A former neighbour of mine sent me the follwoing comment after hearing Hecklers last night:
Enjoyed the programme this evening. However, depressed by attitude of most of the other contributors. Particularly sad to hear one member of the audience say that he had thought that all this ‘ideology’ nonsense in the way we are governed had [...]
The Guardian politics page promotes the second broadcast of Hecklers as follows:
Saturday, 10.15pm, R4: HecklersIEA tax specialist Richard Murphy argues that Britain should stop trying to attract the super-rich with tax breaks. Slightly unexpected line.
Well, at least it shows they thought about it, but for the record might I say that just because I stepped [...]
The script for my argument on Radio 4 this evening is available here. Of course all the discussion was entirely unscripted.
Only one loss in the edit caused me regret: I pointed out rather robustly to the audience that Mike Warburton’s claim that the UK tax affairs of a non-domiciled person were simple was completely wrong. [...]
Someone (I’ll mention no names) sent me an email on the above, which said:
Might be nice to see the geographic segmentation of mortgage assets at the moment. The risk is geographic.
True. Very true.
How much would that be worth? More than the cost of reporting this stuff, that you can be sure.
It’s not just us in [...]
The FT has reported:
Hutchison Telecommunications International, the Hong Kong-based company, has booked a tax-free windfall of HK$69.3bn (US$8.9bn) from the sale of its Indian mobile phone arm to Vodafone.
Tim Pennington, HTIL chief financial officer, said because the transaction involved the sale of “one off-shore vehicle to another off-shore vehicle”, the company was advised it did [...]
Accountancy Age has covered a story first reported by the FT and says:
The private equity industry is facing a tough shake-up in the way it is taxed, with chancellor Alistair Darling proposing stiffer capital gains tax (CGT) rates and lengthening the taper relief period.
According to the FT, Darling is considering an increase in CGT from [...]
The Guardian obituary for Leona Helmsley described her as in the title for this piece. I rather liked that.
As important, it added a quotation I was not aware of attributed to her:
The most significant line attributed to her is not “Only the little people pay taxes” (quoted by a servant in court) but “That’s how [...]
A reminder - Radio 4, 8pm (UK time) tomorrow features the programme called Hecklers in which I propose the motion that ‘The British government should stop giving tax breaks to foreign multi-millionaires’. This was, of course, all about the domicile rule.
I think it made for a good debate. I know - it was recorded last [...]
PWC have noted that:
Two new Statutory Instruments provide a formal exemption for medical check ups or vouchers used to pay for them - but only where they are provided to all staff or focused on those who have been identified as at special risk for some reason. This is a significant change in practice.
New regulations [...]
I have said relatively little about the financial turmoil of the last week or so. It proves what I have always known; that markets are irrational and any argument to the contrary is wrong as it defies all the evidence
So I agree with the Guardian leader this morning which says:
[M]erely leaving financial markets be is [...]
