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Fears that the proposed nom-dom tax laws could see an exodus of the army of antipodean accountants working in investment banks may be overblown.

The City is reliant on 5,000 Australian and New Zealander accountants and 2,675 South Africans. Attracted by bigger earning potential and better career prospects, London has called on the southern hemisphere to fill the dearth of home-grown talent.

The proposed rules require expats who are not domiciled in the UK, and have been here for the past seven years, to pay a flat fee of £30k on all income, including that generated outside the UK.

Given that the average product controller with seven years’ experience can expect to earn around £80k to £100k, you wouldn’t expect non-dom accountants to be storing buckets of cash in offshore accounts. However, The Guardian predicts the new rules would affect ‘key workers’ including those in the business world, and the Financial Times reports that it’s not just the ‘fat cats’ who will be booking the next flight home.

“The chancellor will no doubt be holding his breath to see whether the changes will trigger an exodus of affluent, but not über-wealthy non-doms,” Stephen Herring, tax partner at BDO Stoy Hayward, said in the FT.

Antipodean accountants who have been working in the City since 2001 can expect to be caught up in the new rules next year. However, given that the vast majority come here on two to five-year secondments, it’s not likely to affect numbers arriving on UK shores.

John Witing, tax partner at PWC, says: “A good number who have been here for some years will have stored up a nice little nest egg. It might not be vast, and they would have paid tax already, so it will be seen as an irritation. Will it mean less people come? Probably not. Is it going to mean less people stay? Yes, possibly.”

However, Chris Nangles, head of tax policy at Ernst & Young, believes those who stay in the UK long term tend to keep their money here: “If you’ve stayed here for seven years, by that time you would have consolidated most of your worldwide wealth within the UK, or you would be relatively happy for that wealth to be taxed within the UK. I think it’s dangerous to assume that suddenly, because of this, we will see a large cut-off.”

This is likely to be good news for investment banks, and their accounting recruiters, who would, we suspect, be a little lost without their antipodean amigos.