Nick Shaxson ■ Fact of the day: how often has Britain’s ‘non-dom’ rule been challenged?

Fact of the day: how often has Britain’s ‘non-dom’ rule been challenged?

Nick Shaxson

Published:

24 February 2015

Reading time:

< 1

Tags:

Britain’s domicile rule is one of the greatest tools available to the world’s wealthiest people to shake of the pesky burden of tax, leaving the rest of us to kindly pay their share for them. It’s a slippery, vague concept, and lots of people who claim domicile status really ought not to be able to. With this short background, here’s our factoid of the day, courtesy of UK barrister Jolyon Maugham:

“In the last ten years (which is as far back as I checked), there’s only been one concluded challenge to domicile, nine years ago. There’s also a single indication of a challenge to come.”

Goodness. Coming in the wake of the HSBC scandal, which shows a resolute determination on the part of the government not to do anything to inconvenience the world’s wealthiest people, this is quite a shocker.

Yeah, right. Photo: Jill & David

The author

Nick Shaxson

Nicholas Shaxson is a journalist and writer on the staff of Tax Justice Network. He is author of the book Poisoned Wells about the oil industry in Africa, published in 2007, and the more recent Treasure Islands: Tax havens and the Men who Stole the World, published by Random House in January 2011. He lives in Berlin.

See author’s full profile