Britain’s wealthiest business people are fleeing abroad amid mounting complications over tax, the country’s richest man has warned.
Amid a growing political crisis over the UK’s future relationship with the EU, Gopichand Hinduja, whose family controls a £20.6bn industrial fortune, told The Sunday Telegraph many of the country’s wealthiest people have already quietly left Britain for Dubai, Singapore and other financial centres.
But what are those tax campaigners going to say about it?
Good riddance? We didn’t want their money anyway? Huzzah London house prices will fall?
Or just do a Spud and insist people don’t move for tax reasons?
fleeing
Sounds like there was a police chasing him, and he got out with just the clothes on his back and one bag ( for life naturally ).
I suspect he bought a plane ticket, methodically arranged his personal belongings, and a managing agent to fill his flat in London with tenants after he’s gone.
Usually described as relocating.
All this hyperbolic language does is to make people think he’s broken the law, hence the phrase ‘fleeing the law’, which will now be extended in its use to fleeing laws which the people would like to have.
@Bongo: to be fair one can also be fleeing from criminals intent on stealing your belongings or worse, which would be a fair description of the Left as embodied by Corbyn and Co. Fleeing is often used in ‘fleeing persecution’ as well, so I’d say its a bit of a stretch to say its use here was pejorative.
How much of Mr Hinduja’a money do we actually collect as tax? I think the answer would determine whether we can manage without him and his ilk.
Mr Hinduja isn’t one of Britain’s wealthiest people. He’s one of India’s wealthiest people who has chosen to reside in the UK for the last decade and a bit. Such people move for all sorts of reasons.
Dubai now has what he wants in a place, and is much closer to his business.
I shall laugh when these people discover that if they piss off the local rulers it won’t be court cases, such as with his previous difficulties, but immediate incarceration and blackmail to get out. One of the reasons London is so popular is the lack of arbitrary seizure and its reliable courts.
That was the position Caroline Lucas took on Question Time in run-up to 2017 GE on wanting 50% or higher tax – loud applause.
It’s crazy – Left prefer 50% of nothing to 40/45% of something.
One of the reasons London is so popular is the lack of arbitrary seizure and its reliable courts.
Indeed. But Corbyn would soon get started on the former, and the latter are less reliable and more activist than they were wont to be.
“the lack of arbitrary seizure”
WRONG – we now have unexplained wealth orders, where the government can freeze your property until you prove to their satisfaction that you came by it acceptably.
“How much of Mr Hinduja’a money do we actually collect as tax?”
Of his money not much.
But the fees on non-doms are high, and the UK makes a lot of money from the income tax of people on their payroll in the UK (and they will have a huge retinue), and sales tax etc give another decent bite.
Should the test be “how much of his money do we get”, or “what is the net gain to the UK of having the ultra-rich base themselves here”
At the top end countries bid for mobile rich to live there, I would say that the UK has been gradually pricing itself out of the market (both explicitly in tax and in non-cash costs e.g. legislation)
We should also chuck on the pile the network effect (rich people like to live near other rich people as a concentration creates the services they like, so be careful about driving them away). And the bias for investing more near where you “live” means there is probably some benefit to the local fund mgmt, venture cap, legal, etc industries.
Didn’t Abramovich flee to Israel because he didn’t want to have to explain where he got his wealth?
Guess this is more of the same.
Ritchie will simultaneously argue that UK passport holders should be taxed on worldwide income irrespective of residence AND that no-one moves for tax reasons.
Consistency is all part of the neo-liberal plot against him.