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International businessman Robert Gaines-Cooper has failed to persuade the Court of Appeal that he has changed his UK domicile.

The globe-trotting entrepreneur is now facing a multimillion-pound tax bill after failing to persuade senior judges that he has non-UK domiciled status because his home for more than 30 years has been a Seychelles villa. Despite living in the Seychelles for this length of time, and wishing to have his ashes scattered there when he dies, his ties with the UK still remain strong. He has been, and is still, a frequent visitor to the UK and has retained property and investments here. His second wife and son also reside in the UK.

Justice Rimer sitting with Lord Justice Wilson in the Court of Appeal in London, dismissed a proposed appeal as “nothing more than an illegitimate attempt to reargue the facts”.

Although Mr Gaines-Cooper has a house in Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire, where he keeps his collection of paintings, classic cars and guns, he maintains that he “fell in love” with the Seychelles as long ago as 1976 and bought a French-style plantation house there, which he renovated at a cost of $2.5 million. It was perverse, he argued, that he was not recognised as a “non-domiciled” by the tax authorities when he has not been “ordinarily resident” in Britain since the mid-70s.

The Gaines-Cooper case has attracted much attention throughout the tax profession and has been of great interest to other non-domiciled individuals because it demonstrates just how difficult it is for someone with a UK domicile of origin to shake off that domicile and establish domicile overseas. Likewise, it is difficult for HMRC to argue that a person who makes a permanent home in the UK will automatically become UK domiciled.

Although the appeal ruling means that Mr Gaines-Cooper now faces a huge tax demand for the years 1993 to 2004, which is certain to run to several million pounds, he does have one final glimmer of hope - last month a separate judicial review was heard by Mr Justice Lloyd Jones and judgment is awaited.