But Switzerland's boring

Tax Migration and the Pull of Place-Specific Cultural Capital

Bibliographic Data

ID4237233
AuthorsR Friedman (0000-0003-2083-1226, London School of Economics and Political Science), Victoria Gronwald (0009-0006-4162-1833, London School of Economics and Political Science), Alexander Summers (0000-0002-4978-7743, London School of Economics and Political Science), Emma Taylor (0000-0003-1471-1244, King's College London)
Year2025
Publication date2025-02-20
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueSocio-Economic Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1475-1461 • E-ISSN: 1475-147X
DOI10.1093/ser/mwaf002
OpenAlexW4407762536
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited36

Many countries are concerned about the migration of top taxpayers. Yet we know little about how economic elites weigh the taxes they pay when deciding where to live. Existing evidence on tax flight is either quantitative or comes from wealthy individuals issuing warnings in the media. Drawing on in-depth interviews with thirty-five individuals in the top 1 per cent of the wealth distribution in the UK, we find a striking stigma attached to tax migration. Participants disparaged those who move for tax purposes and several characterized low-tax destinations as boring and culturally barren. Yet the most important factor restraining tax migration was the attachment to London as a place to work and live, particularly its unparalleled highbrow cultural infrastructure. These findings demonstrate that wealthy individuals often choose to prioritize investments in place-specific cultural capital above the relatively small gains in economic capital associated with tax migration

Business · Capital (architecture · Cultural capital · Destinations · Distribution (mathematics · Economics · Geography · Highbrow · Labour economics · Political science · Public economics · Stigma (botany · Tax avoidance · Tax reform · Tourism · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics · Psychology · Taxation and Compliance Studies · Urban, Neighborhood, and Segregation Studies · Law