The 'millionaire exodus' didn't happen; we need to be more sceptical of stories about the rich

Last year there were, on average, 30 stories a day in national newspapers, every day of the year, all based on a single report. This report showed that there was what was almost always referred to as an 'exodus' of millionaires from Britain and other countries. In more than half of the stories, tax is specifically cited as a factor.

Except this report does not appear to be true and the almost wall-to-wall coverage of the report during the year does not appear to be sustained by either the data or the facts available. This tells us a lot about how the interests of the wealthy are reported in our society.

The report which acted as the source for almost all of this work was by a consultancy called Henley and Partners. The company both advises the super-rich on how to obtain 'golden passports' and also advises nations on establishing golden passport schemes. It is quite clearly the case that this company has an interest in promoting the interests of the very wealthy.

But the Tax Justice Network has now produced a more detailed analysis of the data and it raises significant questions about the initial reporting. There are a number of significant methodological shortcuts used which all have a similar effect.

First of all the definition of millionaire is not the one usually used; this report defines a millionaire as someone who has immediate access to a million dollars of liquid capital. That is a very different financial picture to the standard definition of a millionaire. The report uses a sample size of 'social media' reporting to establish where the millionaires concerned are working, not real world location data.

When corrected for these and proper data is used it turns out that this story is based on the emigration of what appears to be no more than 0.3 per cent of the UK's millionaire population. Not only is this almost functionally zero, it is unclear that this is anything other than the normal mobility rate for wealthy people.

Even less justifiably, tax has been cited repeatedly as a driver for this, but the report appeared under a Tory Government which was not known for tax rises. Indeed much of the media reporting involves speculating that the 'exodus' was a response to the likelihood of an incoming Labour government, though there is absolutely no evidence to support this cited in the report.

This report uses a partial definition of millionaire and some spurious 'social media reporting' of a small sample size to arrive at a conclusion which is a favoured lobbying line for the commercial business that produced the report – and this was reported on on average of 30 times a day for the whole year.

The reason this analysis is so important is that it highlights the entirely false impression which can be given about the world in which we live based on how newspapers select and present news. It is not said often enough that newspapers are mainly owned by members of a super-rich class and that the selection of stories often reflects the interests of the super-rich.

But it is not just coverage of the super-rich which distorts public awareness, all sorts of commercial lobbyists have an influence on media reporting which leads to news selections which do not accurately reflect the views or interests of the population as a whole.

In Scotland, stories with slants that favour landlords, short-term let owners, nuclear power, north sea oil, the hotel industry, financial industries and many more gain coverage well out of proportion to other stories which affect wider groups of people. It is much less likely that stories will be framed in ways that harm vested interests.

The reality is that there has been a wealth of research that shows that the wealthy and very wealthy greatly prioritise lifestyle factors when they choose where to live. The correlation between millionaires and low tax jurisdictions inside the US is actually negative (millionaires avoid low tax jurisdictions because of poor public infrastructure etc.). The evidence of wealthy people avoiding tax through relocation is hard to sustain.

And yet blanket reporting of this deeply flawed and misleading report has all pointed towards two 'facts' which policymakers appear to have absorbed – that millionaires are flooding out of Britain and that it's because of tax.

We need a more balanced media with much less of it owned by super-rich individuals. And we need politicians to be less affected by newspapers and to be more willing to commission – and believe – their own data.