Chancellor of the Exchequer John Healey seems to be losing little sleep over foreign billionaires curtailing their ties to Britain over the past few years.

His first budget, coming days after the UK received praise from the International Monetary Fund for its fiscal discipline, offered local entrepreneurs financial perks but announced few measures to court ultra-wealthy individuals hailing from Asia, Africa, Europe and elsewhere — despite the UK having explored steps to do so this year.

Investors and business owners collectively worth at least £200 billion ($266 billion) with a financial footprint in the UK are instead now facing greater scrutiny from the nation’s tax authority as part of its modernization efforts, according to documents released as part of Healey’s budget presented on Wednesday.

State-backed investment firms from abroad — currently exempt from taxes on income from rental properties in the UK — are now in the government’s crosshairs for a levy of 15%. Those include parts of the high-end fashion district of Regent Street and the Canary Wharf financial quarter, expanding Britain’s focus on overseas investors’ financial affairs.

“In the deeply volatile world that we live in at the moment, we could have the UK looking like a beacon of stability,” said Iain Tait, head of the private investment office at wealth-management firm W1M. “And we’re missing that opportunity.”The moves show how Britain is continuing to reshape its relations with the global elite after the Labour government, which is now headed by Prime Minister Andy Burnham, introduced tax reforms under his predecessor in April 2025 for well-heeled residents originally from overseas and dented the nation’s longstanding wealth-hub status.

At last year’s budget, when Rachel Reeves was still Chancellor and Keir Starmer the UK premier, the government sought to curb the impact of the reforms first proposed in early 2024 by the then-ruling Conservative Party. Both before and following the measures taking effect, a steady stream of billionaires have continued to relocate from Britain. Some of them have subsequently closed down their firms and put their luxury homes up for sale in the UK as they build a new life elsewhere.

To boost its appeal to globally mobile individuals, the UK announced on Wednesday it would move ahead with plans for a foreign tax credit to help curb punitive tax rates for British residents receiving income from US entities. That measure removes a barrier for individuals relocating to the UK once the policy comes into effect from 2028, the year before the UK must hold its next general election.

But before that, months of speculation over higher capital-gains taxes in the lead up to the budget have left a wave of UK entrepreneurs seeking to sell stakes in their firms before any change came in. In his budget, Healey announced preferential tax treatment for certain stake sales by founders of businesses starting next year, but those already with a transaction underway are likely to miss out.

There were “discussions about potentially realizing gains,” Piers Master, a London-based partner at law firm Charles Russell Speechlys, said on his clients’ budget preparations. Many of them were “convinced” of the UK aligning capital-gains taxes with income tax rates of as much as 45%.

Nassef Sawiris, Egypt’s second-richest person, and Swiss tech billionaire Guillaume Pousaz have been among the super-wealthy individuals relocating from the UK as the nation brought in tax hikes for non-domiciled individuals who contributed more than £9 billion annually to the UK economy.

Some home-grown British billionaires such as hedge fund founder Chris Rokos are also exiting after facing higher levies and fearing further attacks on their wealth. The financier is relocating to Greece, which brought in its own preferential tax regime for wealthy foreigners almost a decade ago that’s partly styled on Britain’s now-defunct, centuries-old system for so-called “non-doms.”Meantime, his fellow British billionaire Richard Desmond has restructured his fortune to help him expand his investments outside the UK after shifting residency to the United Arab Emirates last year. That move illustrates the knock-on effects from ultra-wealthy individuals transferring to other territories.

The UK’s tax system for so-called non-doms allowed the nation’s wealthy foreigners to avoid local taxes on their offshore wealth for as long as 15 years following reforms almost a decade ago that ended permanent use of the status. It now has a new preferential tax system that’s typically less complex but lasts instead for four years, a timeline that many wealthy individuals see as too short to put down roots in the UK.

A confidential survey sent out earlier this year when Reeves was still chancellor to private wealth advisers from a cross-government unit, which the Treasury helps oversee, highlighted the possibility of the nation extending its four-year program introduced last year for wealthy foreigners.

That prospect signaled a growing awareness within Downing Street that Britain had damaged its global standing as a wealth hub and needed to act, but there were no hints of those possible changes in the speech that Reeves’s successor delivered in the House of Commons on Wednesday.

Instead, as part of its improving compliance efforts, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs revealed on the same day that it had spent the summer months — when Reeves and Starmer left Downing Street — identifying 200 billionaires with tax exposure to Britain even if they didn’t live in the country.

The tax authority has assigned a customer compliance manager to each of those individuals, stepping up its efforts for a cohort described as making a “substantial” contribution to the UK economy.

Rather than any incentive to build a life in Britain, those billionaires received something else from the UK government: an invitation for a “voluntary discussion” over their financial affairs.

“What the budget does is reinforce the perception that the UK’s tax environment is becoming less favourable for building and passing on wealth,” said Harinder Hundle, managing partner at Hundle, a multifamily office. “For families with substantial pension assets, private businesses or international lives, it may accelerate decisions already under consideration.”