The tax affairs of Spear’s readers are often highly complex. With their wealth and business interests held in a range of structures and often spanning several jurisdictions, simply calculating the correct amount of tax payable, never mind minimising it, is a huge undertaking.
Accountants, lawyers, offshore specialists and, ultimately, probate and wills lawyers all have their vital roles to play, whether it is optimising a client’s tax position, advising on HMRC investigations and disputes, or restructuring trusts as part of overall estate and succession planning.
The Spear’s Tax & Trust Indices will help you find the very best expertise in what one adviser succinctly describes as ‘an unpredictable tax landscape’.
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How the tax and trust landscape is changing in 2026
Wealthy families are still absorbing a string of changes to UK tax policy, including the abolition of non-dom status in April 2025; curbs on agricultural and business property relief from April 2026; pensions entering inheritance tax (IHT) from April 2027; and the so-called mansion tax, a council tax surcharge of £2,500 to £7,500 a year on homes in England worth more than £2 million, from April 2028. And alongside Chancellor John Healey’s first Budget, advisers say clients are bracing for more.
Stacy Lake of Greenwoods tells Spear’s that changes to IHT and residence rules – namely the post-departure period during which one remains exposed to UK IHT – has ‘tipped a lot of my clients over the edge’.
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‘They were going to leave anyway at some point,’ she says. ‘They might as well start that exit tail sooner rather than later.’
[See also: Who’s on the move? David Reuben joins UK billionaire exodus list]
Business and agricultural relief caps are being felt most acutely by landed estates and farms. ‘People are certainly more aware now of the inheritance tax liability as a result of business relief and APR being capped,’ says Ann-Marie Atkins of Evelyn Partners.
Advisers across sectors are weary of the pace of change. ‘The concern is the cumulative effect of successive changes on business ownership, succession planning, family wealth and long-term certainty,’ says Catrin Wigley of Hugh James.
In the Spear’s Tax Survey 2026, nearly half of respondents (45.5 per cent) lacked confidence that Prime Minister Burnham and Chancellor Healey would improve the economy before the end of this Parliament. Most favour modernisation of tax policy over new levies, with 51 per cent backing a property or land value tax to replace council tax, while a higher IHT or a wealth tax on assets over £10 million drew near-universal opposition.
Explore the full 2026 Spear’s Tax & Trust Indices:
- Tax Lawyers
- Contentious Trust Lawyers
- Probate and Wills Lawyers
- Tax and Trust Barristers
- Accountants and Tax Advisers
- Trusts, Structuring and Offshore
The wealth exodus
A year ago, advisers were grappling with the fallout from the non-dom reforms. Whether the changes raise money overall depends on how many former non-doms stay.
The Centre for Economics and Business Research put the break-even point at 25 per cent of former remittance basis users leaving in the first full year. Some 30 per cent of respondents to our tax survey believe more than that left in 2025-26 alone, though official figures will not arrive until 2027.
Departures take time, says Daniel Channing of Whitmill, who describes a ‘queue’ of wealthy individuals unravelling their UK ties at their own pace.
[See also: Is Britain’s wealth exodus about to accelerate?]
So where are they going? The UAE remains the favourite destination, cited by 36 per cent of respondents, ahead of Italy (21 per cent) and Portugal (15 per cent), though when it comes to actually making a move Robert Pullen of RSM offers a simple rule: ‘Try and be driven by lifestyle; don’t be driven by tax. If you want to go and live in Italy, go and live in Italy and we’ll make it work.’
David Lesperance of Lesperance & Associates is blunter: ‘Treating the golden geese like a captive audience only gets them to consider flying away.’
The American connection
Where some leave, others arrive. Americans are reported to be the largest group coming to the UK, drawn by its relative stability. ‘We have had a number of US individuals move to the UK because of what’s going on there at the moment and the uncertainty,’ says BDO’s Emma Hosking-Williams. ‘The UK is palatable to them because they’re obviously used to US tax rates.’
Because US citizens are taxed wherever they live, the work is largely about avoiding double taxation, which makes dual qualification particularly valuable.
[See also: American buyer’s £11.5 million Mayfair purchase is a sign of deals to come]
Daniel Crouch of EY and most of his team are qualified in both countries; their specialism is understanding how the two systems interact. Few of his clients have actually left the UK, he says.
Advisers also note that in the first few months after Americans arrive, a lot of the work is about education, whether that’s explaining trusts, which Americans tend to love but which work very differently in the UK, or other differences between the two systems.
Spend it while you have it
Pensions entering the IHT net are changing how advisers work with their clients. For about 50 years, the counsel was to leave the pension untouched for as long as possible.
Julia Lewis of Hunters Law calls it ‘the sacred one last thing that you held on to to the very end’, but investment managers now tell her ‘people just aren’t putting money into pensions as much as they used to, or they’re taking money out’.
[See also: HNWs brace for rising burden as pensions fall into inheritance tax scope]
Many clients would rather stay, advisers say, and are weighing up gifting, insurance and spending more during their lifetimes.
Succession planning
Pullen says succession planning has moved to the front of clients’ minds, particularly as tax rules change in major jurisdictions. The priority is making sure structures are secure, and that begins with open conversation.
For Andrew Bayles of SwissIndependent Trustees, new to our index this year, the driver is asset protection as much as tax. ‘The world is becoming more litigious,’ he says, with disputes arising not only with business partners but within families. The most common answer is an irrevocable, discretionary foreign trust.
[See also: The costly consequences of poorly drafted family trusts]
Because Switzerland is party to the Hague Convention, a Swiss trustee can administer, say, a Jersey or Guernsey trust, which ‘provides a huge amount of protection because whoever’s a beneficiary can benefit, whoever’s not a beneficiary cannot’.
The human side matters as much as the structure. George Porter of Winston Taylor says his team’s work is, in essence, ‘succession’, in the sense of the television series. ‘It’s usually not about money. It’s about power,’ he says.
Methodology
Each year, the Spear’s Research Unit reassesses and refreshes its rankings of the leading providers in each sector by gathering data from and about the advisers and firms themselves, assessing submission forms, collating nominations, carrying out peer reviews, reviewing data from third-party sources, gathering references and recommendations, canvassing experts and conducting hundreds of interviews.
Advisers are evaluated using a proprietary scoring system that assigns different weightings to certain attributes. These scores feed directly into each new set of rankings in the Spear’s Indices. Each of these indices are published first online (according to the research calendar) and then in print. Print publication takes the form of the annual Spear’s 500 directory, which includes the top advisers in every index.
[See also: A guide to The Spear’s 500: Everything you need to know]
Each featured adviser is profiled on spears500.com. The site allows users to search the Spear’s database of more than 4,000 entities to find one (or more) to meet their specific requirements by filtering for specific attributes such as an adviser’s location, their specialist expertise and information about their client base.
Explore the full 2026 Spear’s Tax & Trust Indices:
- Tax Lawyers
- Contentious Trust Lawyers
- Probate and Wills Lawyers
- Tax and Trust Barristers
- Accountants and Tax Advisers
- Trusts, Structuring and Offshore
Contact us
- To apply for inclusion in The Spear’s 500, complete our submission form.
- For further information about rankings, please email research@spearswms.com; we aim to respond to all queries within two working days.
- For commercial enquiries and questions relating to enhanced profiles, please contact Commercial Director Shady Elkholy: shady.elkholy@spearswms.com
- To keep up to date with the Spear’s 500, subscribe to our magazine, newsletter and follow Spear’s on Linkedin and Instagram.
- If you have missed calendar deadlines for our research cycles in 2026, you can still register your interest for updates about upcoming research and rankings.
- Click here to order a print copy of The Spear’s 500.
