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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
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Stephanie Brobbey

Labour shouldn’t fear taxing the rich – the people I work with would welcome it

Luxury  homes in Holland Park, west London.
Luxury homes in Holland Park, west London. Photograph: Kathy deWitt/Alamy

I’ve worked with the super-rich my whole career. I worked for more than a decade as a lawyer advising high net worth individuals, and many of the people I worked with had assets worth more than £10m. It was commonplace to refer to their luxury apartments – usually in neighbourhoods like Kensington or Chelsea – as “safety deposit boxes in the sky”. My work involved advising them on how to pass on assets such as these pieds-à-terre and country piles in the home counties while minimising their taxes.

Many of the super-rich have ties all over the world, decamping to homes in the south of France in the summer, or their Alpine chalets for ski holidays. Some have constructed more contrived connections to places like Singapore or Bermuda to reduce their tax bills. But regardless of their undeniable worldliness, the super-rich love living in the UK.

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