{"id":14215,"date":"2012-02-22T15:42:20","date_gmt":"2012-02-22T15:42:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=14215"},"modified":"2012-02-22T15:43:21","modified_gmt":"2012-02-22T15:43:21","slug":"the-isle-of-man-likes-to-say-its-debt-free-but-it-owes-171-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/02\/22\/the-isle-of-man-likes-to-say-its-debt-free-but-it-owes-171-million\/","title":{"rendered":"The Isle of Man likes to say it&#8217;s debt free &#8211; but it owes \u00c2\u00a3171 million"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>As <a href=\"http:\/\/www.iomtoday.co.im\/news\/business\/we_owe_171_million_to_the_isle_of_man_bank_1_4260784\" target=\"_blank\">Isle of Man Today reported yesterday<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>THE Manx public owes nearly \u00a3171 million to the Isle of Man Bank in local authority loans.<\/p>\n<p>The figure \u2014 branded \u2018alarmingly high\u2019 by one MHK \u2014 was revealed on the eve of the Budget and in the wake of the news that interest on all of those loans has increased by 0.25 per cent as a result of a clause in a deal between Treasury and the bank. The clause states that if the island\u2019s credit rating is downgraded \u2014 as happened in November when Standard and Poor\u2019s downgraded the Isle of Man from AAA to AA+ \u2014 then the bank can increase the interest rate on the loans.<\/p>\n<p>The actual figure owed in local authority housing loans is \u00a3170,737,446.20.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The island's\u00a0politicians\u00a0always like to claim it has no debt: that's clearly not true. It actually owes \u00a32,074 per head of population. OK, that's not quite the \u00a316,500 per head of the UK. But then, nor can the\u00a0Isle of Man print its own money either and it's also now running serious budget deficits of more than 11% of income - again smaller than the UK, but so it should be given that as yet it is\u00a0still\u00a0being heavily subsidised by us as not all the VAT\u00a0subsidy\u00a0has gone as yet and we're still massively\u00a0subsidising\u00a0the\u00a0island\u00a0in some ways - such as defence.<\/p>\n<p>It strikes me that times are just going to get tougher in the middle of the Irish Sea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Isle of Man Today reported yesterday: THE Manx public owes nearly \u00a3171 million to the Isle of Man Bank in local authority loans. The<br \/><a class=\"moretag\" href=\"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2012\/02\/22\/the-isle-of-man-likes-to-say-its-debt-free-but-it-owes-171-million\/\"><em> Read the full article&#8230;<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-isle-of-man"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}