With both the UK Government and the EU looking to close tax loopholes for Britons working abroad, the British-based rock legends will join a growing band of entertainment and sports stars as tax exiles.

They are united in their status as millionaires and their employment of accountants to find a lucrative path through often intricate tax rules.

Damon Hill lives in Ireland

Millionaires such as rock star David Bowie, who has lived in Switzerland since 1981, Damon Hill, who lives in Ireland to protect his motor racing earnings, and reclusive businessman Joe Lewis, who has invested in football clubs including Rangers, have saved millions as non-residents.

They retain their citizenship but pay tax locally, often at greatly-reduced rates in places such as the Bahamas and Monaco.

It was business figures who led the way in streamlining their tax burdens.

Offshore trusts, which came to prominence last year when the Labour MP Geoffrey Robinson answered questioned over his business interests, are a favourite of many firms but are thought to be next on Gordon Brown's hitlist as he presses for he believes is a fairer taxation system.

Richard Branson is another who routes his businesses through tax havens, fittingly the British Virgin Islands.

He has called paying tax "a waste of money", though he says that it is the confidentiality afforded his interests abroad that attracts him overseas. Though he lives in Britain, he likely to be saving many millions on the businesses he controls.

It is the unexpected plans by Gordon Brown in the March Budget to abolish the Foreign Earnings Deduction, introduced by Labour Chancellor Denis Healey in 1977, that has caught out the Rolling Stones and prompted them to postpone the home dates on their tour until the new tax year.

'The Stones are angry'

The deduction allowed a 100% tax rebate for those spending 365 days abroad, and its sudden scrapping has caught out thousands of British workers who are serving contracts based on its tax-free benefits.

Similar benefits are possible as a non-resident, but require being abroad for the entire April-to-April tax year. An estimated 20,000 people are affected, according to the Treasury.

Mick Jagger, who owns a large house in Richmond, will now play the postponed concerts in the new tax year. Though he will pay tax that year, it is years in which the Rolling Stones tour the world that they receive their biggest paychecks.

The band argue that making the plan retrospective to Budget day is unfair, and will punish their crew of more than 200 as much as themselves.

John Whiting, a tax partner at Price Waterhouse, said: "The Rolling Stones are angry because they set up the tour of the basis that their staff would benefit. Suddenly they are not going to.

"This is a retrospective tax change. Suddenly, halfway through the year, the tax break goes. I'm quite upset. I'm with Mick Jagger on this one."