Almost two-thirds of the country’s million-pound earners disappeared from Britain after the introduction of the 50p top rate of tax, figures have disclosed.Read the rest here.
In the 2009-10 tax year, more than 16,000 people declared an annual income of more than £1 million to HM Revenue and Customs.
This number fell to just 6,000 after Gordon Brown introduced the new 50p top rate of income tax shortly before the last general election.
The figures have been seized upon by the Conservatives to claim that increasing the highest rate of tax actually led to a loss in revenues for the Government.
It is believed that rich Britons moved abroad or took steps to avoid paying the new levy by reducing their taxable incomes.
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11 hours ago
10 comments:
Duh. From JFK to Reagan, lower tax rates and less loopholes and exceptions means higher tax revenues.
But that means the politicians have less leeway to dole out favors. That's why you see tax rates high, regardless or not more revenues fill government coffers. Where's the fun in that for a politician, who thrives on creating dependent constituencies to keep him in office?
Actually, I'm in favor of every "advanced" country imposing a 50% tax rate on the wealthy and then spreading this tax world-wide to the less "advanced" countries. This will have the effect of concentrating the wealthy in smaller and smaller areas, perhaps islands, where they can be quarantined and their pernicious plague-like behavior be contained and through natural attrition they are finally reduced to be small enough to individually drown in a bathtub.
Anon, nothing like a little power grab masquerading as concern for the poor.
Stephen,
Ain't no power grabbin', it's just takin' back what's not theirs to begin with.
Why do people automatically think that wealth, however obtained, ( remember the French saying...behind every fortune lies a great crime...),
absolves the need to repent???
Amazing how people will lick the boots of their oppressor.
Anon - so the solution is a global government with the means to draw on a worldwide tax base? How kinder and gentler do you think that would be? You think the US is brutal, wait until you see what a bunch of trans-national bureaucrats with no loyalties to any particular people or place can do. (Hey, didn't I just describe the US government?)
Socialist systems mean that government becomes the richest game in town, so the elite who formerly figured out how to make money in business are replaced by a new elite who start raking it off taxpayers.
The global government is already in place- haven't you heard of transnational corporations who basically determine the economic, ( and therefore political/social), destiny of various countries? Their directors are unelected, appointed by fellow cronies etc;etc;
Anonymous,
I am sure you will be gratified to know that North Korea fully concurs with your views and they are a great success story.
What has North Korea to do with the topic?
Do you really mean to say that you have no problem with multi-national corporations busily intruding into the internal affairs of countries solely in order to benefit themselves and no one else?
Is this what's become of what used to be conservatism or is it libertarianism?
I did not know that the worship of Mammon was integral to the Orthodox faith.
Anonymous,
My point, which suspect that you got, was that your visceral hostility to private property and free enterprise has Marxist overtones.
I don't have a visceral hostility to private property and free enterprise as long as such don't negatively affect other people's lives nor were obtained through immoral or criminal means. I suppose that means that most wealth is illegitimate given the way things are.
My inspiration is from Scripture as interpreted by the Fathers of the Church such as Basil, Chrysostom and others. I suppose that, if they were alive today, they would have quite enough material for many a sermon on what the use of wealth is for and how the world's oligarchy is truly an expression of the Anti-Christ.
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