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Nigel Farage is due to speak at a global conference that celebrates rich individuals who lower their tax bill by moving cash – and their citizenship – to other countries.
In a video promoting the ‘Nomad Capitalist’ event in Kuala Lumpur in September, the Brexiteer talks about an alleged “brain drain” in the UK and blames the Conservative Government for bringing in “rules about non-doms” – people registered abroad for tax purposes – claiming that “the exodus is beginning”. He also praises the Nomad Capitalist firm for “giving people best advice on where to go, and how to do it”.
The event promises to teach attendees “legal strategies that actually work in 2024 to reduce your taxes, build a global Plan B, and diversify and protect your wealth around the world”. It will be Farage‘s second time addressing the conference.
Nomad Capitalist is a financial consultancy catering to wealthy clients, offering a “holistic offshore plan” to help them exploit local countries’ loopholes to reduce tax liabilities through moving money, obtaining second citizenship and residency permits, and overseas investing in “real estate, stocks, venture capital, and precious metals in global markets”.
In the promotional video, Farage speaks about so-called tax burdens and tells Nomad Capitalist CEO Andrew Henderson that “these are very real issues”.
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He then goes on to give an example of the kind of hardships some British workers might face: “You’re earning £120,000 a year, let’s say, at 26-27, you’re doing pretty well in life, well, you should be doing pretty well in life, but your marginal tax rate will be 62 pence in every pound that you earn.
“If you still have student loans to pay back, you’ll be paying 70%.” People with an income of £120,000 are in the top 3% of earners in the UK. There are currently about 70,000 people with non-dom status in the UK, with an average income of roughly £800,000.
A “brain drain” in the UK has occurred in recent years – but many analyses point to the end of freedom of movement after the vote to leave the European Union as the leading cause, as top scientific researchers, academics, and others relocated to the EU to avoid losing funding.
Farage went on in the video to further slams taxes on the rich and anti-tax avoidance measures by saying: “If you get rid of rich people, if the non-doms decide to leave, if the entrepreneurs decide to move to Dubai or Dublin or wherever it may be, that doesn’t help the poorer in society”.
Research conducted by the London School of Economics indicates that the UK’s super-rich are unlikely to leave the country in meaningful numbers, partly due to fears they would be “bored to death” in “culturally barren” tax havens. There is a well-documented “home bias” among even the ultra-rich, partly due to ties of family, friends, nation, language, and sentimentality.
In his interview, Farage doubled down on his support for Liz Truss, saying the short-lived Prime Minister’s controversial mini-budget was “all done right, perhaps in the wrong order, and done far too quickly”. He blamed the bank of England for her downfall for selling off Government bonds – economists blame the forced sell-off on the former PM’s unfunded tax cuts.
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Farage states that what Truss was trying to do was to, in effect, “make people not need to go to Nomad Capitalist”.
Farage has previously blamed the implosion of the Truss Government on a “globalist attack”, stating that the “assault came from the IMF, the Biden Administration, the German Chancellor “. He branded MPs that ousted her “globalists” and “EU Remainers”, and added that the Conservative Party and “oldest functioning democracy in the world has been subjected to a globalist coup”.
Responding to Farage’s video Naomi Smith, CEO of Best for Britain and founder of tactical voting website, GetVoting.org said: “If you want to find the real causes of Britain’s brain drain, look no further than Farage’s disastrous Brexit that brought lost economic opportunities and interruptions to Horizon funding for UK science, not to mention his demonisation of immigration pressuring the Government to curtail talented minds and vital funding streams to British universities.”
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She added that “those who truly care about reversing this trend should advocate a reciprocal EU-UK Youth Mobility Scheme and reinstating Erasmus+ which would do far more to boost our fortunes, economically, socially and culturally, than opening the floodgates to tax-avoiding non-doms”.
Richard Murphy, professor of accounting practice at Sheffield University Management School, told Byline Times that Farage’s comments “display the typical attitude of those who abuse tax systems by undertaking tax avoidance through the use of tax havens”.
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“Rather than recognise the obligation that every citizen of a state has to make payment of the taxation liabilities legally owing by them as a consequence of the benefits of citizenship and the rights to protection as well as residence that it provides, he promotes a transactional relationship between the person and the state,” he added.
Prof Murphy said Farage’s defence of non-doms “ignores the very essence of community that is implicit in living in a place”.
Amid persistent rumours that Farage could return to frontline politics to lead Reform UK, Prof Murphy added his views represented the “polar opposite of what any person controlling a political party in the UK that will be seeking to return members to Parliament in the forthcoming general election should be promoting.”
Nigel Farage did not respond to a request for comment.