Farage’s “tax dodgers’ license” for non-doms

Nigel Farage’s ‘Britannia Card’ proposal sounds at first like a tax on the rich, as it would charge non-doms a one-off fee of £250,000 for the card.

But here’s the catch: that fee lets them avoid a huge range of taxes after that point, including wealth taxes, capital gains and even inheritance tax.

‘Non-doms’, or non-domiciles, are a category of rich person who tries to avoid paying British tax by saying that their ‘main home’ is abroad, often in a tax haven, even though they spend a large amount of time in the UK.

This special status for the super-rich is in the process of being abolished – but Farage wants to protect it, by disguising it as a new tax.

Farage’s card is not actually a tax on these non-doms – it is handing them a “license to dodge tax”. It’s a way for the richest to pay £250,000, which is peanuts to them, in order to save countless millions over the rest of their life.

Tax Policy Associates did the sums and showed that the scheme would give away £34 billion to the wealthiest individuals.

What an indictment of the media that some of them, seeing only the fee, called this a ‘Robin Hood’ scheme.