How Governments Compete For Wealth

The rich are relocating like never before, and governments are increasingly keen to attract wealthy foreigners who contribute tax revenue, bring capital investment and spend in the local economy. 

The appeal runs deeper than the direct financial contribution alone. Many of these individuals are entrepreneurs and business owners who bring jobs, expertise and entire professional ecosystems with them, while their presence can also carry a reputational effect, reinforcing a country's standing as stable, well-governed and genuinely attractive to do business in. 

For countries facing ageing populations and shrinking working-age tax bases, wealthy new residents can play a meaningful part in easing financial pressures and establishing economic prosperity over the long term. As a result, some governments are increasingly shaping policy specifically to appeal to millionaire migrants.

The levers that governments have at their disposal to attract wealth include:

•  Tax Policy - income tax, capital gains tax, inheritance and gift tax, wealth tax, and whether a regime is progressive or offers flat-rate certainty for new residents
• Residence And Citizenship Programmes - golden visas, investor visas, digital nomad visas, and elective residence routes for those with passive income rather than a lump-sum investment
• Family Inclusion Rules - whether a spouse, children and dependent parents are covered automatically, or require separate applications
• Regulatory Predictability - the consistency and longevity of a policy regime, not just its current terms
• Business And Investment Environment - ease of company formation, access to capital and investor networks, free zones and incentives for specific sectors (innovation, green infrastructure, R&D)
• Legal Infrastructure - independent courts, common-law frameworks and dedicated structures for family offices, foundations and trusts
• Rule Of Law And Institutional Strength - property rights, judicial independence and political stability
• Connectivity And Access - visa-free travel networks, direct flight access and proximity to major economic hubs
• Quality Of Life - safety, climate, culture and healthcare access
• Education Infrastructure - international schools and university systems that appeal to relocating families
• Marketing And Positioning - increasingly, active promotion of a jurisdiction's advantages to advisers, investors, influencers and the media, rather than relying on passive appeal
• Streamlined Processing - fast, digitised application and approval systems, which matter more than people often expect once families compare the practical experience of relocating between programmes

No single jurisdiction wins on every dimension. The ones that score consistently well tend to be the ones that have deliberately built a coherent package across several of these factors.

Henley & Partners, a strategic partner of Hoxton Wealth, built its Global Wealth Mobility Framework specifically to compare the attractiveness of different countries. Jurisdictions are scored according to a range of criteria from tax treatment and rule of law to climate resilience and visa processing times. These are weighted by their importance to internationally mobile HNW individuals. The results, published in its Private Wealth Migration Report 2026, reveal the winners and losers in the race for global wealth.

Singapore, the UAE and New Zealand sit at the top of the tree in terms of attractiveness for internationally mobile wealth, and they haven't got there by accident. None of them are winning on a single advantage alone, scoring highly across nearly every dimension the framework measures.

That said, each of these popular wealth hubs stands out for a deliberate, specific policy choice: a genuinely competitive tax environment in the UAE's case, sustained institutional stability in Singapore's and the absence of wealth, inheritance and capital gains taxes in New Zealand making it particularly attractive for wealth preservation and succession planning.

Below the leaders sit two groups – strong and competitive wealth mobility jurisdictions – which demonstrate consistent, well-rounded performance across the framework. These include established financial centres like the Cayman Islands (strong), Cyprus (strong) and Monaco (competitive), EU access routes such as Portugal (strong), Italy (strong), Latvia (competitive) and the Netherlands (strong), and a scattering of smaller, highly open economies including Uruguay (competitive), Panama (competitive), Hong Kong (competitive) and Costa Rica (competitive).

 None of these countries are competing on tax alone. Switzerland's appeal rests as much on financial stability and discretion as on its tax treatment.

 Greece, categorised as a competitive jurisdiction, is an interesting example of how policy decisions in one country reshape demand in another.  The country picked up demand when Spain closed its ‘golden visa’ pathway and Portugal withdrew its property-linked investment route. This demonstrates how when an established pathway closes, wealthy families pivot to the next best option, and jurisdictions paying attention are quick to position themselves to catch that demand.

In the report, the UK, Germany, France, Norway and South Korea are all classified as Competitive Jurisdictions Under Pressure - a notable list, given how large and economically significant each of these countries remains.

What links them isn't decline so much as a shared set of pressures: ageing populations, strained public finances and, in several cases, a live domestic debate about taxing wealth more heavily to help close the gap. 

Each of these countries remains a major economy in its own right. What's changed is that the wealth they're trying to retain now has more genuinely competitive alternatives than it did a decade ago, and considerably less patience for policy uncertainty.

Emerging economies Brazil, China, Russia and India are all included in this group. They all play a significant role in global production and large populations but lack appeal as a destination for international wealth. 

The challenges they face are structural, rather than temporary obstacles. Common barriers to wealth migration in these countries include capital controls that make it harder to move money freely across borders, complex or unpredictable tax and regulatory environments and geopolitical uncertainty. 

All four countries continue to generate enormous private wealth but the lack of ease of moving that wealth across borders means that the demand for international diversification from wealthy citizens of these markets remains consistently high.

This group includes Iran, Lebanon and Nigeria, all unlikely candidates for inbound wealth migration. These countries face acute pressures such as currency instability, economic crisis and ongoing conflict or political upheaval. 

In fact, they are more likely to see wealthy residents fleeing, their desire for residence or citizenship elsewhere driven less by optimisation and more by the desire for the long-term financial security and stability that is lacking back home. In the case of Iran, outbound mobility is restrained by limited passport access and restricted international pathways.

Governments compete for wealth the way businesses compete for customers - through policy and positioning. The most successful have identified what internationally mobile wealth is looking for and built a coherent offer around it, often while their established competitors were doing the opposite.

This rapidly evolving 21^st century global landscape is fuelling a trend towards increasingly sophisticated multi-jurisdictional wealth planning. As high-net-worth individuals and families seek to diversify their living arrangements, countries respond by adapting to their changing preferences and movements, and so the circle continues.

With constantly changing goalposts, it can be difficult for families and individuals operating across multiple countries to keep track of policy changes and new regulations.

Hoxton's advisers keep a close eye on exactly this kind of shift across the jurisdictions our clients call home - tracking policy changes to keep them informed before the event, not after. It's a standard part of how we work with internationally mobile families, not an add-on.

If your own plans span more than one jurisdiction, get in touch and we'll help you make sense of what's changing, and what it means for you.