Farage unveils ‘Robin Hood’ tax policy to stop richest leaving Britain – but is the real cost billions?
Nigel Farage has announced a new tax policy that would allow wealthy foreigners to pay a £250,000 fee to move to the UK and live here exempt from all tax on their foreign assets – but it could cost the UK billions, according to experts.
Speaking this morning, Farage warned “many talented people are leaving” the UK – and “we want, as a party, as many entrepreneurs, as many risk takers, as many job creators, as many people paying lots of tax, and as many people to invest in huge sums of money”.
This, he said, “is why today we’re coming up with this idea of the Britannia Card”.
Under this plan, wealthy foreigners and returning British citizens would be granted a 10-year residence permit and tax benefits in exchange for a one-time fee of £250,000.
All the fees received would be distributed “Robin Hood”-style to 2.5 million of the lowest-paid workers, giving them approximately an extra £600 a year (based on Reform predictions of 6,000 people buying into the scheme).
But one think tank has warned it could lead to a £34bn shortfall in government revenue.
Similar fees have been introduced before
Similar schemes were introduced under previous governments to try and tackle the issue of “non-doms”.
People born abroad but living in the UK, and who plan to return abroad, are “non-doms” – it means they live in the UK but are not legally domiciled here. In a tax sense, it meant they pay tax on UK income and assets, but had previously been exempt from tax on foreign income and assets (unless they brought them into the country).
2008: A £30,000 annual fee was introduced for non-doms who had lived seven years in the UK.
2012: The fee was raised to £50,000 for people who had lived here for 12 of the previous 14 years.
2015: A higher band was introduced, of £90,000, once people had lived here for 17 of the previous 20 years.
2017: Major reforms meant non-doms were automatically UK domiciled after living here for 15 of the previous 20 years.
2024: Conservatives proposed a four-year tax exemption for new residents, after which they would become subject to income and capital gains tax as normal. The non-dom regime was abolished in the 2024 autumn budget, with effect from 6 April 2025.
All of this has caused a number of very wealthy non-doms to leave the UK.
And for many, says Dan Neidle from the Tax Policy Associates, they will be unlikely to return under Reform’s new plans.
“No parliament can bind its successors, so unless billionaires believe Reform will have a majority for two or more terms, they are very unlikely to move to the UK in the expectation the ‘Britannia card’ will survive long-term,” he wrote on X.
“High-net-worth individuals crave tax stability and predictability when making long-term decisions about their residence. So we expect few would be attracted to a Britannia card.”
It also may not be paid by as many people as Reform expects.
“Only 2,400 people paid the £30k and £50k charges in 202,” Neidle says. “A £250k charge will be attractive to a smaller number of people.”
How it could cost the UK billions
Reform wants to go back to a pre-2017 position, which would mean a one-off payment could effectively retain the benefit of being a non-dom and not pay tax.
But Tax Policy Associates has raised a number of problems with the plan.
While it will attract the very wealthy who can afford such a fee, it will deter highly paid professionals – doctors, scientists, entrepreneurs – from coming to the UK.
“The Reform UK proposal makes new arrivals fully taxable immediately – that makes the UK look uncompetitive compared to many other potential destinations,” the organisation says.
“The Reform UK proposal doesn’t give any grace at all to new arrivals, unless they pay £250,000 – and that will only make sense for the very wealthy.”
The proposal will also give a windfall to a relatively small number of wealthy people who were already planning to stay here and pay UK tax.
That tax now won’t be received because the money will be automatically redistributed to lower-income workers.
“The £33.9bn reflects tax raised from a small number of very wealthy people who would opt to buy a Britannia card and so pay no tax – it’s therefore revenue immediately lost by Reform UK’s proposal,” Tax Policy Associates says.