Will the UK Chase Away the Geese with the Golden Eggs?

Allister Heath has an excellent column in the Spectator explaining how Gordon Brown’s class-warfare policies will discourage successful foreigners from moving to the United Kingdom.

London will be hit particularly hard because the attack on “non-domiciled residents” will be augmented by higher capital gains taxes and policies to discourage British expatriates from spending too much time (and money) in the city.

But some people will benefit. Swiss realtors are probably delighted with Brown’s self-destructive proposals, since many highly-productive people will now be looking to relocate to tax-friendly jurisdictions:

[T]he Treasury now admits that 3,000 non-dom expats will leave Britain in April, when the changes, including a £30,000 annual poll tax, are due to kick in. This is a truly remarkable admission, of which far too little has been made. Given how hard all economies, including Britain, strive to attract high-net-worth investors and the highly skilled these days, it is difficult to fathom why any government in its right mind would wish suddenly to begin penalising those it has sought to woo for so long. What is most absurd about this is that the Treasury readily acknowledges, in the very same document laying out its tax hike plans, that ‘in an increasingly globalised economy it is crucial for the UK’s competitiveness that the UK continues to attract international talent to this country’.

…[T]he assault on the non-doms is going hand in hand with a hike in capital gains tax, a rise in corporation tax on small companies, and a crackdown on the 29,000 non-residents who commute most weeks from Monaco or the Isle of Man. All of these changes add up to a simple message to the skilled, hard-working and above all footloose international talent to which today’s Britain owes so much of its success: don’t bother coming here, we don’t value you any longer.

…Tax lawyers are starting to warn their clients seeking to relocate to Britain that the current volley of tax hikes is likely to be merely the thin edge of a much more punitive wedge. Brown’s attack on the non-doms could easily become Brown’s very own Sarbanes-Oxley, the ultra-onerous piece of post-Enron legislation in America which chased away hundreds of companies to more welcoming shores. But what is most distressing to non-doms currently based in the City, and to many of those considering moving here, is that the Tories support an almost identical policy.