What is Reform UK's Britannia Card tax plan?

In its latest stab at policymaking, Reform UK has come up with the “Britannia Card”.

- SEAN O'GRADY

It sounds like a kitsch gimmick from a building society, but it is actually the party’s attempt to recast tax policy to attract “wealth creators” to the UK.

The policy supposedly offers a bonus to workers with the lowest incomes in the country, funded entirely from the one-off fees charged to non-doms - billed fancifully as a kind of Robin Hood tax.

What's the deal with the Britannia Card?

It is not completely clear, and much depends on how many very rich people come to Britain in response to the offer. In principle, it works a bit like this: someone very rich pays HM Revenue and Customs a one-off "landing fee" of some £250,000. For that modest (to them) sum, they are free of all UK tax on their income and wealth from overseas. That means no income tax, dividend taxes, and no capital gains taxes on such foreign income, indefinitely. As well as that, they get a "Britannia residency permit" that gives free entry and exit from the UK, renewable every 10 years - but not automatic UK citizenship (this is Reform UK, after all).

This new breed of "non-dom" - they'd no longer have to prove even a tenuous previous family or business link to the UK would only have to pay tax on their UK income, such as it is, and their spending. Stamp duty on their estates and mansions, VAT and other tax on luxury cars, employers' national insurance for the butler, that sort of thing.

Where does the Britannia money go?