The Wall Street Journal recently reported that the number of people in the U.K. with a net worth of £1 million or more has declined by 7% since 2024. The drop is attributed to slow British economic growth and high taxes that have driven away some individuals to lower-tax countries. The newspaper quoted the founder of an economic forecasting firm as saying that Britain’s wealthy have moved to places like Switzerland, Greece, Italy and Portugal to escape onerous taxes.
In Britain, the top marginal tax rate for income over £125,140 (about $170,000) is 45%. At the federal level in the U.S., the top marginal tax rate of 37% applies to income over $640,600. Current IMF data show that GDP per capita for the U.S. is $94,430, while that of the U.K. is $61,060. As these numbers show, the U.K. subjects a much higher proportion of its middle class to the country’s top marginal income tax rate than the U.S. does.
The Forbes 2026 billionaire list shows that the U.S. has 989 billionaires, while the U.K. counts only 56. Perhaps that explains why the U.K. has to tap a much larger portion of its upper-middle-class population for revenue. It is widely known that U.S. billionaires employ all sorts of tax avoidance schemes to lower their tax burdens. Even so, despite a lower top marginal income tax rate, the federal government still collects substantial revenue from this group and hence does not need to cast its tax net as broadly as the U.K. does.
What did surprise me in the Wall Street Journal article was how low the pain threshold appears to be among British taxpayers. Here in the U.S., we are used to hearing about billionaire flight to lower-tax jurisdictions. In the U.K., it seems as if even mere millionaires are running away from the taxman. That made me wonder: Would more Americans start to act like the billionaires and find ways to shield their wealth if they were subjected to higher tax rates?
Many of us often describe billionaires as greedy for their unwillingness to share more of their wealth. Perhaps we should be a bit careful with our condemnations. We cannot know for sure how we would behave if we were to someday join the ranks of the ultrawealthy.