Britain risks sending a signal that it ‘doesn’t want the wealthy’, a Canadian multimillionaire entrepreneur and reality TV star has warned – after packing her bags and fleeing the UK following the abolition of the non-dom status.
Dr Ann Kaplan Mulholland – who has a purported net worth of £500million – has attacked ‘Reckless’ Rachel Reeves over the ‘astronomical error’ of trying to extract more tax from the ultra-wealthy who are domiciled abroad for tax purposes.
Instead of remaining in Britain and being forced to pay UK tax on their foreign income under a new tax regime, millionaires and billionaires are thought to be fleeing abroad, taking their spending and investing power with them after Labour pushed ahead with a proposal first tabled by Conservative chancellor Jeremy Hunt.
Real Housewives star Ann and her husband Stephen, a former plastic surgeon, claimed non-dom status for three years, during which they bought a medieval castle and invested a purported £25m to transform it into a luxury wedding venue.
They intend to keep Lympne Castle in Kent, where around 100 people are employed, but plans for future British ventures including a new credit finance business have gone up in smoke along with their tax exemptions.
Speaking to from her Las Vegas penthouse, Ann said the decision to leave the UK had been motivated ‘purely’ by the end of the regime alongside changes to inheritance tax (IHT) that would have sapped millions from her children’s fortune.
She said of the change: ‘It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not that we’re not willing to pay taxes: we do pay taxes in the UK, we employ over 100 people.
‘We bring clean capital to the UK, we’ve invested in businesses in the UK, we pay tax in the UK. But it’s like they don’t really want the wealthy in the UK, which I think is a big error.
‘There’s an opportunity for ‘Reckless’ Reeves, as I call her, to try to save this.’
She estimates her estate would have been liable for a bill running into hundreds of millions of pounds if she had remained in the UK for more than half of the next 20-years – the point at which non-doms have to pay IHT.
And the requirement after a short amnesty period to pay tax on all earnings would have ‘demolished’ her other interests abroad.
Stephen also owns a manufacturing plant employing 3,000 people overseas – the tax bill on which would have been substantive.
‘We have businesses we’ve built from scratch that we pay tax on in other countries, we own multiple properties,’ she said.
‘Our children wouldn’t be protected by trusts and they would be subject to exorbitant inheritance tax It makes no sense to give the Government all of that money.’
Late last year, she mulled over writing to King Charles III seeking permission to create her own nation state in the grounds of the castle, so she could escape the non-dom clampdown. She ditched it when she realised it was an impossible ask.
Instead, she and Stephen plan to move to Italy’s swanky fashion capital Milan by next year – following in the footsteps of Aston Villa owner Nassef Sawiris, who left London earlier this year.
The European country has an attractive non-dom regime where the super-wealthy are charged a flat annual rate of 200,000 EUR (£171,500) plus 25,000 EUR (£21,400) per family member in order to shield their foreign assets.
In the UK, 74,000 people claimed non-dom status as of 2022-23, and were liable for £8.9bn of income tax and national insurance.
Another 6,800 were ‘deemed domiciled’, having spent 15 of the 20 previous years living in the UK – making them liable to pay tax on foreign income.
The OBR estimates that the number of non-doms could fall by 12 per cent this year, and the number of ‘deemed doms’ will fall by a quarter. And there are already signs Britain is hemorrhaging its wealthy population.
A report from New World Wealth suggested some 11,300 dollar millionaires left London in the last year – joining Moscow as one of only two top 50 cities beloved by the rich to have recorded a net dip in wealthy residents in the last decade.
Ann argues that if the UK brought in an Italy-style regime, those 74,000 non-doms would bring in a hypothetical £14bn a year in flat taxes.
The non-dom regime has its roots in the laws that created income tax in 1799 – first drafted to fund Britain’s fight in the Napoleonic Wars.
Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger taxed UK properties and land, as well as income from British trading – but exempted wealthy aristocrats from being taxed on their properties elsewhere in the British Empire.
Since then, the scheme has evolved to give attractive tax status to the super wealthy that want to live in Britain while protecting their assets abroad.
Under the old non-dom regime, non-UK-domiciled residents would pay £30,000 a year to shield foreign income from HMRC.
This applied to those living in the UK for seven out of the previous nine years, after which the charge doubled to £60,000 for those living in the UK for 12 of the previous 14 years.
The rules were then changed in 2017 to create ‘deemed domiciled’ status for those who had lived in the UK for 15 of the previous 20 years – forcing them to pay UK tax on their global earnings.
Labour has scrapped these statuses, and instead introduced a residency-based scheme that gives the wealthy three years to bring foreign income into the UK at a low tax rate.
There will be a four year period in which they do not pay any tax on overseas earnings – after which all earnings will be taxed.
Estates will also be liable for inheritance tax, including any wealth held in offshore trusts.
‘I don’t know why the Government hasn’t chosen a path like that,’ Ann says.
‘But for us, it’s easy. We’ll leave.
‘We’re not here to save the country. My concern is that this is an astronomical error for the UK Government to make.
‘I would love to hear from Rachel Reeves where she expects to make that £13billion, because we’re all leaving. They don’t want us.
‘They just say, you know: ‘Goodbye, don’t slam the door on the way out.”
The Treasury estimates that the changes to the non-dom regime will bring in £12.7bn in the next five years – a figure the Office of Budget Responsibility has warned is ‘very’ uncertain and could be shaken by the mass exodus of the rich and powerful.
Others have thrown out bigger, scarier numbers: neoliberal think tank the Adam Smith Institute has suggested the abolition of non-dom status will cost Britain £111bn by 2035. The Treasury has rejected this suggestion as ‘incorrect’.
Among those reported to have left the UK ahead of the new tax year are steel tycoon Lakshmi Mittal – net worth, £14.9bn, per the Sunday Times Rich List – and Frederic de Mevius, a member of the founding families of brewery giant AB InBev.
‘The projections Rachel Reeves has are probably based on not expecting non-doms to leave – I don’t think she expected that exodus,’ Ann added.
‘She expected us to stay and pay tax on our worldwide income but there is a reason why, for over 200 years, people have come to the UK: it has a preferable tax structure for very wealthy people to live here, invest here and pay taxes here.
‘But their businesses, while they’re still operating their businesses, are not subject to a double tax (in the UK as well as the country they are based in).
‘There are many countries that recognise this and they want to attract wealthy people. Countries that really want to prosper should attract the wealthy.
‘We could go to Switzerland, we could go to Dubai… Italy rolled out the red carpet.’
Ann and her husband attracted widespread media attention when they snapped up crumbling Lympne Castle in Kent for a steal at £5.5million in 2023 after the last of their children flew the nest.
The price tag was snipped amid concerns over the huge amount of investment needed to bring it up to scratch – a brief on which she was more than able to deliver.
She has since invested around £25million in revitalising the castle and opening a restaurant, the Naughty Dog, on site.
She says she now employs around 100 people on the site, and has filmed a new reality series currently airing in the US that follows the renovation journey, entitled Queen of the Castle.
‘I felt so at home in the UK: I joined the church, joined the community, I play Scrabble with people – we love living here,’ Ann continued.
With wealth comes spending and Ann spends in the UK: she invests in charities, invests in businesses, and splashes out on luxury goods and top restaurants, all of which incur taxes.
The one thing she hasn’t bought, however, is a flash car – because she can’t bear the idea of driving on the left.
‘This is money that we have spent, that we have paid taxes on,’ she says. ‘We’re not dodging anything.
‘But many people that live in England do not have manufacturing plants that many of us millionaires and billionaires have worldwide. They don’t have the assets to be concerned about because they are from here.
‘If they built a company in another country they would likely do the same thing and take measures to protect themselves being double-taxed.
‘We do pay our fair share of taxes. But why pay it on worldwide income? That does not make sense, and we do pay our fair share of taxes, and, I’m suggesting, have us do what the other countries are doing, pay 200,000 a year plus invest in infrastructure.’
And while she’s a reality TV star, there is a business brain behind her success: she started loan firm iFinance in 1996 and sold it in 2022 after growing it into one of the country’s biggest lenders.
She boasts a doctorate in finance as well as an MBA and other industry qualifications.
That hasn’t stopped her from being targeted with hate online: recent interviews have blasted her looks, calling her a ‘ghoul’ and ‘plastic’.
The attacks don’t bother her. What does bother her is having to leave the UK to avoid ‘demolishing’ her businesses – as she has grown fond of her new home.
‘I would do anything to stay but not demolish my businesses globally at the same time. I love it here, and I’m part of a community.
‘I love my life in England. It’s a beautiful country – who wouldn’t love it there?
‘It was a big decision to move to the UK. We could have gone anywhere but we chose the UK, and we chose to invest in it and make it our home, and part of that choice was because of the non-dom regime.
‘But the government is not listening, or are not recognising the impact this is going to have on the economy.’
The Treasury insists the end of the non-dom scheme will not send the super-rich packing.
‘Our tax system is fair and progressive, and keeps the UK an attractive place to live while ensuring everyone who is a long-term resident in the UK pays their taxes here,’ a spokesperson said.
‘The UK’s main capital gains tax rate is lower than any other G7 European country – including Italy, France and Germany – and our new residence-based regime is simpler and more attractive to new arrivals than the non-dom regime it replaces.’