France ran the UK wealth tax experiment between 2000 and 2016. And as expected, 60,000 more millionaires left than arrived. The annual cost: 0.2% of GDP in lost investment, income tax, capital gains, and spending. Not just wealth tax revenue. All of it. So, France ABOLISHED the tax. Germany did the same. So did Sweden and Denmark, and the Netherlands. The UK is about to run the same experiment with the same assumptions, expecting a different result. The proposed £24bn revenue depends on a tax base of 5,000 people. - 80% of projected yield from that group. - 15% from ten individuals. A policy built on the residential decisions of ten mobile people is not a tax. It's a hope. And the weird part is we all know the population is already leaving. 16,500 millionaires left the UK in 2025. The figure is projected to potentially double in 2026. UBS estimates 500,000 fewer millionaires in the UK by 2028. The wealth tax isn't even live yet. I run a capital advisory, and I watch where high-net-worth capital actually moves. It moves on capital-allocation logic, and it moves faster than the policy debate assumes. The Swiss residency offer doesn't take 18 months to evaluate. It takes a meeting. The structural problem runs deeper than flight. You can't tax wealth you can't price. Private businesses, farmland, startup equity - if we look, none of it has a liquid market value. Every valuation is a negotiation and every negotiation is a potential legal challenge. West Germany spent 3 Deutschmarks administering every 10 it raised. Because valuing illiquid assets is genuinely hard. Then the liquidity trap. A quarter of people above the £10M threshold hold no meaningful cash. They hold farms, family businesses, and long-term equity positions. The tax bill arrives annually. The liquid assets don't. Five countries already learned this. The UK is preparing to be the sixth. 🔁 Send this to anyone in your network betting on the £24bn number. The historical record is clear, and the UK doesn't have a new approach. // I'm Niclas, building spectup into a new kind of capital advisory. Follow along if you're raising, investing, or just curious how the game really works.
This is not UK government policy. What you are quitting is some proposal from some PM wannabes. Suggest you wait until they put some meat on the bone before you condemn in the meantime… Gary’s Economics is the way forward https://youtube.com/shorts/o2J7SmssHY0?si=3IyTF5_B90UsRoTL
A tax base of ten people is not a policy. It's a weather forecast. And like most forecasts, it assumes the subject stays still long enough to be measured.
Well, at the end of day, if any policy is implemented and it is just hitting the middle class or founders trying to grow, it will get the backlash and definitely never work Niclas Schlopsna. I guess every Government should check this and then proceed with policies. Or maybe have transparent voting first
The liquidity point is the structural issue. A policy can model wealth as if it were cash, but private businesses, farms and founder equity do not behave like bank deposits. Once the tax depends on mobile people and illiquid assets, the real question becomes capital formation, not only revenue collection.
Well, every time relying on a tiny, highly mobile group of wealthy individuals to fund government budgets is extremely risky 💡
Well, you can't tax illiquid paper valuations with real cash without forcing founders to drain operating capital. 😶
Niclas, every wealth tax assumes wealth is still where it was filed. By the time the policy is live, the spreadsheet is already wrong.
I love the title: "A tax built on 10 people" 😄 Those are the people that optimize the most and are smart enough to move their assets wherever the policy is the friendliest.
ahh man, this tax caused so much noise in France on how absurd it was....
📍 I have been hearing a lot of debates around this, and yes, some might agree, and some might disagree. But the whole crux is startup equity and private assets aren't cash; they are illiquid, fluctuating metrics. If a policy forces founders and investors to drain operating capital from growing businesses just to fund an annual tax on a theoretical valuation, it doesn't just trigger capital flight; it actively breaks the capital formation cycle the economy relies on. Happy to hear more insights!