There’s been much in the news today about twenty (that’s all they could find) economists who wrote to the Financial Times saying the higher 50p rate of income tax was damaging to the economy. (Whether or not these people are conveniently in that tax bracket remains to be seen.) In other corners of the globe, billionaires such as Warren Buffet, and millionaires in France, are asking if they could please pay more tax, thank you very much, which is nice of them to do so.
Of course, let’s put aside the fact that many of these people and their firms are probably squirrelling away most of their earnings through offshore tax havens or through tricks like transfer pricing, and barely pay much tax anyway. Who’s to deny millionaires a spot of good publicity, right?
Anyway, my point – finally – is that you should read this, which devastates the spurious claims made by those ‘leading’ economists:
How does this punish wealth creation? This is a) a marginal tax rate not applied to all income b) not applied to much income derived by ‘talented’ foreign individuals coming to the Uk for less than seven years because of the domicile rule and c) I’m told highly avoidable because the same group say almost no one is actually paying this sum]. So where’s the ‘punishment?’
It’s well worth a few minutes of your time, because it points out so many truths and facts. And besides, we all know what happens when we slash taxes for the well off – the only Death is of the economy:
