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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Labour’s hoping that taking on the non doms could be a narr
politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » Labour’s hoping that taking on the non doms could be a narrative changer
Today’s announcement by Miliband that if they win power they’d end the special tax status of non-doms is the first genuine policy surprise of the campaign and could be quite a tricky one for Cameron/Osborne to respond to.
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"Labour: Tough on inward investment, tough on the causes of inward investment."
Will we be getting manifestos this time round? Or have the parties sussed out that the voters won't believe a word they say.
Labour had 13 years to do something about Nom-Doms , there was a reason why they didn’t.
This new policy by Ed shows a significant shift to the left imho and is just another attack on wealth creators and big employers.
OT, unlike mansions, non-doms can move elsewhere.
75 hours
Rich people may be annoying and unpleasant and brash and flaunt their wealth. But every time they buy another supercar or a yacht, the VAT they hand over employs a few more doctors and nurses.
The top 1% - retained here or brought here by an attractive tax regime - pay for the NHS. I want the Tories to rip Ed Miliband's bollocks off and wave them in his face over this.
Brilliant stuff.
Good luck opposing this if that is what the Right is going to attempt to do.
Anyway the general point remains, and best you will get no extra tax because they will leave or their accountants will work around it. At worst they wont come here to start their businesses or invest in ours and economy will suffer. A plan with no upside except salving a few lefties ideas of "fairness" and a significant downside when billions of pounds goes somewhere else to be spent.
A poor response in my opinion. It gave the impression that the Tories had no problem with inequality for the super rich as long as the treasury made a few quid out of it.
This thinking is the achilles heel of the Tory party.
It also fails to address the question that the housing market which is being seriously distorted by the privileged tax status of the non doms. It will certainly be popular unless you're a Chelse supporter
"Rich people may be annoying and unpleasant and brash and flaunt their wealth. But every time they buy another supercar or a yacht, the VAT they hand over employs a few more doctors and nurses."
It ain't the yachts but the mansions that trickle down and mean a whole generation cant afford to live in London anymore
The work will still be here in the UK. If the 1pc earn a dime here it will be taxed here.
If so, does he think it fair that they have only 1% (actually a lot less since many won't even be citizens) of the votes?
"Indigo's squeals tell us... what, exactly? That the sun's over the yardarm in the Philippines, perhaps?"
If you live in the Phillipines have you heard of someone called Geoffrey Bennun? the last of ten people killed by a serial killer there? If 'yes' I'll tell you why I want to know.
The second thing that strikes me is how economically illiterate the policy is. These people's presence in Britain is discretionary. The reason why different rules apply to them is because they are in a different position from the rest of us. They don't have to be here, and if we make it financially unattractive for them to be here, they won't come (or they won't stay), which would be damaging to Britain's economy in the long run since these people contribute to the country's economic growth. Indeed, Labour acknowledges this tacitly by suggesting that there will be a long period before the British tax regime applies.
The third thing that strikes me is that the general sweep of the policy will undoubtedly be popular. If the Tories are to combat it effectively, they will need to paint a picture of a Labour party that doesn't understand the private sector and doesn't like wealth-creators.
But I expect the Tories to fall into the trap every bit as much as Labour fell into the business trap last week. Indeed, pb has already shown why that is likely to happen.
"That is why Ireland is wolf whistling at them to move there. Milliband will destroy this country. But at least the destruction will be fair."
This always makes me smile. The whole pont about being one of the super rich is that you get to live where you want. Who wants to have squillions if you have to live in Ireland?
I have no problem with one person one vote, I don't see how the level of wealth you have comes in to it. The people have the right to elect the government they want, those with the where with all have the right to move to another country if they don't like the government the people chose to elect. The people can't look all surprised if the first causes the second. I wouldn't get the impression that I am some sort of plutocrat though, I think my income over the past five years probably averaged less than the UK benefit cap
Headline: "Labour would scrap non-dom status"
Translation: "we will probably reduce the free non-dom period by a few years"
From the Guardian-
"Labour will stress that foreigners in the UK for a genuine temporary short period will be able to retain non-dom status. The party intends to consult on the length of that period if it wins the election.
Richard Murphy, the left-of-centre tax expert, has suggested that the grace period could amount to five years, arguing that, without such a time frame, foreigners could be subject to being taxed in two jurisdictions, including their permanent place of residence overseas.
Someone who is a non-dom and lives in the UK for less than seven years can currently use the special non-dom rules free of any charge. They then have to pay charges ranging from £30,000 a year for people who have been UK resident for seven out of the past nine years, to £90,000 a year for those who have been UK resident for 17 of the past 20 years.
http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/apr/07/ed-miliband-non-dom-tax-status-labour
Good.
What happened to the NHS letter? Has that died a death already?
Not so good.
"They don't have to be here, and if we make it financially unattractive for them to be here, they won't come (or they won't stay), which would be damaging to Britain's economy in the long run since these people contribute to the country's economic growth. Indeed, Labour acknowledges this tacitly by suggesting that there will be a long period before the British tax regime applies."
That suggests that they're here to avoid tax? Surely they are here because they choose to live here so why not pay the tax like the rest of us. It's how it works in the States and hasn't led to a non dom exodus
We also do not know if this will affect everybody or just UK citizens which was a clear implication of a quote from Labour on the Sky website. Lazy journalism. They should be asking questions about the specifics and, possibly, not using Roman Abramovich as an example.
I think this just further re-enforces that they don't understand wealth creation and that they're determined to make Britain a worse place for business. If you're looking to locate yourself or relocate a company here and you're in a decision making capacity you are either earning the proposed 50% tax or a non-dom and with such tax rates Britain now compares really poorly with others in Europe. What is the opportunity cost of this? No doubt it will go down great with the core vote.
2) culture (in its broadest sense)
The tax advantages certainly do no harm, mind.
The top 1% of taxpayers paid around £180 billion of that.
The NHS Budget for 2015 is around £115 billion.
Just to inform the debate with some real numbers. The political campaigning yesterday was about an extra £8 billion for the NHS. Less than 5% of the amount the top one hundredth of taxpayers meet.
Or to put it another way, say there are 30m taxpayers in the UK (HMRC says 29m in 2013). 1% of that is 300,000. That 8 billion we need to find represents the amount paid by say 13,000 people.
If 13,000 out of 30m choose to leave the UK, that NHS black hole of £8 billlion just doubled to £16 billion....
Under Labour - monumentally shite economy.
Under the Coalition - strongest growing economy in the western world.
It's touching, and could possibly lead to them worrying about large parts of our society who are seeing their lives ruined.
(N.B. only in a parallel universe of course)
Effectively Milliband is proposing worldwide taxation for these people. Unless he scurries round and renegotiates all our global tax treaties that effectively becomes double taxation for the vast majority of these people (who pay tax in their country of domicile). As an example, the US allows UK taxpayers to offset $80,000 of tax against US taxes, but anything above that you pay twice.
The effect?
- City based people whose job is dependent on their network and generate significant locational benefits will probably mainly take up UK domicile. This is a good thing.
- Expats (I'm assuming there will be a window eg 3 years before these rules kick in) will end up being here for a shorter period and then cycling out for purely tax reasons. This is a bad thing
- The super wealthy will probably live here even less. I'm not convinced they will sell their homes, but will just leave them empty. This is a bad thing for the service economy (although on the margin may remove one aspect of demand for housing)
Overall a slightly bad thing in practice (why didn't he just lift the £30,000 residence fee to a higher number?) which probably won't generate much more income.
It sends a terrible terrible message to people considering investing in the UK though. There was a reason why Gordon Brown and Alistair Darling both looked at it in detail and decided it was a bad idea...
"YouGov are also returning to a method we successfully used in the 2005 general election. Our usual polling method relies upon weighting by party identification. However, for the campaign itself we will be drawing our daily polling samples from people who we previously contacted in January and February this year and weighting our data using how those people told us they were voting at that time (a period when the polls were broadly stable and Labour were, on average, slightly less than a point ahead).
This means that we can be confident that any material change in the polls from that position reflects a genuine shift in public opinion since January & February. There will be still be some random sample variation from poll to poll - it can never be eliminated completely - but it will mean any substantial change in the polls will be down to individual people changing their minds (or making their minds ups) since we interviewed them in February."
https://yougov.co.uk/news/2015/04/08/labour-lead-2/
"I heard the story vaguely, it was in the news just after we arrived here, but those events weren't local to me so I don't know much about them,"
Thanks. I went to school with him. My old school magazine asked ex pupils if we had any photos from our time at school. I sent one of him as the winning captain of a rugby team.
It was an interesting shot with an interesting story and a nice change from the ex pupils who went on to become captains of industry so I emailed to ask them why they didn't use it.
Apparently it was the circumstances of his death. It wasn't that he was the tenth and final victim of a serial killer but that his partner with whom he shared his fate was just sixteen.
Ed is prepared to crash that notion. Fairness is top trumps, even if it means everyone getting poorer.
More accurately: "Labour would tighten the non-dom rules" (just as the Tories have done)
God knows why the media haven't yet picked up on Labour's electioneering shenanigans, promising the earth to appease lefties and keep the likes of the Greens in their place, while the small print reveals the tiniest of incremental changes that wouldn't satisfy any Labour supporter if they actually knew about it.
So the policy is based upon guesswork and appears unlikely to raise so much as a billion.
VAT is mainly the prerogative of those on PAYE.
http://globalnation.inquirer.net/news/breakingnews/view/20100726-283240/P100000-reward-offered-for-arrest-of-suspect-in-foreigners-slay--police
"Surely the whole point of a tax is to raise money?"
But more important is a cohesive society which requires equality under the law and under the tax regime
Polling needs rethinking.
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/nov/24/private-schools-labour-warning-tax-breaks-tristram-hunt
Same rules should apply as for everyone else, 183 days and you pay the tax.
As for the property thing, frankly a market correction is well over due and it'll allow more local people onto the property ladder
http://www.oecd.org/pisa/pisaproducts/pisainfocus/48482894.pdf
Overall figure is 69%
Men: 73%
Women: 66%
Cons VI: 76%
LAB: 77%
LD: 73%
UKIP: 74%
2010 Cons: 77%
LAB: 76%
LD:72%
18-24: 60%
25-39: 61%
40-59: 68%
60+: 82%
ABC1: 71%
C2DE: 68%
London: 69%
R of South: 70%
Mids/Wales: 66%
North: 71%
Scotland: 72%
183 days. Doesn't matter what your citizenship is.
It's good enough for every other country in the world, I refuse to accept the the UK is so crap and lacking in attractions that people wouldn't live there without massive tax loopholes.
Is that really what we're saying ?
A proposal to reduce tax avoidance by the richest 1% from Miliband is economically crap.
A proposal to reduce tax avoidance by Osborne, upon which all his plans for the next term rest, is sheer genius.
We know this because of who their authors are.