Tax exiles’ cheap attitude to nationality

Posted on

Tax exiles' cheap attitude to nationality | Liam Firth | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk .

Good to see this on Comment is Free:

Every year, around this time, there is a conference given for those who wish to escape this cursedly overtaxed isle and depart to warmer climes: namely, the Caribbean islands of St Kitts and Nevis (or, rather less warm, Switzerland). The Global Residence and Citizenship Conference, as it is known, is held every year in the tax-dodging capitals of the world: Hong Kong, Dubai, and this year in Zurich.

The author's logic is impeccable:

It is not so much the buying of citizenship which is so irksome, but the shocking ease with which some people could subject their lives to a simple, cold calculation of income and expense: will I pay more money to the government here or there, by lying on a Caribbean beach or in a tackily furnished ski lodge? (The exact location is fairly unimportant, just as long as there are extensive helicopter facilities and built-in widescreen televisions.)

The real irony is, of course, that by being so concerned with the avoidance of tax, it becomes the organising principle in your life. For such denizens of tax havens, tax is not just something you have to do once a year by filling in a form or arranging a meeting with your accountant; it can influence where you live, whom you sleep with, where your children go to school, which people you talk to and associate with, even down to your identity as a citizen.

Please read it. It's great to to see an undergraduate a) thinking this b) getting an airing for it c) being willing to face the flak from the usual right wing idiots on CiF for it.


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