The First-tier Tribunal Tax Chamber has handed HMRC another clear win on domicile of choice. In a decision dated 15 September 2026 (reported 17 September), Sir John Griffin — founder of Addison Lee, later sold to Carlyle — was found domiciled in England, not Ireland, for the years 2013/14 to 2019/20. The practical result is an additional £20.5 million of UK tax on worldwide income and gains for that period, including the PE exit window and offshore investment returns that the remittance basis would otherwise have kept outside the charge.
For CFOs this is not nostalgia for a regime abolished from 6 April 2025. It is a reminder that pre-reform years still litigate, founder and PE-backed exit files still carry domicile risk, and “I feel Irish / I own a house in Kerry / I hope to retire there” still fails the settled-intention test. Open enquiries, protective claims, trust and offshore company maps, and board packs that assumed non-dom status on thin facts need a hard look now — before HMRC finishes the backlog.
What the tribunal actually decided
Coverage from The Guardian and Bloomberg Tax is consistent on the core findings. Tribunal Judge Michaela Snelders and member Gill Hunter held there was “clear, cogent and compelling evidence” that by 5 April 2013 Sir John had settled in England in every meaningful sense.
England was where he had established his home, raised his family in Hertfordshire, built Addison Lee from 1975, accumulated his wealth, and organised personal, social and professional life. Emotional attachment to Ireland and a genuine hope of spending more time there never crystallised into a sufficiently definite intention to make Ireland the permanent home. Time on the ground mattered: eight nights in Ireland in 2015 was “inconsistent with someone seriously preparing for permanent relocation.”
HMRC also won the domicile-of-origin path. Griffin was born to Irish parents in 1942 and lived briefly in Ireland before moving to London at nine. Counsel argued his father’s English domicile of choice had already displaced any Irish domicile of origin before Griffin reached majority in 1963. The tribunal agreed. The case was decided without oral evidence from Griffin himself after HMRC accepted he was not medically fit due to cognitive decline — a reminder that domicile files have to stand on contemporaneous records, not late narrative.
The commercial context is the 2013 majority sale of Addison Lee to The Carlyle Group, then reported around a £300 million valuation. Exit years plus overseas investment returns are exactly where remittance-basis claims concentrate value — and where HMRC concentrates resource.
Why domicile still shows up after abolition
From 6 April 2025 the UK replaced domicile as the main connecting factor for income tax, CGT and IHT with residence-based rules and the four-year foreign income and gains (FIG) regime for qualifying new residents. Official material is on GOV.UK: the reforming non-UK domiciled individuals collection, the deemed domicile guidance, and the still-useful RDRM domicile of choice pages (now background for tax, still relevant to historic years and non-tax law).
What did not disappear overnight:
- Open Self Assessment years and enquiries for periods when remittance basis or non-dom status was claimed.
- Protective claims, discovery windows and appeal pipelines already in train.
- Trust, offshore company and investment holding structures whose historic characterisation still drives tax and reporting.
- Private international law, succession and some treaty contexts that still reference domicile.
- Board and PE diligence that treated “non-dom founder” as a settled fact without a file that would survive FTT scrutiny.
Griffin is the latest public illustration that HMRC will still run domicile of origin, domicile of dependence and domicile of choice to ground for pre-2025 years when the numbers justify it. The common-law tests in RDRM — residence as an inhabitant plus intention to reside indefinitely — are unforgiving of romantic attachment without settlement facts.
PE exit and founder packs: the CFO control points
If your group has a founder, chair or significant shareholder who claimed non-dom or remittance basis before April 2025, treat Griffin as a control-test, not a celebrity story.
1. Map the years that still matter. List every open SA year, enquiry, ADR or appeal where domicile or remittance basis is in play. Separate closed years from anything HMRC can still touch. Exit years around PE sales, secondary buyouts, earn-outs and management incentive realisations sit at the top of the risk stack.
2. Rebuild the domicile file from primary evidence. Passports and birth certificates are the start, not the end. You need residence history, family base, business centre, club and social life, days in each jurisdiction, property use (not just ownership), wills, school choices, bank and investment mandates, and any contemporaneous statements of intention. Griffin shows that Kerry property and “besotted with Ireland” do not displace an English life.
3. Stress-test the PE exit tax model. Models that assumed remittance basis on foreign proceeds, loan notes, escrow interest or offshore holdco distributions need a UK-arising alternative. Where the founder’s domicile was a modelling assumption, get written tax counsel refresh against current HMRC posture and this FTT line of reasoning. Carlyle-era and later PE deals with UK founder non-doms should be on the diligence checklist for residual personal tax exposure that can still land on the individual — and sometimes on warranties or indemnities.
4. Align payroll, benefits and shadow payroll. Founders who spent most of their working life in the UK while claiming foreign domicile often have messy employment and NIC histories. Cross-check against host-employer and secondment themes still live in the Upper Tribunal (see Aramark Ltd v HMRC [2026] UKUT 348 (TCC) on secondary Class 1 NICs where personal services are “made available” to a UK host). Domicile and employment status files should not contradict each other in the same board pack.
5. Trust and offshore company inventory. Excluded property trusts, pre-cut-off settlements and offshore investment wrappers still need a residence and historic-domicile spine. BDO and other mid-tier notes on what happens after abolishing non-dom status remain useful for the transitional map; pair them with the GOV.UK policy papers, not with sales slides.
6. Governance and attestation. Audit committees and PE boards should ask one blunt question: if this individual’s domicile file were opened tomorrow, would it survive the Griffin standard — settled home, family, business, wealth and life in one place, with foreign ties that never crystallised into indefinite intention? If the answer is “we have a counsel letter from 2012,” update it.
Practical lock-list for the next 30 days
- Pull the founder/shareholder domicile and remittance-basis schedule for all years still open or under enquiry.
- Instruct counsel or the tax agent to refresh risk ratings after the 15 September 2026 FTT decision and the Guardian/Bloomberg reporting.
- Re-run PE exit and management incentive tax models on a full arising basis for any remaining contingent consideration.
- Inventory offshore trusts and companies with a one-page residence/domicile chronology per settlor and principal beneficiary.
- Confirm SA software and agent mandates still hold the correct status flags for historic years (wrong flags create wrong correspondence).
- Diary any limitation and appeal deadlines; do not wait for HMRC’s next letter.
- Brief the board in plain English: abolition ends the regime going forward; it does not delete pre-2025 litigation risk.
Useful official and professional anchors:
- Find Case Law — FTT Tax and Upper Tribunal Tax & Chancery
- HMRC RDRM domicile of choice
- Reforming the taxation of non-UK domiciled individuals
- Deemed domicile rules
- Statutory Residence Test guidance
- ICAEW Tax Track — goodbye non-doms, hello FIG
- BDO — abolishing non-dom status
- Aramark [2026] UKUT 348 (TCC) (employment/NIC control parallel)
Bottom line
Griffin does not revive non-dom status. It proves HMRC will still fight domicile of choice on the facts for years when that status still drove the charge — and that PE exit windows, overseas investment returns and thin “emotional homeland” narratives are exactly the terrain. CFOs who treat April 2025 as a hard stop on domicile work are early. Close the open years, harden the files, and force the arising-basis stress test on every remaining founder and PE exit exposure before the next tribunal decision makes the same point with a different nameplate.