Friday, March 05, 2010

Independent on revolting behaviour, parasites, and TJN

This long comment article in The Independent is worth reading, especially for key quotes such as:

(on 'non-doms') "this revolting behaviour is perfectly legal"

and

"Tax exiles want all the benefits of an advanced society, without paying for it to keep going. There's a technical definition for this in the natural sciences: a parasite."

and

"The invaluable Tax Justice Network has calculated that rich individuals "avoid" £13bn a year and rich corporations £12bn. (Indeed, a third of Britain's top 700 companies haven't paid any tax at all.) That's enough to double the education budget – or to pay off Britain's entire deficit in seven years without a single dent in public spending."

and this nice little snippet:

"When Monaco refused to co-operate with France on tax laws, Charles De Gaulle surrounded it with troops and cut off the water supply."


Read the whole article, in fact: it's worth it.

2 Comments:

Blogger Physiocrat said...

"The invaluable Tax Justice Network has calculated that rich individuals "avoid" £13bn a year and rich corporations £12bn."

That is surprisingly little. I have mentioned elsewhere that there is the petition for the reform that will put and end to all the avoidance, so I hope you will lose no time in signing.

Number 10 petition

2:20 am  
Anonymous TJN said...

The petition states that:

We the undersigned petition the Prime Minister to to replace taxes on earnings, goods and services by a charge on the unearned rental value of land, thereby raising public revenue in accordance with natural justice, reducing inequality, encouraging economic development and restoring prosperity while preventing ‘boom-bust’ cycles.

TJN supports part of this petition - that a charge on the unearned rental value of land is an effective form of taxation that should be pursued with significantly greater vigour. However, TJN does not support the position that a tax system should "replace" other forms of taxation.

4:07 am  

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