Osborne discovers that the rich avoid paying tax

[Beef Oven]

You mean in order to reverse the redistribution of income from poor to rich begun in the late 1970s it will be necessary to dispense with taxation of the rich and go for straight appropriation? Fine by me .

Yeah, storm the winter palace!!!

[ahinton]

You mean in order to reverse the redistribution of income from poor to rich begun in the late 1970s it will be necessary to respond in kind - dispense with taxation - and go for appropriation? Fine by me .

That ain't what I said and you know it! As I hope that I also indicated, if only by implication - nothing could be so simple in practice!

[ahinton]

Yeah, storm the winter palace!!!

Is that by chance the "palace of wisdom" that you cite in your sign-off?...

[Beef Oven]

Is that by chance the "palace of wisdom" that you cite in your sign-off?...

No.

[Maclintick]

"We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes" - Leona Helmsley, American heiress.

[ahinton]

No.

Much obliged to you for that confirmation.

[Beef Oven]

Much obliged to you for that confirmation.

You are more than welcome

[John Skelton]

That ain't what I said and you know it! As I hope that I also indicated, if only by implication - nothing could be so simple in practice!

You don't think taxation is a good way of redistributing income, fine; maybe it isn't. Maybe, seen from a certain perspective, any redistribution of income from the present situation is undesirable. (If you're holding plenty of the stuff, for example). However. The last 30 years have seen a programmatic, with accompanying ideology backed up by force where necessary, redistribution of already unequally distributed wealth from poor to rich. The situation isn't different in 'developing economies', though the spread of new prosperity is wider (with the same vast grabs at share of capital by the rich). It might not be simple, but if the poor decide to take the matter into their own hands, through revolutionary organisation, on what grounds would you disapprove of that? That it's unfair to the rich?

[teamsaint]

odd thing this. The rich claimed that the 50% rate actually raised less tax than a lower rate would. They say a lower top rate will raise more tax, which will come from the better off since most people don't pay the top rate.
So the well off actually asked to pay more tax.
Funny, because they don't usually think that paying more tax is good.
Hmmmmmmmmmmm......

[Serial_Apologist]

odd thing this. The rich claimed that the 50% rate actually raised less tax than a lower rate would. They say a lower top rate will raise more tax, which will come from the better off since most people don't pay the top rate.
So the well off actually asked to pay more tax.
Funny, because they don't usually think that paying more tax is good.
Hmmmmmmmmmmm......

I thing the Tories' argument was that, by lowering the tax threshold, more rich would be prepared to pay the lowered rate of tax rather than avoid it, thereby procuring more net tax to the Exchequer. Huh!

[ahinton]

You don't think taxation is a good way of redistributing income, fine; maybe it isn't. Maybe, seen from a certain perspective, any redistribution of income from the present situation is undesirable. (If you're holding plenty of the stuff, for example). However. The last 30 years have seen a programmatic, with accompanying ideology backed up by force where necessary, redistribution of already unequally distributed wealth from poor to rich. The situation isn't different in 'developing economies', though the spread of new prosperity is wider (with the same vast grabs at share of capital by the rich). It might not be simple, but if the poor decide to take the matter into their own hands, through revolutionary organisation, on what grounds would you disapprove of that? That it's unfair to the rich?

Once again, it seems that I am making myself insufficiently clear when I get responses about things of which I might "approve" or "disapprove" when what I am seeking to do is address the issues as best I can without providing personal opinions.

The problem with "the poor" deciding to take "the matter" into their own hands is that not all of the poor share identical agendas and goals or identical views as to how such goals might be achieved. More importantly, however, I see redistribution of wealth as a micro-phenomenon, i.e. as something that occurs everytime there is a transaction, however large or small and, as such, it seems to me that there can be no reliable means - taxation régimes or otherwise - that can or will effectively exert control over such redistribution; every penny of profit represents a loss for someone else and every transaction has its beneficiary and its loser.

Furthermore, I think it important, especially when considering tax structures as a potential means of addressing "the problem of the rich", to define first how one should identify "the rich"; those on large incomes might well be seen as "income rich", but true financial wealth is surely more meaningfully measured in the ownership of valuable assets, be they land, buildings, businesses and business interests, financial instruments of one kind or another or readily realisable cash. There may well be people out there with vast portfolios of such things who may justly be described as "rich" but who have - and in some cases perceive the need to have - relatively modest incomes, but those low incomes do not make them any the less "rich". How can taxation address such a situation? Only by the imposition of wealth taxes which, for example, France and Spain have but UK does not. The problem with these is that some rich people who are liable to them but have insufficient cash resources to meet those liabilities have to sell assets in order to do so; this ultimately devalues assets to the point at which less wealth tax becomes levied on the rich. In other words, it has little or no beneficial effect for the rest of us.

[aeolium]

The problem with these is that some rich people who are liable to them but have insufficient cash resources to meet those liabilities have to sell assets in order to do so; this ultimately devalues assets to the point at which less wealth tax becomes levied on the rich. In other words, it has little or no beneficial effect for the rest of us.

I disagree. The devaluation of the ludicrously appreciated property values in some parts of the country, particularly London, is wholly to be desired and would benefit everyone apart from that small group of the wealthy and property speculators who contribute to making housing increasingly unaffordable for many people. And I see redistributive taxation not merely as an opportunity to increase the overall tax take so that public infrastructure as a whole is improved, but as a means to abolish that whole class of the superrich (at least from this country) and move towards a society of greater income equality. I just don't think huge salaries are ever justifiable in a country where 5 million households are in relative poverty.

[John Skelton]

@ahinton #131

The last 30 or so years have seen a systematic redistribution of already highly unequal wealth from the poor to the rich (more than reversing the trend of post-1945 social and economic policy in the 'developed' world; hence redistribution is a perfectly good description of Reaganite / Thatcherite policy). One major factor in this redistribution has been the policy of wage restraint effected in part by breaking the Trade Unions and reducing their bargaining power (or refusing to recognise them altogether).

This has been accompanied by a tax policy which has reduced the amount of tax proportionate to wealth ... 1% (for the sake of keeping it simple for a conversation on an internet message board, something you have a temperamental aversion to I realise) pay. So that when figures get produced showing the % of total tax paid by the 1% (or whatever) to show how put upon that 1% is, what is neglected is the simple fact that if wealth was distributed more equally tax would be paid more equally. Producing the entirely unparadoxical effect that more people would pay more tax and be better off in the process, and that some people (1% etc.) would pay less tax and be worse off in the process.

You love presenting everything as some intractable dilemma, but the balance rich - the rest hasn't happened by accident or state of nature: it has happened because of political and economic policy, enforced by government and trans-governmental theory and action. It is, therefore, reasonable to suggest that with a bit of will and effort and enforcement (of the kind that has been applied to protect the poor to rich redistribution of three decades) the trend could be reversed. One way to do that would be super-taxing. Another would be appropriation and redistribution of assets. Something you would perhaps describe as "immoral".

[ahinton]

I disagree. The devaluation of the ludicrously appreciated property values in some parts of the country, particularly London, is wholly to be desired and would benefit everyone apart from that small group of the wealthy and property speculators who contribute to making housing increasingly unaffordable for many people.

I agree in principle; indeed, the cost of housing almost everywhere in UK bears little or no practical relation to earnings, much to the detriment and chagrin of homewoners and propsetvie homeowners. my point, however, was that devaluing land and property reduces the tax take - not only from wealth taxes (if we had them here) but also council taxes and other taxes based and/or levied on properties, so it would do nothing to help such redistribution, especially since wealthy potential investors from outside UK would see what was happening and decide to invest elsewhere.

And I see redistributive taxation not merely as an opportunity to increase the overall tax take so that public infrastructure as a whole is improved, but as a means to abolish that whole class of the superrich (at least from this country) and move towards a society of greater income equality. I just don't think huge salaries are ever justifiable in a country where 5 million households are in relative poverty.

Whilst I do not disagree in principle with your last statement, it sems to me to be putting the cart before the horse; as I have already observed, huge salaries are only received because people and firms are prepared to pay them and, in any case, the "super-rich" do not necessarily receive such salaries, their true claim to "riches" (or rather others' claims of their "riches") resting largely upon the possession of valuable assets (including the high proced housing that you mention) which cannot be taxed like income and whose value fluctuates in any case in accordance with prevailing market conditions (one of which could be wealth taxes).

Where I disagree with you is in the very notion of "redistributive taxation" as a realistic, meaningful and practically achievable possibility. Most of us are either (a) poor, (b) rather poor, (c) have just about enough of which to manage or (d) relatively comfortably off; only a very few are "rich". Charging, say, an income tax rate of 50% on the largest parts of the very few large taxable incomes of that tiny handful of people who would have the means to pay such tax from those incomes will make negligible redistributive difference to the rest of us, particularly in that those in categories (a) to (c) above will have little hope of rising into category (d) as a result of such measures as they might do if there could really be such a thing as redistributive taxation.

[ahinton]

@ahinton #131

The last 30 or so years have seen a systematic redistribution of already highly unequal wealth from the poor to the rich (more than reversing the trend of post-1945 social and economic policy in the 'developed' world; hence redistribution is a perfectly good description of Reaganite / Thatcherite policy). One major factor in this redistribution has been the policy of wage restraint effected in part by breaking the Trade Unions and reducing their bargaining power (or refusing to recognise them altogether).

This is largely true, but what do you suppose would have happened otherwise? What has been allowed and/or encouraged to happen could be made to happen regardless of government policy if sufficient people capable of gaining and wielding sufficient power were sufficiently determined to make it happen; not for nothing has a remark been made elsewhere (in connection with the Murdoch empire, I seem to recall) that some people and oprganisations seems to think that they're larger than nations. Whilst the poor can indeed try to organise revolutionary activity, so can the rich; I think that we would all do well to bear that most unpleasant and unwelcome fact in mind.

This has been accompanied by a tax policy which has reduced the amount of tax proportionate to wealth ... 1% (for the sake of keeping it simple for a conversation on an internet message board, something you have a temperamental aversion to I realise) pay. So that when figures get produced showing the % of total tax paid by the 1% (or whatever) to show how put upon that 1% is, what is neglected is the simple fact that if wealth was distributed more equally tax would be paid more equally. Producing the entirely unparadoxical effect that more people would pay more tax and be better off in the process, and that some people (1% etc.) would pay less tax and be worse off in the process.

You love presenting everything as some intractable dilemma, but the balance rich - the rest hasn't happened by accident or state of nature: it has happened because of political and economic policy, enforced by government and trans-governmental theory and action. It is, therefore, reasonable to suggest that with a bit of will and effort and enforcement (of the kind that has been applied to protect the poor to rich redistribution of three decades) the trend could be reversed. One way to do that would be super-taxing. Another would be appropriation and redistribution of assets. Something you would perhaps describe as "immoral".

You make good points here, believe me - but I must counter one of them by stating that I do not love to present anything as "some intractable dilemma" but seek to do so as a matter of fact. The "will" that you mention might indeed lead to the achievement of something, but so might the "will" of the rich. I do not know exactly what you mean by "appropriation and redistribution of assets", but it sounds to me rather like legalised theft; apart from the innumerable and never-ending arguments about just how and to whom such assets could or should be distributed by whom, I can imagine that "the rich" would rise up against any such measures far more vociferously and effectively than they ever would about "super-taxing"; it might, for that matter, be regarded as a parallel to the oft-cited argument that corporal punishment risks making some of its victims more violent than they might otherwise become, in that the legalisation of theft risks undermining the very principle of all property and asset ownership (by rich and poor alike) and the encouragement of far more theft than occurs now. I would want very quicky to depart from any country that sought to impose such Zimbabwean measures - and, for the record, I do not say so because I am "rich"!