The Non-Dom Debate [Topic Split]

[threegee]

....  Ed however is playing the jealousy and envy card for all it is worth, banking on the fact that most of his voters are totally clueless about things like non-doms, NHS funding, and a host of other issues.  That's why none of the local Labour crowd want to publicly debate any of these things - Labour thrives on prejudice, jealousy, envy, and total ignorance of the issues!

 

As a TU official you must be more clued up than most Tony - so, explain to me exactly what a non-dom is, why Ed is attacking their status, and why any of this would actually help the common man?

[Malcolm Robinson]

Whey it sounds good man!

[Tonyp]

3G you know what it is simple terms no web link quotes people don't pay taxes on there multi billion pound businesses but they do like the British way of life IE Mr Abamovich they pay a One off fee £90,000 chicken feed there is about 100,000+ of them who should be paying more tax Ed wants that to put into the NHS which I believe is right & any working class person should feel the same.The thing is David

wants them to just to carry on as it is because most of them give the Tories (GIFTS) which helps support there party Mr Goldsmith

Was one of them till he decided he wanted to be an M.P just a bunch of weasels.....

[threegee]

Yes, I do know what it is Tony, and OK I won't provide any links for you, but I don't think you know what it is.  I think you know what you've been told by Labour, but - as usual - Labour is economical with the truth.
 

...don't pay taxes on there multi billion pound businesses but they do like the British way of life IE Mr Abamovich they pay a One off fee £90,000 chicken feed there is about 100,000+ of them who should be paying more tax Ed wants that to put into the NHS which I believe is right & any working class person should feel the same.The thing is David
wants them to just to carry on as it is because most of them give the Tories (GIFTS) which helps support there party Mr Goldsmith
Was one of them till he decided he wanted to be an M.P just a bunch of weasels...

 

There are about 110,700 people with non-dom status.  They pay tax on every penny of their earnings in this country.  In aggregate they pay about £8,400,000,000 a year in direct tax.  That's an average of about £76,000 directly to the exchequer, and if they didn't pay this we'd have to double the tax paid by the bottom 10 million taxpayers (the people who can least afford to pay it).  In addition to this they pay far higher indirect taxes than the average person, provide considerable employment, and reputedly invest heavily in our country.  They don't burden the NHS, or any other public services, but do spend a lot.  The majority of these people are doctors, surgeons, lawyers, specialists and other top professional people who we sorely need.  It's impossible to say exactly what these people contribute indirectly to our country but in direct, indirect, and trickle down economics the figure must be well over £30BN a year.

 

However that's not the full story, not all of these people are wealthy, quite a lot of them earn less than you or me, and only a tiny percentage of them fall into the super-rich Abramovich category.

 

What we are talking about from here on is what they earn simply from overseas sources.  Firstly about 64,000 of them (in theory) declare ALL their overseas earnings, and pay full UK tax on them.  This isn't necessarily a huge gain for our country because they will also be taxed in the country where the earnings originate, and it's quite likely that (under international double taxation treaties) they'll be able to deduct this from what they pay to HMRC.  In an event they are pretty much on the same terms as you or me, and you have to discount all these people as a source of further higher rate taxes.

 

110,700 - 64,000 = 46,700  In that 46,700 people are the already mentioned poorer people who simply have inherited non-dom status and aren't good for much or any overseas earnings (taxed at source or not). Already Ed Miliband's "soak the rich" is starting to look pretty limp, but how many of them can actually yield any more tax revenue?  Well the number of people who chose to have their foreign earnings exempted in exchange for an ever increasing fee is in fact a paltry 5000!  Yes, we are not talking about 110,000 we are talking about 5000. And the vast majority of those 5000 flit around the world, have houses in multiple countries, and their true wealth is hidden behind chains of companies, and is, to all practical extents untouchable - because they don't own it, they simply CONTROL it (in fact just like Tony Blair!).  They pay the fees because it's often cheaper than paying international accountants, or concealing, transferring, or laundering the wealth, and some of them don't want their affairs flagged up to other tax authorities.

 

So... we do have a nice little earner of about £300M from those fees, but Ed M wants to throw those fees away (not impose further taxes "on top" of those fees, like a silly Labourite claimed at the weekend) because he thinks he can get more.  Do you think this is true, or do you think that Ed B was right when interviewed earlier this year, when he said income might fall if we try to up the take?  Or, do you think that this isn't a matter of money at all but a matter of "fairness" and principle (in which case you'd better tell Ed M this before he spends even more money he hasn't got!)?

[Tonyp]

What world are you on?if there earning less than you & me they could easily reverse there status as Goldsmith did.Shady people 3G

shady people was at Kensington today walked passed a pub at lunchtime about 50 to 60 people drinking bottles of champagne.Guess

They must have had there Non Dom status through inheritance cos they certainly weren't working.Ask me this question if there earning less than me or you how come there paying £90k to the goverment by the way we don't need successful lawyers cos David will not give you money for legal aid on another note if you want to go to an industrial tribunal it would cost you 1,200 just to get there...

[Symptoms]

Let me clear this up once and for all. 

 

The current gang of non-doms are the 'ethical decendants' of those sugar plantation and slave owners from a couple of hundred years ago.  The original Mr Darcyesque guys, living in their huge estates in Blighty, needed to be insulated from having to hand-over the plantation profits to King George's merry tax collectors so they cooked-up this wheeze to hang-on to the blood money.  Fast forward to 2015 and the scheme's still operating for the benefit of similar gangsters.

 

That's it in a nutshell.

[Tonyp]

Symptoms I live in thamesmead people around here call it miny Lagos people around here knows Money laundering goes on & it's not British money or EU money

[threegee]

What world are you on?if there earning less than you & me they could easily reverse there status as Goldsmith did.Shady people 3G

shady people was at Kensington today walked passed a pub at lunchtime about 50 to 60 people drinking bottles of champagne.Guess

They must have had there Non Dom status through inheritance cos they certainly weren't working.Ask me this question if there earning less than me or you how come there paying £90k to the goverment by the way we don't need successful lawyers cos David will not give you money for legal aid on another note if you want to go to an industrial tribunal it would cost you 1,200 just to get there...

 

I'm on the real world Tony where only the FACTS matter. I'm looking closely at whether Miliband's explanation of where he can find more tax money to fund his spending can possibly come from - are you?

 

Chanting "soak the rich" doesn't hack it!  The rich will always have a say in whether they want to be soaked or not, and they have the ultimate sanction of telling Miliband to get stuffed. If you've lived long enough, and kept your eyes and ears open, you'll know how easy it is for a Labour government to impoverish everyone!  The easiest people to impoverish are people at the bottom of the economic tree because they have little idea of what is really going on, but there are plenty of socialists around to feed them pure BS!

 

That's exactly how Labour works - feed people false information then appeal to their worst emotions. I hold no brief for your "nasty party" (the Tories) but Labour surely is "the BS, jealousy and envy party".

There's nothing like 114,000 people paying for the exemption - Miliband claims "over 114,000" and he's lying!  Several thousand of those have already quit the country on the increasing fees, and probably because they can see a non business friendly party getting power.  We are down to 100,700 at last count, and falling.  Only 5000 currently pay the fee, and that will inevitably fall too.  Like it or not those people's real wealth is effectively untouchable; they will surely leave if you push them too far and kill the golden goose.  The facts illustrate that we've already gone too far in the name of social engineering, and that our aggressive tax policy has already lost more than we've gained.

 

And yes, whether you like it or not, there are quite a few people with non-dom status who have less earnings than you or me.  It's a legitimate status, not a convenient label to demonise people with.  You and your militant TU chums are very quick to use the "Nazi" label on anyone who you disagree with. Labelling classes of people and demonising them is precisely what socialists do too - it's a substitute for looking at the real world and the real people who live in it.  It seems than in Milibandworld non-doms have become the new Jews!  You can identify non-doms in the street by their spending habits? That's amazing, there's undoubtedly a job for you in HMRC!  But, there's a job for you in immigration too: because you also know exactly what professional people our economy needs, and those we don't need. Great stuff! 

 

Both you (and Symptoms) are conveniently conflating tax dodging with non-dom status.  Tax dodging is illegal and the way you tackle tax dodging is enforcing existing law, which has all the teeth needed.

 

Let's look at what happened when the original £30,000 charge was introduced.  Well, you guessed it, a lot of them left the country!  16,000 of the original 130,000 left.  Good riddance you say - well, say good riddance to the people they employed, the establishments they patronised, and the smaller companies they invested in.  That charge is ramped in stages to the £90,000 annually you quote, and increasing it further would be idiotic, especially if you combine this with a further hike in income tax, and a wealth tax on houses valued at over £2M.

 

The fact is that non-doms pay a lot of tax. They pay tax on ALL their UK earnings, and they pay tax on their overseas earnings too.  The UK government may not see all the tax on those overseas earnings because of (very necessary and fair) double taxation treaties, but that's how the world works - other countries very rightly claim tax just like we do!

At the end of the day Miliband is lying in his crooked teeth!  Balls knows the truth about non-doms (and has previously told the truth), but he's keeping his trap shut during the election period and letting Miliband tell all the lies.

Hey, industrial tribunals - I'd love to tackle that one some day!

[Symptoms]

Sym conflate?  Never!

 

What my colourful statement "The original Mr Darcyesque guys, living in their huge estates in Blighty, needed to be insulated from having to hand-over the plantation profits to King George's merry tax collectors so they cooked-up this wheeze to hang-on to the blood money." means is quite clear.  It means foreign income earned by those in the UK need not be taxed in the UK.

 

Oh, and I've never stated the practice was illegal only unethical/immoral;  I've also always said arrest and prosecute those breaking the rules.

 

Tony ... I know Thamesmead very well - which bit are you in, Bexley or Greenwich?  I worked there for a while in the late 70s and me and my mates usually had lunch in the Barge Pole pub.

Edited April 11, 2015 by Symptoms

[Tonyp]

Symp the barge pole is still there you wouldn't go there for lunch now a cross the road is a gypsy camp people arranging fights I'm living inthe greenwich area the Tavey bridge side which is in Bexley where Clockwork Orange was filmed is all been knocked down & luxury flats been built which means less space for social housing which means more people living in hostels & hotels..

[Symptoms]

I remember the Travellers' site from the 70s ... even back then the Barge Pole had a bit of a reputation with local 'faces'* always supping there and doing a 'bit of business'.  Those lunchtimes I mentioned always included a live stage show ... it really was like The Sweeney or Life on Mars. 

 

So Thamesmead Phase 1 has been tumbled;  what about Phase 2 (around Southmere Lake)?  So you live over in Phase 3. I was involved with some of the development design work there for a period and so watched it all being built, including the millions of tons of North Sea dredged sand being pumped from ships over the marshes to raise the ground level before building work began.  Tons of fantastic Nepoleonic era (and later) armaments were recovered during this phase as the land was the firing range for the Woolwich Arsenal (I've still got a 32 pounder cannon ball recovered from there).  The wildlife during this time was fantastic as the land hadn't been developed for a couple of hundred years and we often had the Natural History Museum folks down to ID stuff being found.  Did you know about the Arsenal's disused miniture railway system that ran around the whole of the Woolwich marsh ... much of this was re-discovered during the development work. I did quite a few of the RYA sail training courses on Southmere lake (there was a sailing centre there at the time - is it still there?) and over the floodwall we did the tidal  training on the Thames.  Happy days!

 

 

* for our sheltered viewers in Northumberland 'faces' is the SE London expression for active criminals

[Tonyp]

3G where did I say good riddance to the privileged few I just said they should pay there appropriate TAXES. Symptoms I will take some photos & send them to you might get a shock.

[threegee]

Let me clear this up once and for all. 

 

The current gang of non-doms are the 'ethical decendants' of those sugar plantation and slave owners from a couple of hundred years ago.  The original Mr Darcyesque guys, living in their huge estates in Blighty, needed to be insulated from having to hand-over the plantation profits to King George's merry tax collectors so they cooked-up this wheeze to hang-on to the blood money.  Fast forward to 2015 and the scheme's still operating for the benefit of similar gangsters.

 

That's it in a nutshell.

 

No, it was originally introduced for colonials - that's history!  In case you haven't noticed the days of empire have gone. There are a few archaic elements to it, but they are harmless, and there are in many in our customs and laws. Today the vast majority of people who have non-dom status qualified for it on their own account.

 

The people who benefit from it are us, because we attract investment into the country, and we lock it in here. Ditto with expertise. It's totally mad to abolish it because the exchequer will suffer.  It's even dumber to be sold on the proposition that abolishing it will magically gain £2BN or whatever for the NHS.  All of that is lies, and what will in fact happen - though it will take a few years to become evident - is that the country will be impoverished to the tune of about £30BN.  That's money we desperately need for the NHS, especially if we have idiot politicians who insist on funding overseas dictators, and gifting ever-increasing amounts of our wealth to the the poor Germans!

 

You want to abolish it solely for doctrinaire "social engineering" purposes, the overwhelming economic argument cuts no ice with you. You are perfectly prepared to go along with Miliband's lies that he'll collect revenue from abolition to suit your purpose.  The end justifies the lies - well it never does, a lie is always lie!  If you knowingly vote for liars then don't complain when you discover you've been had!

[threegee]

3G where did I say good riddance to the privileged few I just said they should pay there appropriate TAXES. Symptoms I will take some photos & send them to you might get a shock.

 

That's what a Labour MP said on Question Time, and it seems to be the standard Labour response when confronted with the facts.  But saying "good riddance" is exactly what you are doing by abolishing non-dom status. You are wishing a long goodbye to something of the order of £30,000,000,000 in GDP!

 

Yes, please do post pictures of these champaign swilling scum non-doms, I can't wait!  We might of course discover that they are not in fact non-doms, but some other form of lowlife in the class war!

 

Everyone pays their taxes (though it looks like a lot more could be paying them somewhere else quite soon).  Have you noticed that every LibLbCon politician, when confronted with the thorny problem of where they are going to get money from to pay for their unfunded electoral promises, cites a crack down on tax dodging raising however many millions they need?  Does it ever happen?  It doesn't because we are very efficient at tax collection in this country - sometimes too efficient for our own good.  Of course tax dodging still goes on, but wealthier people present a far easier target than the very small and nimble domestic dodgers.  However at the end of the day there's a law of diminishing returns, and (apart from tip offs) it's simply uneconomic to go after that last bit of graft.  If it were that easy it would have been done long ago.

 

Ergo ANY undertaking from ANY politico to fund ANYTHING from a crack down on tax dodging is a pure fiction, and should be treated with the derision it deserves.  And, ANY promise that the super-rich will pay is equally risible - they can afford armies of accountants, can spin off webs of international companies, and generally have a large say in the matter.  That's why the ARE super-rich!  If you doubt this ask Tony - but then again, you probably can't afford his advice.

[Symptoms]

GGG, you should surely know by now that my position is always 'to stiff the ruling elite'.  Like you I'm not taken in by all these politicians' promises or their abacus driven economic argements ... I'll repeat my standard mantra that they're ALL shysters.  Perhaps my post #6 wasn't 100% historically accurate but phrased to elicit a smile in the viewer, but I'm sure others here recognised the precision of the aim.  Certainly, the first part of my subsequent post #9 illustrates Sym's complete grasp of history and how those Empire dregs continue to benefit only a few.  I laughed when I read " In case you haven't noticed the days of empire have gone." - maybe in name, but Threadneedle Street* still continues to exert control over much of the wealth generated around the World and the poor slaving in their sweatshops.  If that's not an Empire I don't know what is.

 

I think that Tony's promise to send some snaps was about Thamesmead and probably not ones showing hordes of wealth fund managers supping on Moet.

 

*code for all money grabbing bastards swarming like bloated blue bottles over heaps of exhausted workers around the globe.

[Smudgeinthebudge]

A bit of graffiti in the Haymarket in the eighties comes to mind - Fight poverty. Eat the rich.

[Dave]

Leave those poor rich folk alone, being filthy stinking rich cannot be easy. They should be able to come and go as they please. Money is power, and they should be allowed to park their yachts off our beaches and do what they like, including giving me some cash. 

[mercuryg]

Im intrigued, 3G, that your stance appears to be there's nothing we can do about tax dodging wealthies. It's all very eell spinning the figures, but I have to pay mine, as do you. Is thus a ukip thing? Are they committed to sending home all bar those who have lots of dosh or something?

[mercuryg]

Furthermore 'everyone pays their taxes' you wrote. No, they don't, and you know it. You already referred to the armies of accountants tgat wealthy people can afford to employ to make sure of it. Have cake and eat it?

[Smudgeinthebudge]

I think the last figures I saw where 21 trillion tucked away in tax avoiding offshore accounts (That's World wide not just the UK). Now we could ask nicely for the rich to pay their taxes or we could threaten to use the money spent on trident to nuke them. Another world wide solution would be to kidnap the super rich and hold them to ransom, just for the tax they owe of course. If 21 trillion was shared between every man, women an child on the planet that's roughly over four grand each. I think that would kick start the world economy. They stole it. Lets steal it back! Then don't nationalise all industry, internationalise it. The workers produce the wealth they should be the ones who own it. Remember most immigrants come here to earn a better life for themselves and their families. It would be a lot worse if all the emigrants came home. We would sink.  

[threegee]

Im intrigued, 3G, that your stance appears to be there's nothing we can do about tax dodging wealthies. It's all very eell spinning the figures, but I have to pay mine, as do you. Is thus a ukip thing? Are they committed to sending home all bar those who have lots of dosh or something?

 

My personal view, based on long experience.  To the left all wealth is wrong no matter how it is used.  That's a recipe for impoverishing everyone.  I'm not two-faced about this like Mliband and Balls - on the one hand "encouraging investment", on the other hand making cheap political capital by appealing to the worst instincts of the electorate.

 

Furthermore 'everyone pays their taxes' you wrote. No, they don't, and you know it. You already referred to the armies of accountants tgat wealthy people can afford to employ to make sure of it. Have cake and eat it?

 

I already addressed tax dodging, and it's nothing like as big as politicos want us to believe at any convenient time. The world is unfair; life is "unfair; get over it and don't get consumed by it! In particular don't let politicos tell you there's a pot of gold out there - there simply isn't!

 

I could have phrased it that everyone pays their taxes in the jurisdiction where it is due, except a few cheats who are breaking laws anyway, but I've already explained that at length. Non-doms - either unintentionally or intentionally - don't owe some of their taxes in UK jurisdiction. That's inconvenient for Miliband's jealousy and envy party, but if he pursues this nonsense that will become evident in time.  By then it will be too late.  But politicos get to walk away from their mistakes, and someone else gets to foot the bill - largely us!

 

Why isn't he railing about 10% corporation tax in the Irish Republic that's parasitic on our economy and constantly draining our inward investment? Now that IS a serious and real loss of tax revenue; but he can't go there because it's politically inconvenient to him.

 

http://www.forbes.com/sites/taxanalysts/2013/11/06/if-ireland-is-not-a-tax-haven-what-is-it/

 

Thing is I don't believe this is a Gordon Brown self-delusion kind of mistake. I believe this one is cynical manipulation of the electorate, those who don't understand, or (it seems to me, in our Tony's case) don't want to understand the full issue.  This is the the old strategy of demonising an identifiable group of people, and blaming them for all ills.  It's shabby, it's sad, and Miliband puts himself beyond contempt.  David Starkey fully express my feelings on this - Miliband is poison!

[Symptoms]

GGG wrote: "Why isn't he railing about 10% corporation tax in the Irish Republic ...".  Actually, the correct figures for Michaleenland is12.5% for trading income and 25% for non-trading (eg. investments) and the UK rate going to be reduced in Northern Ireland to match that in the Republic.

 

Also, "In particular don't let politicos tell you there's a pot of gold out there - there simply isn't!"  There's more than one pot of gold controlled by the undeserving rich ... usually located in safety deposit vaults like that one that got screwed in Hatton Garden last week.

[threegee]

OK, well spotted, and I should have followed my own link.   But, I knew it was something stupid, especially when we bailed out the failing Irish (euro based) economy.  How long before Milband bumps UK CT to 30%, to make us wildly uncompetitive again?

Ah, the "undeserving rich".  Are there no undeserving poor?  Seems like public attitudes to that have come a very long way since Maggie T!

 

http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/scrounging-off-the-state-hardening-attitudes-toward-welfare-and-its-recipients/

 

And, who could disbelieve the heavily EU funded (with our very own money) LSE?

 

So, you want to put Britain's diamond industry out of business in pursuit of Citizen Syms revolution?  A big loss of luxury product VAT, and more loss of jobs there, but I suppose if the non-doms have left it will be on its uppers anyway.  I know I know - this time a Labour administration will all be different. 

 

[Malcolm Robinson]

Ed's promised to be fiscally responsible this time……..which kinda begs the question……..

[threegee]

Ed's promised to be fiscally responsible this time……..which kinda begs the question……..

 

But have you noticed the weasel words in Labour's glossy manifesto?  We are not going to go on a borrowing spree again except...  Ed's definition of "investment" wouldn't cut it with any real world investor.  Ed's investment returns are as nebulous as all this "influence" we buy in the EU. What he really means is go on a borrowing spree again, at a time when all existing credit cards are maxed out.

 

 

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2079rank.html

 

Frightening stuff that, as you've raised many times!  It's only possible to run those massive levels of debt per head through our being THE world financial capital (something that went to Gordo's head). Yet the loonies want to chase the people with deep pockets away on the basis of a piddling amount of money which some scheming quasi Marxist tells them they are entitled to!

Our present debt balancing act is only possible because of near record low interest rates.  If we don't have a believable plan to eliminate the current account deficit our borrowing costs will soar.  Ed might as well borrow his £30BN in voter bribes from Wonga!