For those who don't know today is UK budget day. This is what I want to hear and might hope for:
1) A commitment to introduce a general anti-avoidance principle to tackle tax avoidance;
2) A UK commitment to extending the EU Savings Tax Directive to companies and trusts and an undertaking to make sure our Crown Dependencies and Protectorates comply;
3) An explicit statement that tax evasion, wherever it might be suspected to occur, is always money laundering and should be reported as such in the UK and throughout its Crown Dependencies and Protectorates;
4) The the government's commitment to alleviating child poverty is intact;
5) That the government is committed to ensuring that tax compliance takes place in tax reporting worldwide;
6) That the UK will supply increased support to the tax administrations of developing countries to ensure they can collect the tax due to them;
7) In support of this objective the UK government is calling for the International Accounting Standards Board to support the introduction of country-by-country accounting by multinational corporations;
8) That automatic reporting of the sale of all land, shares and other securities to HM Revenue & Customs by all persons registered under the FSA will be introduced to prevent what I believe to massive capital gains tax evasion currently occurring in this country;
9) The transfer of assets between married couples and civil partners less than a year before disposal of an asset will be ignored in future for all capital gains purposes;
10) All gains on the disposal of assets held for less than a year will be subject to income tax henceforth and not capital gains tax.
What I'd like and doubt I'll hear are:
1) That the domicile rule has been abolished and that the TUC's approach to this issue is being adopted in its place;
2) That the move on income shifting is being deferred for a year whilst a thorough review of the structures available for use by small business, and of their taxation, is undertaken with radical legislation to promote change that eliminates much of the current tax abuse and at the same time reduces admin and other burdens in this area.
I could add more. That should do for now.
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How about:
The sale of any UK real estate by a non-resident will be subject to CGT in the UK, irrespective of ownership structure (personal name, trust or company)?
That should stop non-residents buying Central London for stupid prices and driving everybody else outside the housing market.
Forget the non-dom issue. It’s irrelevant for tax purposes.
The purchase of real estate by non residents for speculation purposes is what is driving the UK into the wall: it can be bought through an offshore structure and avoid all taxes. The effect on all “normal” people is a disaster.
You didn’t give poor Mr Darling much time to review your suggested changes Richard!
It’s not only non-residents who speculate on property.
A full annual land value tax payable by owners would capture, for public benefit, all the unearned capital gain in land values (the largest element in property prices) plus the economic rent (which the banks partly capture through mortgage interest). And you wouldn’t have to wait for a (possibly hidden) transaction to take place to produce a huge, secure revenue stream.
All booms end with a speculative land price bubble since, as Mark Twain once observed, ‘they ain’t making any more of it’. The bubbles just get bigger each cycle with increasing population, concentration of wealth and environmental degradation.
When will economists stop ignoring the land issue?
[…] Chancellor has listened to me: the rules on income shifting will be postponed for a […]