I was interviewed (again) on non-doms yesterday. Some of the questions and answers were as follows:
Will the non-doms leave?
Yes, of course they will. They all have to leave at some point. If they do not they are not non-dom. The real question is how many will leave now.
Maybe 20,000 are really hit by this change [...]
Also filed in
|
|
In its Budget submission, the TUC says, according to Money Marketing::
non-domiciled business owners are exploiting the non-dom tax loophole to gain an unfair advantage over businesses owned by UK taxpayers. It says this rule is stifling genuine business competition.
TUC general secretary Brendan Barber is reported to say
If the UK is to survive in today’s ultra-competitive [...]
Also filed in
|
|
The Independent ran a front page story on the cost of tax havens to Europe. It’s not 100% accurate but the location of the story in the paper gives some indication of how they view this.
The Guardian covered the fact that both the Treasury building and the Home Office are now owned through offshore structures, [...]
I think Simon Caulkin one of the best writers on management in the UK today. Last weekend he wrote:
Of course, we want London to continue to innovate and be a magnet for the financial sector, but for the right reasons, not the wrong ones. Maintaining a dubious status as an offshore tax haven, as the [...]
The Guardian has reported that:
The government has officially admitted it is unlikely to meet its target of halving child poverty by 2010.
As Larry Elliot in the same paper says:
It says something about political debate in Britain that raising half a million children above the poverty line should be seen as less important than taxing the [...]
It’s rare you read a blog that is as good as Alex Hawkes’ on the non-doms from which I was distracted by Liechtenstein:
It’s getting to the stage where I’m so fed up of non-dom whinging, I might leave the country myself.
Mike Truman has, as ever, an excellent piece on the subject in Taxation this week. [...]
Also filed in
|
|
You can see the FT debate on non-doms here.
Or rather, at the time of writing (14.55 on 20-2-08, with the debate now closed) you can’t - because STEP managed to submit not one answer that was published on the site in the hour we had available - and I submitted all eleven of mine in [...]
Just in case anyone is feeling smug about Germany’s problem with Liechtenstein, remember this: the UK operates a ring fence so that it is a tax haven, just as Liechtenstein does.
We call it the domicile rule.
And it is as unacceptable as the rule that makes the Liechtenstein foundation tax free in that country.
The FT is holding an on line debate at 14.00 on Wednesday to address this question.
I’m one of those taking part.
Roll up!
Also filed in
|
|
Robert Peston wrote this in the Guardian yesterday:
True to its counter-intuitive form, this government has eschewed a progressive remedy: a flat £30,000 tax is by definition regressive, hurting those at the bottom of the income scale and an irrelevance to the billionaires. Surely Gordon Brown would not view his Britain as a land fit only [...]
