BBC: UK's third-biggest taxpayer to leave for Greece

[najaB]

A hedge-fund billionaire and one of the UK's richest taxpayers has decided to leave the UK for Greece, the BBC understands.

Chris Rokos plans to open an office in Athens, according to reports. Greece has generous tax rules for wealthy foreigners earning overseas income.

Rokos was ranked third in The Sunday Times list of Britain's top taxpayers, having paid £330m last year, and in March said he would donate £190m to Cambridge University.

The main reason why one imagines that he's leaving for Greece:

It is not publicly known why Rokos has made the decision, which was first reported by Bloomberg, but Greece's tax-rules are seen as attractive to the ultra-wealthy.

They allow foreigners who meet certain criteria to pay a flat yearly tax of €100,000 (£86,000) on all overseas income.

While it's quite the loss to the Treasury, would we be able to (or want to) come even close to matching that kind of deal in order to keep the mega-wealthy here?

Source: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgynjlzk8zo

 

[DarloRich]

While it's quite the loss to the Treasury, would we be able to (or want to) come even close to matching that kind of deal in order to keep the mega-wealthy here?

He may as well pay no tax as pay £100k on billions!

 

[Yew]

Should there be a levy for moving large amounts of money out of the country?

 

[LYradial]

Compared to the three billon pounds we transfer to China for fashion items from shein and Temu it’s small fry.

source bbc 28 aug 2025

 

[AlterEgo]

Compared to the three billon pounds we transfer to China for fashion items from shein and Temu it’s small fry.

source bbc 28 aug 2025

...so what?

Temu pays hardly any taxes here.

 

[JamieL]

He may as well pay no tax as pay £100k on billions!

What is your source for this? The OP quoted a source that said he paid £330million last year. That is supporting an awful lot of healthcare for people here.

 

[LYradial]

...so what?

Temu pays hardly any taxes here.

I should perhaps have quoted the thread above regarding a levy on money transferred abroad, the spend on luxury items is still money transferred abroad, so should we all be subject to that levy

 

[najaB]

What is your source for this? The OP quoted a source that said he paid £330million last year. That is supporting an awful lot of healthcare for people here.

I think the comparison was being made between the situation here and that which obtains in Greece, and more to what would happen if we attempted to adjust our tax system to compete.

 

[Yew]

I should perhaps have quoted the thread above regarding a levy on money transferred abroad, the spend on luxury items is still money transferred abroad, so should we all be subject to that levy

Perhaps in the broadest sense that could be considered correct, but there is certainly a difference moving taking money abroad for tax purposes, and purchasing services from abroad. The second feels more more of a "balance of payments" imports/exports style argument.

 

[DarloRich]

What is your source for this? The OP quoted a source that said he paid £330million last year. That is supporting an awful lot of healthcare for people here.

I am saying that if you are going to charge £100K on millions you pay as well not bother and let the rich live tax free.

 

[jon0844]

I am saying that if you are going to charge £100K on millions you pay as well not bother and let the rich live tax free.

Which plenty of people think is the right thing to do because the rich create the wealth to trickle down to others, so let's support them by not taxing them or p**ing them off in any way - and we all benefit in the end......

I did see on LinkedIn and Reddit discussions that this person is somehow representative of every business leader and a sign that they're all going to leave if Labour dares ask for more taxes, or close loopholes. To me, it seems that this is a relatively isolated case (which is why so many people have jumped on it) and suggests most people aren't going to leave.

 

[roblondon]

Didn't the Mirror send taxis to the housed of various celebrities who'd said they'd leave the country if Labour won the 1997 election because they predicted increased taxes?

Needless to say nobody got in.

 

[Bletchleyite]

Which plenty of people think is the right thing to do because the rich create the wealth to trickle down to others, so let's support them by not taxing them or p**ing them off in any way - and we all benefit in the end......

The trickle down theory is largely discredited, though, and is usually just pushed by the super rich and their supporters.

 

[DarloRich]

Which plenty of people think is the right thing to do because the rich create the wealth to trickle down to others, so let's support them by not taxing them or p**ing them off in any way - and we all benefit in the end

When does this trickle reach me? The pipe must be blocked somewhere........

( the wate pipe seems to flow like a fire hose mind!)

 

[The exile]

I should perhaps have quoted the thread above regarding a levy on money transferred abroad, the spend on luxury items is still money transferred abroad, so should we all be subject to that levy

IIRC, the de minimis amount on individual imports is shortly to be cut so we will be.

 

[Djgr]

Which plenty of people think is the right thing to do because the rich create the wealth to trickle down to others, so let's support them by not taxing them or p**ing them off in any way - and we all benefit in the end......

And plenty of people don't.

Much wealth "creation" is no more than a transfer/appropriation from the many to the few.

There is no creation of anything (apart from smoke and mirrors).

 

[jon0844]

The trickle down theory is largely discredited, though, and is usually just pushed by the super rich and their supporters.

It's basically total BS. The wealth usually finds its way anywhere but going down the chain, and often the extra money earned allows the purchase of rival businesses and consolidation that could very well mean job losses and other cuts.

 

[Tetchytyke]

What is your source for this? The OP quoted a source that said he paid £330million last year. That is supporting an awful lot of healthcare for people here.

He is moving to Greece. Greece has a tax system which caps the income tax for the ultra-wealthy at c. £100k. Perhaps he's just moving because he's got a love of feta cheese and baklava.

I am saying that if you are going to charge £100K on millions you pay as well not bother and let the rich live tax free.

It's a tough one.

The Isle of Man has an elective tax cap of £200K per year. To benefit from it you have to sign up for five years and you have to pay £200k for each of those five years, even if your circumstances change.

On the one hand, this means that the effective income tax rate for the rich people who elect to take the tax cap is a tiny proportion of my effective income tax rate. But on the other hand, they pay the same amount of income tax in one year as what I will pay in about 25 years.

My only issue with this arrangement is that our National Insurance rates are notably higher than in the UK, however you only pay NI on earnings. My effective income tax rate is about 11%, much lower than in the UK, but overall I'm only slightly better off than in the UK because of the NI. They don't pay the NI.

 

[DarloRich]

It's a tough one.

Not for me - I become very Stalinist in relation to bankers and hedge fund managers!

 

[brad465]

This is an issue that really needs a worldwide agreement on, as money moves far more easily than in the 20th century, when tax rates were much higher than today. We sort of got an agreement on a global minimum corporation tax under Biden, even if was only 15%; something similar will be needed here. The only way we are getting it though is after a major crisis (economic depression and/or a world war), and/or a US President with an economic philosophy similar to Scandinavian countries. I'm all for wealth creation that is genuinely earnt and benefits society overall, but when you have individuals with more wealth than they could ever spend in their lifetime, something is broken.

 

[najaB]

I'm all for wealth creation that is genuinely earnt and benefits society overall, but when you have individuals with more wealth than they could ever spend in their lifetime, something is broken.

We need a tax system that rewards spending and disincentivises hoarding.

 

[jon0844]

I'd like for us to also differentiate between someone who builds up a business that benefits society, providing goods or services to people that are beneficial to society as a whole, while employing people that get paid a fair wage they can and will spend in the local economy, to the person who gets rich having loads of money to invest in buying up businesses and asset stripping them, getting rid of staff and making huge profits they can use to rinse and repeat (e.g. private equity 'investments').

 

[najaB]

...to the person who gets rich having loads of money to invest in buying up businesses and asset stripping them, getting rid of staff and making huge profits they can use to rinse and repeat (e.g. private equity 'investments').

I agree with the principle, but have to point out that a minority of PE firms have given the entire industry a bad name. As an example, my current employer was taken private, invested in, stabilised, and then returned to the public market by a pair of PE firms who both have a long history of so-doing. If you're in the tech industry you will definitely have heard of many of the companies that they've previously invested in.

Unfortunately, market conditions are such that there's a non-zero chance that they will have to repeat the exercise as we're currently profitable but are stuck in stock price purgatory.

 

[Yew]

I agree with the principle, but have to point out that a minority of PE firms have given the entire industry a bad name. As an example, my current employer was taken private, invested in, stabilised, and then returned to the public market by a pair of PE firms who both have a long history of so-doing. If you're in the tech industry you will definitely have heard of many of the companies that they've previously invested in.

Unfortunately, market conditions are such that there's a non-zero chance that they will have to repeat the exercise as we're currently profitable but are stuck in stock price purgatory.

It feels like some more subtle regulations to stop asset stripping would be in order. I don't know exactly what they would be. I know a company I was in had a "if we have a windfall from setting a building or something, it doesn't count for the bonus scheme" policy, whether that could be turned into a workable law to limit dividends from asset stripping or not, I don't know.

 

[Tetchytyke]

It feels like some more subtle regulations to stop asset stripping would be in order.

The difficulty, as always, is in structuring laws in such a way as to make them both effective and watertight.

There should be ways of reversing these sorts of transactions when a company becomes insolvent afterwards. There are specific powers when it comes to personal insolvency- if you sell your house for £1 just before going bankrupt, for instance, the authorities can force the transaction to be reversed, and they will do this routinely. If these powers exist in company insolvency they don't seem to be used. Phoenixing is becoming more and more of an issue with companies and there doesn't seem to be either the legal ability or the legal appetite to clamp down on it.

A lot of asset-stripping isn't that blatant though. Sale-and-leaseback is a common way of asset stripping a company but it is also a legitimate way of raising capital to fund additional investment. Creating a legal definition to distinguish between the two is almost impossible. Same with borrowing money, securing it against the company, and then using the loan to pay dividends. A common asset-stripping tactic- the Thames Water Method- but there are also legitimate reasons why a company would do this.

We need a tax system that rewards spending and disincentivises hoarding.

The only way you would ever achieve that is through an asset or wealth tax.

But even then, spending and hoarding aren't necessarily mutually exclusive- if I buy a luxury sports car (or a yacht, or a Learjet) it is very likely to keep most or even all of its value, so whilst I've spent some cash my net worth hasn't changed very much at all. But the process of changing my cash into a new yacht creates real economic value for the yacht manufacturer and all the people it employs. I'm just not sure how you can reward that in a taxation system without effectively creating a whole new type of carousel fraud.

Whilst I'm always very sceptical about Dan Neidle- a man who made his fortune selling complex tax avoidance schemes to high net-worth individuals (HNWIs) is strangely very much against any sort of wealth tax against HNWIs- he does make a valid point that any such asset or wealth tax is incredibly difficult to implement against HNWIs who are, by their very nature, fairly mobile people.

I think that the closest you could ever get would be to impose an annual land or property tax on land worth over a certain amount. It wouldn't necessarily be fair- the tax could very likely end up exceeding the annual income from that property, especially where the property isn't used- a land tax has the advantage that you can't easily move your Scottish Highland forest estate to Dubai.

 

[Yew]

he does make a valid point that any such asset or wealth tax is incredibly difficult to implement against HNWIs who are, by their very nature, fairly mobile people.

I can't imagine that tracking the income of nearly 70 million people is particuarly easy, but that didn't stop us implementing PAYE.

 

[JamesT]

I can't imagine that tracking the income of nearly 70 million people is particuarly easy, but that didn't stop us implementing PAYE.

They outsource most of the PAYE tracking to the employers.
But the major difference is that with income there is a transaction. Which makes it easy to say take N% off before it gets to the recipient. The problem with most wealth taxes is valuation. Capital Gains works because you're selling the asset, so there's a clear price that can be taxed and you're receiving money that can be used to pay the tax. But if you're wanting to take a percentage of the value of things annually, then you need to work out how much they're worth first. How much is your house worth if it hasn't been sold recently? The painting on your wall? Your share of the family business that isn't publicly listed?

 

[najaB]

But even then, spending and hoarding aren't necessarily mutually exclusive- if I buy a luxury sports car (or a yacht, or a Learjet) it is very likely to keep most or even all of its value, so whilst I've spent some cash my net worth hasn't changed very much at all. But the process of changing my cash into a new yacht creates real economic value for the yacht manufacturer and all the people it employs. I'm just not sure how you can reward that in a taxation system without effectively creating a whole new type of carousel fraud.

I agree that it's not easy - if it was then someone would have done it already! Perhaps the key is to tax net worth but allow deductions based on spending. So if our super-rich person just has money sitting in a bank, or a house that they just own and do nothing with it would get hit for tax, but if they've bought something, or done renovations/improvements on the house then they get a discount on the tax bill.

Not ideal, but at least it rewards moving the money (even if it end up effectively going from one pocket the other, at least it passed through someone else's hands at some point).

 

[Yew]

They outsource most of the PAYE tracking to the employers.
But the major difference is that with income there is a transaction. Which makes it easy to say take N% off before it gets to the recipient. The problem with most wealth taxes is valuation. Capital Gains works because you're selling the asset, so there's a clear price that can be taxed and you're receiving money that can be used to pay the tax. But if you're wanting to take a percentage of the value of things annually, then you need to work out how much they're worth first. How much is your house worth if it hasn't been sold recently? The painting on your wall? Your share of the family business that isn't publicly listed?

I think we're also reaching into the differentiation between private and personal property.

 

[Egg Centric]

While it's quite the loss to the Treasury, would we be able to (or want to) come even close to matching that kind of deal in order to keep the mega-wealthy here?

No, but given he was happy to stay here before we ought to be happy to try to come up with some decent deal. IDK what though. Mind you I'm more interested in giving ultra-rich investors deals than ultra-rich "generic hedge fund". Hedge fund is such a vague term and I've no idea what he was doing but price discovery/liquidity production activities seem to be overly rewarded by markets versus e.g. capital allocation and that's what i'd want prioritised. We absolutely should tenderly suck on rich boobies when they're giving us lovely milky capital though fosho.

As it is though I suspect that a) With a name like Rokos he's probably just returning "home" and this isn't very important b) If there is a tax motivation it's more about worry about what Burnham will do, which I think is overblown but is fully understandable as a "protection" move. But it is what it is and the latter will hopefully be benign. And if he's not, well we are at least going to see some entertaining politics and please don't do it before the 25th and my final retention bonus!