HMRC just closed the book on the non-dom era. Here is what the last page says.

On 30 July 2026 HMRC published its statistics on non-domiciled taxpayers and said, in its own words, that this is the final publication in its current form. The publication ends in that form because the thing it measured no longer exists. A tax world that ran for decades now ends as a footnote in a spreadsheet.

So let us close the book properly, with the real dates, because even well-run briefings get them wrong.

What actually changed, and when

The remittance basis, the arrangement that let a UK resident keep foreign income and gains untaxed as long as they stayed offshore, was abolished by the Finance Act 2025. Its last tax year was 2024-25. Since 6 April 2025, not 2026, a UK resident is taxed on worldwide income and gains at full marginal rates, unless he is inside the narrow new window: the four-year regime for arrivals who spent at least ten consecutive years outside the UK first. Four years of shelter, once, and the window only reopens after another full decade abroad.

The same Act moved inheritance tax from domicile to residence. Since 6 April 2025, anyone resident in the UK for ten of the previous twenty tax years is a "long-term UK resident" and owes IHT on the worldwide estate.

And now the clause that matters more than any of the headlines, section 6A of the Inheritance Tax Act:

Leaving does not end it. After departure, the worldwide estate stays inside the UK inheritance-tax net for a tail of three to ten further tax years, scaled to how long you were resident. Thirteen years or fewer of UK residence buys the minimum tail of three years. Every additional year of residence adds a year, up to the full ten-year tail for a twenty-year resident.

Read that as a planner, not as a victim. It means two things at once. First: there is no clean escape on the day the plane takes off, and anyone who tells you Switzerland fixes your IHT exposure at touchdown is lying to you. Second: the clock only starts running when you actually leave, and every extra year you stay between year thirteen and year twenty makes the tail one year longer. Delay is not neutral. Delay is the tax.

What the outflow actually shows

Now the honest numbers, because the exodus story deserves better than the versions circulating.

The famous counts of millionaires fleeing Britain come from private consultancy reports. No official UK statistic measures "millionaires leaving", and we will not dress a marketing estimate up as data.

What HMRC's final release does show, for the tax year ending 2025, the last year of the old world: about 9,000 taxpayers left the non-dom population while about 8,600 arrived. Outflow exceeded inflow before the abolition had even taken effect, though both flows were smaller than the year before, and HMRC labels the figures provisional. The population fell to at least 81,900, and, awkwardly for everyone's narrative, the group's tax and NIC contribution rose 9 percent to 13.6 billion pounds. The dramatic post-abolition years are not in any official data yet.

One more official number, and it is the most revealing one. The OBR's own costing of the reform assumed in advance that 12 percent of the non-doms made ineligible for relief who hold no trusts, and 25 percent of those with trusts, would leave in the first year, and stamped the whole calculation "very high" uncertainty. The British state priced in your departure before you booked it. Whatever loyalty you feel you owe, the Treasury's spreadsheet feels none towards you.

If Switzerland is the destination

Three facts to build on, none of them soft.

The four-year UK window is gone for you the moment you are past year four of residence; there is no British shelter left to wait inside. The TRF, the discounted route for bringing old offshore money onshore, runs at 12 percent only until April 2027, then 15 percent for one final year, and requires UK residence in the year you use it: whatever you intend to do with pre-2025 stockpiles, that decision has a deadline attached. And the IHT tail travels with you to Zurich or Zug regardless, for its three to ten years, which is precisely why a UK exit and a Swiss entry have to be planned as one sequence, not two events.

The old regime did not end with a bang. It ended with a statistical commentary and a note that the publication ends in its current form. If you are still holding a plan built for the world that page described, you are planning for a country that no longer exists.

The page has turned. Turn with it.