ambitious individuals early in their careers.

The OBR's own uncertainty analysis acknowledges that behavioural responses to the October 2024 tax changes — particularly CGT and non-dom reforms — carry a wide confidence interval. Their central forecast assumes limited behavioural response. If emigration runs significantly above their assumptions, the fiscal forecast deteriorates.

What It Would Take to Reverse the Trend

Wealth managers interviewed for Henley's 2024 report identified three conditions that would most effectively halt and reverse the outflow. In order of frequency cited: predictability (a commitment not to raise CGT, IHT, or introduce a wealth tax for a defined period), international competitiveness (CGT rates at or below G7 median, currently approximately 20%), and a reformed non-dom regime that retains the principle of taxing overseas income on remittance for new arrivals.

None of these changes are currently announced policy. Until they are, the forecast from New Wealth Frontiers is for continued net outflows of 9,500–11,000 HNWIs per year through 2026, making the UK one of the most significant net exporters of private wealth in the developed world.