Monaco Millionaires — the elite group of business people who reside outside the UK to slash their tax bill — face a crackdown by Revenue & Customs on the number of days they can spend in Britain, after a surprise legal decision.
Accountants yesterday accused HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) of introducing a stealth tax on the wealthy after it ignored its own guidelines to pursue a case against Robert Gaines-Cooper, a Seychelles-based multimillionaire.
Mike Warburton, a senior tax partner at Grant Thornton, said: “The present Government doesn’t like people getting out of tax by moving offshore so they keep moving the goalposts and changing the rules by the back door. There are going to be a lot of people who are significantly shaken by this decision.”
Some of Britain’s most successful entrepreneurs live in offshore havens such as Monaco, the Isle of Man, Jersey and Switzerland to avoid paying income and capital gains tax on UK dividends and assets.
