The Observer reported this weekend that:
Of the £188m raised by political parties from donations since 2001, some £17.5m, or 9.3 per cent, comes from those who have declared themselves to be non-domicile or are very likely to enjoy that status. Labour has received £8.9m from non-doms or suspected non-doms. The Tories have received £5.6m.
The answer is simple: as I suggested during the Hecklers programme I did recently, if you don't pay full UK tax you should have no right to participate in the democratic process here.
I'd go further though - I'd make UK tax payable by all UK citizens whether or not resident here. This is the US system. It doesn't seem to have harmed them.
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To make UK tax payable by all UK citizens worldwide would be a huge shift that would require a lot of thought and a massive amount of work and legislation in order to ensure that such a regime would be fairly and equitably implemented.
For example, would allowance be made for different living costs in the different countries where UK citizens are resident, or would it be a one size fits all approach?
What about taxes paid in countries without a double taxation agreement with the UK?
And, would all categories of UK citizens be included, or only those with right of abode in the UK? If you advocate the former, you would be advocating something that would be hardly practicable. If you advocate the latter, you would be advocating a discriminatory regime, based on type of nationality.
Also, taxing people who do not live in a country, for services that they do not receive and are not entitled to because they are non-resident (for example, the National Health Service and unemployment benefits) doesn’t seem quite fair.
Be that as it may, a far more equitable tax regime would be to tax people on what they actually spend. Raise VAT, EU wide, reduce the number of exempt or partially exempt items, and set up a minimum annual payment to everyone lawfully resident in the country. Keep National Insurance contributions for everyone in any form of employment.
In such a way the supposed inequalities caused by the way in which non-domiciled individuals are taxed in the UK could be considerably reduced.
But the best thing might be to reduce the size of Government, cut the salaries of politicians and quango members, cut back on wasteful expenditure by local councils, reduce the size of the welfare dependent community, do away with the so-called “independent nuclear deterrent” and generally reduce the need for so much taxation.
No, perhaps they won’t go for that one.
But I could be wrong.
Perhaps the National Identity Register will eventually be used as a basis for taxation. Now there’s a thought.