Rachel Reeves has confirmed a tax grab on the UK’s wealthy will be “part of the story” for her forthcoming Autumn Budget as she dismissed critics who fear an exodus from the nation’s richest.
The Chancellor has faced rallying calls to launch a cash grab on the wealthy as she looks to strum up funds for the public purse and to rebuild her fiscal headroom.
When she takes the dispatch box on 26 November to deliver her second Budget, Reeves is expected to announce a package of tax rises amounting to nearly £30bn.
It comes in response to a downgrade in future growth forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), policy U-turns of welfare reforms and a £190bn splurge at the government’s Spending Review.
As she headed to Washington for the annual meeting of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Reeves told The Guardian that higher taxes on the wealthy would “be part of the story” in the Budget.
In the 2024 Budget, the Chancellor launched a series of tax raids on the nation’s richest through changes to the non-dom system and introducing a VAT on private school fees.
“There was so much bleating that it wasn’t going to raise the money – that people would leave,” Reeves said.
Reeves hits out at wealth tax ‘scaremongering’
But the Chancellor added: “The OBR will publish updated numbers on all of those things. And that scaremongering didn’t pay off, because this is a brilliant country and people want to live here.”
“And I think, when people scaremonger again this year, we should take some of that with a pinch of salt.”
But it comes as a number of notable wealth creators in Britain ditch their residency.
On Wednesday, City AM revealed media billionaire Richard Desmond had shifted his residence to the United Arab Emirates.
This followed Revolut chief Nik Storonsky just the week prior making the same move.
Reeves had hoped to shed £5bn in spending earlier this year through reforms to the welfare state but after a rebellion from backbenchers the government was forced into a U-turn.
Following the change in direction, one of the leading Labour rebel MPs Rachel Maskell told the Today Programme the government should “look at those with the broader shoulders’ to balance the books”.