Lobby group calls on Rachel Reeves to scale back non-dom tax plans

Government officials are planning last-ditch meetings with lobbyists who are urging chancellor Rachel Reeves to climb down on her plans to increase taxes for some of the richest people in Britain.
Officials at Number 10 are scheduled to meet this week with Foreign Investors for Britain — a newly formed lobby group representing the interests of the country’s 74,000 non-doms — to discuss a plan to revamp their special tax status in a way that discourages them from leaving Britain.
Non-doms — persons who are resident in the UK but identified as domiciled overseas for tax purposes — are currently exempt from paying British tax on their overseas wealth. They are threatening to leave Britain because of changes the chancellor is proposing to make — including a plan to levy inheritance tax on their foreign assets — at her maiden budget in three weeks time. Those threats have raised concerns that Reeves’s plan could end up losing the Exchequer tax revenues, rather than raising money.
While former chancellor Jeremy Hunt had set out plans to eventually abolish the special tax status of non-doms, Reeves’s plan has caused further controversy. In 2022-23 non-doms contributed £8.9 billion of tax to the exchequer, according to HMRC.
Foreign Investors for Britain, which was formed in June, is understood to have already met Treasury officials. The lobby group, which declined to disclose its backers, is proposing a tiered tax regime to tackle the concerns about inheritance tax.
It includes an idea for non-doms to pay a fixed annual sum, scaled to their wealth and fixed for 15 years. For instance, someone with up to £100 million of personal wealth would pay an annual charge of £200,000 rising incrementally to £2 million a year for those worth over £500 million. At the moment, non-doms pay up to £60,000 a year .
Leslie MacLeod-Miller, an Australian-born lawyer who speaks for the lobby group, said: “We’re obviously very pleased that the government is listening because we have been ringing the alarm bell and they need to understand that this is real, that Britain is being turned into the departure lounge.”
Number 10 declined to comment. A Treasury spokesman said: “We are addressing unfairness in the tax system so we can raise the revenue to rebuild our public services. That is why we are removing the outdated non-dom tax regime and replacing it with a new internationally competitive residence-based regime focused on attracting the best talent and investment to the UK.”