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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.