The ConDem government has announced a further development in its plan to turn the UK into a tax haven. As the FT reports this morning:
Multimillionaire foreigners prepared to invest their money in Britain will find it easier to make a home in the UK under government plans to relax immigration rules for the ¬?super-rich.
The Home Office will shortly propose changes to “investor visas” to encourage more rich people to live and invest in the UK.
Under the plans:
wealthy migrants will from April only have to spend half a year in the country — against nine months under current rules — to qualify for a visa, and the wait for permanent residency will be dramatically cut for the wealthiest entrants.
The government, which has already exempted “high net worth individuals” and entrepreneurs from the new cap on non-European migration, is determined to increase the flow of wealthy immigrants. The UK attracts only a few hundred individuals each year on such grounds, compared with 3,000 for Canada.
Under the proposals, investors bringing in £10m would qualify for permanent residency within two years. Individuals with at least £5m would qualify in three and those with £1m would qualify after five years. At present, anyone on an investor visa has to stay at least five years before being eligible.
This is tawdry tax haven behaviour akin to the worst of the Crown Dependencies, Switzerland and other such grubby states. But it's worse than that. Apart from blatant discrimination on the grounds of wealth, which is clearly a breach of basic human rights. Article 2 of the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights says:
Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
Here we very obviously have deliberate discrimination on the basis of property. This should be, and I hope will be, challenged under human rights legislation.
Offensive as that discrimination is, the policy is also indicative of the deliberate policy this government is pursuing to turn the UK into a tax haven.
We have a deliberate policy to offer low rates of tax on patents, an obvious tax haven measure.
And we have the steady ersoion of the controlled foreign company rules - another blatant measure to allow tax haven activity.
And that has been coupled with the offering of a new tax rate to corporations who want to switch their profits out of the UK and hide them in a tax haven and pay just 8% tax on them as a result - the lowest corporate tax rate in Europe and one, again designed deliberately to undermine the Uk tax base and promote tax haven abuse.
The policy is clear. The UK is deliberately creating tax haven structures to advantage those not usually resident in the UK but who wish to use the UK as a tax base. How long, I winder before the EU looks at it to see if it is abusive under the terms of the EU Code of Conduct? And how long, I wonder, before people begin to become seriously angry about this blatant abuse that is intended to shift the burden of tax from capital onto the long term resident population of the UK?Because remember too, all those new residents will have access to the domicile rule - and the mean to buy their way out of tax in this country as a consequence.
Rarely have I seen such a batant poilicy intended to shift welath from the poorest in our communtiy to the richest. Because have no doubt, that is exactly what is intended to happen as a result of these policies.
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But Richard, immigrating to the UK is NOT a right, it is a PRIVILEGE. And we the people, through our elected government, have the right to determine who can enjoy this privilege and who can’t.
So in the same way that we deny Koran-burning American pastors or gay- and Muslim-bashing Dutch politicians the privilege of entering the UK (depite their right to free speech), we can also incentivize wealthy foreigners to mover to move to our shores.
It is an insult to common intelligence to suggest that human rights have anything to do with this.
@Million Dollar Babe
Except for the fact that discrimination is very obviously going to happen on the basis of property – which is an abuse of human rights – which presumably you’re endorsing
@Richard Murphy
Our immigration rules discriminate all the time: some people need visas, others don’t; Some need a work permit, others do not; some can vote, others not; some students are allowed to work, others can’t, etc., etc. All these rules are based on individuals’ national origin, citizenship, age, place of birth, etc., etc. None of these alleged discriminations have ever served as the basis of a challenge on human rights grounds. That is because as a nation we are free to decide who has the right to join our community, who cannot, and on what basis. Simple, really.
More generally, I am not sure what it is that you are objecting to: Is it (i) that you do not want foreigners?, (ii) that you do not want rich foreigners? (and would it be better if they were poor?), (iii) that you want only rich foreigners if you can hit them with taxes? (in which case he argument is redundant because these foreigners would not come here to start with), (iv) is it something else?
Being myself a foreigner, hoping to make and (in my own judgement) making a meaningful contribtion to the UK, I am puzzled as to why you object so much to my being here.
@Million Dollar Babe
Look, I accept we can’t pragmatically take all comers
But we can be as fair as possible
Discrimination on the grounds of a property qualification is as unacceptable as discrimination on the grounds of race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status
We do not need to do any of them
But you’re saying we should
And that abuses human rights
And I’ll say that’s wrong
Or next they’ll come for you
@Richard Murphy
Our system already discriminates avery day on the basis of national origin and birth. All EU nationals are free to move here, but non-EU nationals can’t. Also, grandchildren of British citizens can immigrate, but those without British ancestry can’t, so we are discriminating on the basis of birth.
The fact is that we need immigration laws and these laws should be designed to benefit the resident popuplation, which invlolves the need for some positive (i.e. we want healthy and educated immigrants) and negative (i.e. we do not want criminals) discrimination. You are free to deny this, but this will put you in a very small minority.
Sigh.
MDB, in order to try to keep up, is conflating “race” with “national origin”. These are different things.
Also the elision from “wealthy” to “healthy”. Your common or garden disingenuous crap.
It is of no palpable benefit to the UK economy to act as a half-yearly base for someone able to continue to gain exemptions to paying UK income tax, IHT and CGT on their offshore income, without any incentives or requirements to invest domestically (other than building tacky double-height living rooms in Belgravia). The Ferrari market just isn’t a big enough a share of GDP for us to humiliate ourselves and traduce HR law.
I have acted for foreign HNWI’s: they never invest meaningfully here, and are obsessed with keeping everything offshore and beyond inspection.
What I find odd is that it is now people to the left politically, like Richard, who are arguing for a fair, vibrant capital-rich UK economy: the “free market” right will instead spin any specious thread available to defend Britain’s decline into a banana republic. Adam Smith would be horrified.
@Million Dollar Babe
Correction on point of fact in law: in most situations immigration is not a right, but immigration on grounds of a valid claim for political or humanitarian asylum is a legal right under the UK’s international legal commitments. The criteria for judging humanitarian asylum are already very strict -you have to provide evidence that you were personally targeted for political, religious or -recently- sexual orientation reasons, not just threatened in general as a member of a targeted, and it cannot be just a potential threat. It is a legal right, not a privilege like most other categories of immigration. Likewise immigration as a spouse or child of a citizen is a legal right under international human rights treaties.
^targeted *group*, I meant, pity there isn’t an edit button!
Hi Richard,
This inspired our Guardian cartoon on Wed (and not for the first time). Keep it up!
http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/cartoon/2011/feb/16/uk-immigratioin-non-eu-rich
Hari
@Hari
Good work!