George Osborne’s wheeze for tackling the nondom tax problem has the virtues of elegance and simplicity. The Shadow Chancellor wants to give UK residents who are nondomiciled for tax purposes a choice: pay a £25,000-a-year levy and keep your nondom perk, or pay nothing and opt to be treated like ordinary UK taxpayers.

The policy deserves a hearing. It begins to address the low-level gripe heard in a thousand bars that there is an elite of UK residents who are not quite paying their fair share of tax. Under the Tory plans, they would at least shell out a little bit more to the Exchequer on their overseas earnings.

It also recognises the legitimate worry that a clumsy crackdown would scare off people we can ill-afford to lose - rain-makers whose businesses sustain jobs, sports and arts stars whose talents really do add to the nation’s happiness, and plain big spenders who keep the tills jangling everywhere from Asprey’s and Jack Barclay to the Royal Opera House. A £25,000 demand is unlikely to send them scuttling off to Heathrow.

But the practical reality may be more irksome and less fruitful. Mr Osborne’s hope that £3.5 billion could be raised looks optimistic. Any nondom making less than £62,500 from nonUK earnings – and that must be many of them – would be better off sacrificing their nondom status. Many will do that and will not thank the Government for the extra red tape. Britain’s reputation as fiscally friendly to foreigners will inevitably dip a notch.

There is a good reason why Gordon Brown - and Tory Chancellors before him - kept returning the nondom issue to the “too difficult” basket.

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