Jamie Dimon used a Wednesday meeting with Chancellor John Healey to argue that raising levies on lenders would put British jobs and capital expenditure at risk, according to people familiar with the discussion. The JPMorgan chief executive has made a habit of intervening in UK fiscal debates, and his latest warning arrives as the Treasury weighs a windfall tax on banks and energy producers for the 28 October budget.

The tax framework Dimon opposes

UK banks already pay a 28 per cent corporation tax rate, three percentage points above the standard level, plus a separate surcharge applied to their domestic balance sheets. Dimon has argued for years that the post-crisis surcharge structure penalises institutions that were never bailed out, and he repeated in August that further increases would carry adverse consequences for employment.

A pattern of leverage

The chief executive hosted Varun Chandra, the prime minister's business envoy, at a King's birthday event in Manhattan shortly before Reeves's first budget last year. Days later JPMorgan unveiled plans for a three-million-square-foot Canary Wharf tower, a £3 billion project intended to consolidate more than half of its 23,000 UK staff. Dimon attached a condition at the time: the investment required a continuing positive business environment.

The conditional commitment

In May he went further, stating the tower could be scrapped if a future Labour leader hostile to the sector replaced Keir Starmer. Andy Burnham, frequently mentioned as a potential successor, has not yet commented specifically on bank taxation, though the TUC and Positive Money have urged higher levies to help fund cost-of-living relief.

The revenue backdrop

The four largest UK lenders, HSBC, NatWest, Barclays and Lloyds Banking Group, have accumulated roughly £200 billion in pre-tax profit over the last five years, driven largely by rising interest rates. For the financial year ending March 2025, the sector's total tax contribution reached an estimated £43.3 billion, according to an industry-commissioned report.