Millionaire exodus numbers “fabricated” warns forensic analysis; Tax Justice Network comments

The Henley & Partners report behind widely reported claims of millionaires migrating away from countries seems to have “fabricated” its numbers, according to a new forensic analysis published today in the Financial Times.¹

The report’s statistics fail several standard forensic accounting techniques used to detect suspicious patterns in datasets that indicate manually entered or adjusted numbers.

Henley’s claims were covered in over 10,900 news pieces in 2024 alone² – the equivalent of 30 news pieces a day – and widely credited for the UK government’s decision³ to weaken planned tax reforms.

Despite the Tax Justice Network’s detailed critique of the Henley report in early June 2025⁴, and despite other criticisms of the report published by other academics, tax experts and journalists in 2024 and 2025, the 2025 edition of the Henley report published on 24 June 2025 was recently covered in over 3,000 news pieces in the month since it was published – equivalent to over 100 pieces a day.

Alex Cobham, chief executive at the Tax Justice Network, said:

“This simply confirms the Tax Justice Network’s thorough debunking of these scare stories, and shows just how far the opponents of fair wealth taxes are willing to go. Governments should take heed, and wise up.”

“78% of Britons and 80% of UK millionaires support a wealth tax but the UK government and media instead listened to what seems to be the fabrication of lobbyists. The UK must reassert the will of its people in its tax policy, and begin again to tax extreme wealth.

“It takes two to tango with public misinformation, and the newsrooms that published over 14,000 news pieces over the past year fanning these scare stories should be today questioning their enthusiasm to ignore the warnings and fuel the fire.”

To date, Henley & Partners:

• Has been accused in a 2018 UK parliamentary inquiry of trying to meddle in the elections of Caribbean nations⁵
• Has been accused in 2025 of providing services to Russian businessmen that would later make it easier for the businessmen to circumvent sanctions⁶
• Had a golden passport scheme it facilitates and helped design be ruled unlawful by the EU’s top court in 2025⁷
• Accused today of publishing a report with numbers that are highly likely to be fabricated, and which is widely credited for preventing tax changes in the UK.⁸

Academic studies consistently show that the tax responses of the wealthy involve minimal levels of migration.⁹ The vast majority (78%) of the UK public support a wealth tax¹⁰, and so do 80% of UK millionaires¹¹.

The notion that governments should be worried about superrich individuals migrating away is based on popular misconceptions on how wealth is created and ignores wide evidence on the harmful impact of extreme wealth on economies and societies.

The rise of extreme wealth is directly linked to lower economic productivity¹², more households going into debt¹³ and to people living shorter lives¹⁴.

-ENDS-

Notes to editors

1. Read more about the analysis in the Financial Times here.
2. See the Tax Justice Network’s ‘The millionaire exodus myth’
3. See the following news reporting:
   1. Sky News: “Rachel Reeves is to water down her crackdown on the non-dom tax status after analysis showed it had prompted an exodus of millionaires.”
   2. CNBC: “The U.K. is to soften some planned changes to its controversial non-dom tax rule following concerns of a millionaire exodus, the Treasury has confirmed.”
   3. The Independent: “Reeves to water down tax raid on non-doms amid exodus of millionaires”
   4. The Times:“Rachel Reeves to relax non-dom tax rule amid millionaire exodus”
4. See note 2.
5. More information about the inquiry in this FT article. Read The Guardian’s 2018 investigation here.
6. Read the FT’s investigation on Maltese golden passports sold to Russians here.
7. See this FT articlefor more information about the European Court of Justice’s ruling and Henley & Partners role in the Maltese scheme. See the press release from the Court here.
8. See note 1.
9. See the literature on migration surveyed in our report, Taxing extreme wealth: what countries around the world could gain from progressive wealth taxes(Alison Schulz & Miroslav Palanský), 2024, Tax Justice Network. Meanwhile, a London School of Economics study found that the vast majority of Britain’s extremely wealthy people would never leave the country for tax reasons, partly due to the stigma involved in doing so, and partly because they think lower-tax jurisdictions are “boring”.
10. See Oxfam’s polling here.
11. See Patriotic Millionaire UK’s polling here.
12. Research shows large rise in wealth among the 1% in the US over the past 40 years did not lead to more investments, and instead resulted in dissaving among non-rich households. Research also shows that “a large rise in inequality generates a saving glut of the rich, which can push an economy into a debt trap characterized by low interest rates, high debt levels, and output below potential”. Indebtedness of non-wealthy households brought on by extreme wealth of the richest households brings about lower productivity. Conversely, another study found that wealth taxes resulted in more investments.
13. Research shows large rise in savings among the 1% in the US over the past 40 years brought on dissaving among non-rich households.
14. Wealth inequality has been shown to be sufficiently extreme that progressive wealth redistribution could add 2.2 years to the US population’s life expectancy as a whole.