KEY POINTS:
As I just gave birth last week - a boy, Bramwell, eight pounds 12 ounces - I could do the revolting mummy-lit thing and gross you out writing about sore nipples or designer strollers if I could find some tenuous business link. But it might be easier to
write about something really grisly, like the fate of New Zealanders with non-domicile tax status in the United Kingdom.
Might we see Dougie and Eric moving back home again? During the past few years, we have said toodlepip to a group of high net worthies and grumpy bastards like Douglas Myers, Alan Gibbs, Eric Watson and Charles Bidwill who decamped to London in a kind of reverse colonisation.
Certainly they were attracted by the global buzz but, also as non-domiciles, they didn't have to pay tax on any income except that generated in the UK.
But that is all coming to an end.
Gordon Brown's Government has introduced new tax laws which mean from April, non-doms who have been in the UK for seven years must pay an annual fee of £30,000 ($74,200) if they want to be exempt from tax on their offshore income and gains.
That doesn't seem huge but there are other rules which the non-doms won't like, including paying tax on non-cash assets - love that 40 per cent tax on artworks brought into the UK. And there will be more noseying around permitted into non-doms' international financial affairs: you know how much everyone loves that.
The UK revenue has already approached 170 banks asking them to hand over records of any customers with a UK address who also hold an offshore account, regardless of whether they have broken the law or are even liable for tax.
The proposed changes have caused a right stink in the UK, where the influx of 114,000 non-doms, including the super-wealthy from the Middle East and eastern Europe, has rejuvenated the City.
You only have to pop into the louche Library bar at the Lanesborough and see all the Russians puffing cigars or wander down Bond St to see some of the £16.6 billion ($41.2 billion) non-doms are estimated to flash about, especially on watches, jewellery and art.
"The Tate [Gallery] will get slaughtered. Look through their list of donors. There are hardly any British people," a leading arts benefactor told the Times.
And research from the Society of Trust and Estate Practitioners has found half of the super-rich non-doms based in the UK are preparing to leave or to sell UK investments, while even the UK Treasury admits 3000 non-doms will leave in April when the new laws come into force.
Does that mean our expat club will also be heading home? Who knows - funnily enough, I haven't had time between midwife visits to ring them and ask.
But they could follow former Geneva and London-based merchant banker Michael Fay, who seems to have managed to rebrand himself on his return to New Zealand as the father of popstar daughter Annabel; don't mention the winebox. As for the others, maybe we should do something to attract them and other displaced non-doms to settle here instead? If I remember rightly, Rob McLeod made a few suggestions about that in his 2001 report on our tax system - capping tax at $1 million for example.
I am sure I have the report in my office somewhere but, unfortunately, I think it is under a pile of used Treasures.
* deborah@coneandco.com
