Turkeys don’t vote for Christmas
March 13th, 2009
And non-doms say tax is a bad thing. Or, as a KPMG survey reports, non-doms have revealed the extent of their dissatisfaction over being charged tax. Apparently:
- One in four non-doms set to quit the UK
- More than 90 percent say tax changes damaged the UK’s competitiveness
Now let’s deconstruct that. First, as a matter of fact all non-doms are required to quit Britain. If not they’re domiciled. So the rules appear to have brought 75% within the UK tax net. Great!
Second, who the heck are the people who think they have a right to define our competiveness in terms of their non-tax payment?
I have a response to this: it’s undiluted drivel.
The British tax system does indeed damage the country’s competitiveness. Every £1 in real purchasing power that an employee receives in net wages costs an employer nearly £2 in gross labour costs as a result of our practice of raising public revenue primarily by levying taxes on labour, goods and services.
This deadweight cost of taxation loses the country about 12% of GNP according to a report by Harrison for the GNP. We need to face up to this.
Henry, I am not quite clear what you are saying. Do you mean that the country should be spending less on schools, hospitals, roads etc etc? Or do you mean that the burden of tax should be shifted away from PAYE and VAT towards other taxable sources such as corporation tax?
James, Henry is talking about taxing the unearned income from LAND. It was the original source of all state revenues. We can’t understand why the whole world seems blind to what lays under all our feet.