Mark Steel: A taxing problem: should the rich pay for cheese?
It wouldn’t be so bad if the people opposed to the proposed change were honest, and said, “I feel very strongly that this is a counter-productive measure because I want to keep all my money, even though I’ve got more than I could ever spend because I want it and I don’t care about your health service because I own my own intensive care unit so that money’s mine.”
Which is why non-domicile tax status is one of those modern phrases, like the names given to various disorders ascribed to unruly kids, that makes you think “Oh that’s what they call it now is it? Why can’t they stick with its simple old-fashioned name, of being a selfish, greedy bastard?”
Posted on February 13th, 2008 at 10:12am under Miscellaneous misanthropy, UK politics
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• 7 Comments |
But this is money made outside of the UK. They’ll pay tax if they invest it or spend it here. Why should the government levy taxes on income generated in foreign markets (where tax may have already paid)?
Also the option of an annual one-off payment (£30k), proves that this has nothing to do with capturing the excessive wealth of the – cliché alert! – hundreds of Russian millionaires, and everything to do with squeezing those who are based here but have modest global interests.
I think “may” is quite an important term in the posting above.
Surely it’s up to the country in which they do business to levy tax? If it’s a tax haven, or they have loopholes, how is the right of the British state to remedy this? Or have I missed something?
Yes. You’ve not asked why they choose to be resident here in the first place and what relationship that decision may have to the ability of “the country in which they do business to levy tax”.
Now I think that’s quite enough sympathy for the poor old overtaxed super-rich.
London is a great city if you’re rich. Nice houses, good schools, and plenty of places to spend your money. However, these all cost. Expensive houses and goods are taxed. Good schools are – in their cases – private. So they will pay tax (although not on education – but we shouldn’t tax that anyway).
The problem is, the “super-rich” – who have all the best tax accountants – can pay a paltry £30k to circumvent this anyway. So it’s got nothing to do with capturing the obscene wealth of the “super rich”, it’s about taxing the middle classes who have interests overseas. The amount of revenues this will bring in is nothing compared to the income generated by these people spending their money in our economy – and hundreds are now considering going elsewhere.
It’s a petty class war being grossly misrepresented by the BBC, nothing more.
It’s a petty class war being grossly misrepresented by the BBC
That’s because the BBC is run by petty class warriors. Practically a Soviet, it is.
“It’s a petty class war being grossly misrepresented by the BBC, nothing more.”
I almost choked on my earl grey when I read that. Ah, right, a PETTY class war, unlike the full-on, gloves-off, nostril-flaringly SERIOUS class war that`s been waged against the rest of us by the rich and their corporations for the last 30 years, then!