"Britain Faces a 'Taxodus' – It's Not Just the Super Rich Leaving, and Labour Should Be Worried!"

IF the world’s fourth-richest person won’t make the case for capitalism, then who will?

founder is clearly a smart cookie who knows how the system works.

Like many US cities and states, the UK could soon be experiencing a ‘taxodus’ as wealth flees Jeff Bezos has faced criticism for backing plans to shift tax burdens away from lower earners, with opponents saying he ignores progressive tax systems Credit: Getty

He knows socialism when he sees it. Just look at his dash to low-tax Florida from state, where he founded the global behemoth in 1994.

Local legislators are determined to turn the once prosperous tech hub on the north tip of the West Coast into the latest business-repellent left-wing petri dish.

They’ve hiked capital gains taxes and introduced state level income taxes on the wealthy for the first time.

So off went Jeff, with his estimated £269billion fortune, to the Sunshine State, where he was far from alone in claiming tax asylum.

With making wealth creators marked men in , after bankrupting the Big Apple within five months of taking office, the Taxodus is far from confined to Washington.

For the first time in US history, — which resembles the UK with its high tax, high regulation and crippling zeal for green wokeness — is shrinking.

The golden frontier of the US expansionist dream is going backwards, ravaged by fires and fentanyl and useless politicians all outdoing each other in the race to spend other people’s money.

Obviously employers, bosses and top earners are all fleeing to friendlier parts like Florida, Texas and even the poorest state in the union, Mississippi.

Despite warnings over a growing exodus of wealthy individuals from the UK, Andy Burnham has been criticised for backing policies including new wealth taxes Credit: Mirrorpix New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani has been criticised by opponents over his hard-left stance on wealth creators Credit: Alamy

There’s a beauty to the American system: Competition.

If one state is determined to repeat the mistakes of history — to make high taxes and high regulation stimulate growth and wealth — then the people who actually make it happen can go elsewhere.

Unfortunately for the UK, when wealth creators take flight it’s not to another part of the country but another part of the world.

Policymakers should be reeling from the fact that one in six people on the Sunday Times Rich List just two years ago did not appear this year.

More than a dozen foreign vanished from our shores, while more than 100 UK citizens who appeared in the chart no longer live on the mainland.

But instead of stopping in their tracks, Labour now eyes a massive shift even further left under , who witters menacingly about new wealth taxes.

Even , who is meant to be the non-loony lefty in the race to oust , on the very entrepreneurs just about keeping the UK’s reputation as a place to succeed afloat.

It’s not just those hard-done-by billionaires we need to worry about. Take the warning from global tax adviser David Lesperance who said he had 20 UK-based multimillionaire international clients two years ago. He now has zero.

He says the Taxodus is far from over in the UK, adding: “The next is the home-grown British wealth creators who don’t want to be hit by higher capital gains tax, a possible exit tax or even a wealth tax after a big moment like selling their .”

Which brings me back to Jeff. Jeff knows what the problems are and got his house in order to escape the meddling clutches of overbearing wealth-destroying government.

He took the easy route with a proposal to abolish outright for the bottom 50 per cent of earners.

Bezos quite rightly pointed out “the top one per cent of taxpayers pay about 40 per cent of all the tax revenue, and the bottom half pay three per cent”. America, and Britain, already have progressive tax systems.

We say those with the broadest shoulders should carry the biggest burden.

According to the US Tax Foundation, the top one per cent of taxpayers paid an average rate of 26.3 per cent, some seven times higher than the 3.7 per cent average rate by the bottom half of taxpayers.

The Office for Budget Responsibility says the top one per cent of UK income taxpayers provide almost a third of all income tax on around 13 per cent of total income.

On the surface, Jeff’s fluffy plan sounds like a nice idea. Yet it ignores the fact the bottom 40 per cent of earners already pay net zero income tax once work benefits and rebates are taken into account.

What happens when the providers just decide it’s not really worth the pain?

In a post-Covid world where millions sit at home with zero requirement to seek work for their welfare cheques, now is not the time to exacerbate the us-versus-them narrative.

It’s the time to be making the case for the exact opposite.

As the Director of Popular Conservatism Mark Littlewood told our show, Bezos’s suggestion is a “disaster zone”.

“I’m not suggesting that a nurse or a teacher should pay the same level of income tax as Jeff Bezos, clearly not. But I am suggesting they should have some skin in the game, and this fleece the rich, tax the rich — this myth everybody can live at everybody else’s expense, will become even more dangerous if we actually say income tax is just for the wealthy.”

If Bezos thought he would buy some Brownie points with the lefties, he was sorely mistaken, with Mayor Mamdani doubling down on his criticism of the Amazon boss. As Littlewood says: “Once you feed the alligator your left arm, it always comes back for more.”

We talk about younger voters not having a buy-in to the system, locked out of what previous generations were able to enjoy — home ownership, access to capital and stable career trajectories. Yet even the champions of the system run from the fight.

If a guy like Jeff Bezos can’t defend that model, and instead parrots an ill-conceived “student politics” talking point, we really are in more danger than I feared.