Wealthy Americans leaving the US are running a split strategy: capital stays in American markets, families don’t. The pattern shows up in two datasets that landed in late 2025, one from UBS and one from the IRS. Private bankers and tax lawyers are describing it the same way.
UBS published its 11th Billionaire Ambitions Report on Dec. 4, 2025, based on a survey of 87 billionaire clients conducted between July and September. The bank found 36% of respondents have already relocated at least once, and another 9% are considering a move. Quality of life, geopolitical concerns and tax planning tied as the most-cited reasons, each at roughly 36%.
Why wealthy Americans are leaving the US for Europe
Investment preferences and residency preferences are diverging. North America remains the top short-term investment destination for surveyed billionaires at 63%, the UBS report says, down from 80% a year earlier. Western Europe rose to 40%. Over a five-year horizon, North America still leads.
Global billionaire wealth hit a record $15.8 trillion in 2025, up 8.8% from 2024, UBS reported. The bank counted 196 new self-made billionaires adding $386.5 billion, plus a record $297.8 billion in inherited wealth across 91 heirs. Eighty-nine of those new billionaires are based in the US, Institutional Investor reported, bringing the country’s total to 924, roughly a third of the global count.
What the IRS expatriation list shows
The other 2024 data point comes from the Quarterly Publication of Individuals Who Have Chosen To Expatriate, the IRS’s required disclosure under Section 6039G of the Internal Revenue Code. The list named roughly 5,000 people in 2024. Q3 alone logged 2,123 renunciations, the highest quarterly figure since late 2016.
The list has limits worth flagging. It captures only “covered expatriates,” meaning former citizens with net worth above $2 million, average annual tax above $206,000 over five years, or a tax-compliance certification failure, per the IRS’s expatriation tax rules. Tax lawyer David Lesperance says publication typically lags the actual expatriation date by 12 to 18 months. Most 2024 names reflect 2022 and 2023 decisions. His firm estimates the global backlog of renunciation appointments exceeds 30,000 cases.
What this means for emigration patterns
The two datasets describe different populations but tell a consistent story. Surveyed billionaires are physically mobile while their portfolios stay anchored in US markets. Covered expatriates, the rung below pure billionaires but well above the median, are formally cutting tax ties at rates not seen since 2016 and 2020, which may expalin the sudden surge in wealthy Americans moving cash abroad.
What the data does not show is destination. The IRS list publishes names, not countries, so claims about specific European destinations for renouncing Americans rely on private-bank reporting and immigration-lawyer caseloads, not federal data. AE’s data on Americans abroad tracks the destination side from Eurostat, OECD and host-country sources.
The next read on this trend lands when the IRS publishes its Q4 2024 and Q1 2025 expatriation lists in the Federal Register. UBS’s 12th Billionaire Ambitions Report, expected December 2026, will show whether short-term North America investment confidence rebounds from the 80%-to-63% drop, or settles there.
