Tax havens, Italy sixth destination for millionaires fleeing the UK

In spite of a demographic dynamic in serious emergency - with a birth rate at the lowest in unitary history and a diaspora of young talent now sadly stabilised - there is a ranking that sees Italy in the top six globally, not only, first in Europe. It is that of the attractiveness - real - for millionaires (High Net Worth Individual, people with at least $1 million in net worth) and ultra-millionaires (Uhnw i>, more than $30 million in assets) fleeing war scenarios or troubled countries and especially Her Majesty's Labour government which, after 225 years of arms wide open to foreign wealth, ended the not dom regime (no tax on foreign property and assets of overseas immigrants).

In the flow projections of this very welcome variant of tax code applicants - projections made on the analysis of the first six months of 2024 - the coast of Liguria and the financial centre of Milan, above all, are credited with 2.200 new 100,000 euro/year taxpayers all inclusive: Rome's tax policy for global nomads with six and more zeros, despite the budget strains of the new budget law, beats Switzerland (1,500 new would-be taxpayers), Greece and Portugal in terms of incremental rates, and does not even disfigure with the top three Dubai (6,700) USA (3,800) and Singapore (3,500).

The ranking of the annual report by Henley & Partners, a British consultancy firm for 'residence and citizenship by investment' describes 2024 as a 'watershed' year in the global migration of private wealth, with 128,000 (an all-time record) millionaires fleeing geopolitical tensions, economic uncertainty and social upheaval. Behind China (15,300 millionaires with passports in hand), there is the diaspora from the United Kingdom, which has become abruptly inhospitable (9,600), then India (4,300), followed by South Korea (1,200) and Russia (1,000, the tail end of the 11,300 expats of the previous two years due to the conflict in Ukraine).

The number of millionaires in the UK, the true driver of the new global balance of family assets, has declined by 8% in the last ten years - at the time it surpassed the 80,000 desired guests, an idyll cracked as of 2017, Brexit - while it has soared in neighbouring Germany, +15%, in France (14%), but even more so in Australia (35%) and the US (+62%).

It would be wrong, however, to read the flight of the paperhounds in a purely fiscal perspective. Net of current and imminent war scenarios (South China Sea, Taiwan), those who move from Africa (Nigeria, South Africa) to South America (Brazil) from China and India are, according to experts in London, "seeking a better lifestyle, safer and cleaner environments and access to more premium health and education services".