UK High Taxes: Famous Brits Vote With their Feet
TAXING PEOPLE MORE HAS CONSEQUENCES
Famous Brits vote with their feet
Britain’s raising the top tax rate to 50% and famous Brits are finding there’s other places more attractive to be.
WHY HIGH TAXES MATTER:
From We should worry that Tracey Emin, Hugh Osmond and Michael Caine are fleeing the 50p tax rate
So it is utterly tragic, at the end of the first decade of this century, that we are back in the hands of a government whose mindset seems frozen in the wastes of the 1970s. If Gordon Brown remains in power – and perhaps even if he does not – Britain’s top rate of tax will soar far above that of our most important global competitors. China, Germany and Australia are on 45 per cent maximum; Italy is on 43 per cent; Ireland on 41 per cent; France on 40 per cent; and America is on 35 per cent.
I would not mind so much if I thought this expedient was temporary, or that it would work. If the 50p tax was going to plug the hole in the nation’s finances, then it might be a good thing, and it would be right that the rich should pay a larger share. But even on the Government’s figures it is only due to raise £2.5 billion of the £700 billion required – and those estimates may be wildly optimistic. This tax is predicted to drive away at least 25,000 people; it may simply encourage more avoidance; it may actually cost money, not bring it in.
IS this a cautionary tale for the Obama administration? Probably not. If cautionary economic tales had any power in this administration, it would have avoided most of the self-inflicted political wounds it currently enjoys.
But some in the UK are aware of the damage high tax rates and the unintended financial consequences. UK Telegraph’s Boris Johnson is merely this morning’s most vocal.
Ronald Reagan famously said that “taxpayers vote with their feet”. The phrase is making a comeback in Britain. Coming soon to a U.S. state nearest you…
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