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bid to boost public finances by £5bn a year by raising taxes on wealthier Brits is instead seeing them flee. In October, Ms Reeves announced a plethora of tax hikes, including , which took effect in April. The Chancellor hopes that the rich will choose to stay in the UK and pay more in tax, which will in turn pay for gaps in public finances.

However, millionaires and billionaires have been leaving the UK ahead of the new non-dom tax regime. Instead of being entirely exempt from paying tax on money made abroad, wealthy individuals now have a four year limit on this. Nearly 11,000 millionaires fled the UK to overseas countries last year, which was the equivalent to losing half a million taxpayers.

The figure is double the number who left in 2023, as wealthy Brits left to avoid the effects of Labour's tax-heavy Budget.

A "non-dom" is the term used to describe a person whose permanent residence, or domicile, is outside the UK. A non-dom previously only paid UK tax on money earned in Britain; they did not have to pay the UK government tax on money they made elsewhere in the world, unless that money went into a UK bank account.

Non-dom refers to a person's tax status, it does not describe their nationality, citizenship or resident status.

2024 saw 10,800 millionaires avoid Rachel Reeves' tax raid on businesses, non-doms and private schools. The Chancellor's October Budget saw £40 billion of tax hikes which sparked a wider collapse in business confidence.

55-year-old Magda Wierzycka is one example of a wealthy individual who is now fleeing to South Africa to avoid paying tax on her global earnings.

"We brought in about £500m and invested it in British innovation. Five years in, I effectively get told 'We don't need your money, and we don't want you in the country'," she told the Telegraph.

Ms Wierzycka, who moved to the UK to start a venture capital business, can now only stay in Britain for 91 days a year before paying extra tax. As a result, she plans to move abroad - the opposite of what the Chancellor hoped to achieve.

New research from the Centre for Economics and Business Research shows that if 25% of non-doms left the UK, the Treasury would make no extra money from scrapping the tax status, and would lose £700m in the first year alone if a third left.