They Really Don’t Get it

Joan Smith bewails the announcement by Tracey Emin that she is planning to abandon Albion in favour of the old enemy as a consequence of the 50% marginal tax rate.

At last there’s some good news on migration: up to 25,000 people are thinking about leaving Britain in the next few months, led by the artist Tracey Emin. “So much here is simply not working now,” she announced at the weekend. “The taxes are too high, there aren’t enough incentives to work hard, and our politicians have put me off”. Just to be clear, when Emin says taxes are too high, she isn’t one of the people hit by the abolition of the 10p tax rate for low earners. She’s complaining about having to pay the new 50% rate on income over £150,000, which comes into force in April.

I’d have thought this an entirely predictable outcome of the 50% marginal rate. Who, in their right mind would be willing to cough up half of their earnings above a given level to a profligate state (and, yes, I am aware that when you add ’em all up, it already comes to around half of one’s income)? My own reaction at a much lower level, is to reduce the amount of work I do to avoid the higher marginal rate as I have to work harder for every penny I get to keep and I am disinclined to do so.

Emin says she’s “simply not willing” to pay at 50% and may move to France, where she already has a holiday home – another clue, you might think, that she doesn’t have to worry about where the next meal is coming from. She’s one of a number of high earners who are threatening to decamp, including hedge fund managers and footballers; apparently it was one of the reasons why Jermaine Pennant moved from Liverpool to Spain’s Real Zaragoza, where he may be able to pay a “foreign executive” tax rate of only 24%.

Note that “simply not willing” comment. Smith really doesn’t get it. It isn’t just the high earning celebs who are “not willing” it is also those who, though they might not be in that bracket, find the idea obscene, including me. I am “not willing” to pay 40%, so keep my earnings below the threshold.

Along with the thousands of new offences, the surveillance state, the hoards of jobsworths and inspectors who have powers of entry and the ability to make one’s life a misery that have spawned and multiplied in the UK since New Labour grasped the reigns of power, life in France becomes highly desirable. There’s the climate, of course, but also despite having the “code Napoleon” in place, in one’s daily life the state is much less intrusive than in the UK. Yes, French bureaucracy does, indeed, exist and I have experienced it. But, even then, it is still preferable to the UK. What a state of affairs, eh?

At one level, this is a familiar ritual being played. During general elections campaigns, there’s usually some self-regarding celeb who declares that he or she will go into tax exile if the wicked tax-and-spend socialists get in.

Well, if it gets the message across. Although…

Sadly, they tend not to deliver on the promise, finding a way of coexisting with the most hated Labour chancellors and disappointing those of us who hoped to see the back of them.

I tend to agree. And Emin is coming my way. Oh, dear.

However, most appalling of all for our Guardianista:

 What’s different this time is that the angry celebs are making a pre-election appeal to the Conservatives…

Oh, how awful, how terrible – the eeeevil Tories, who, presumably, eat babies and strangle kittens if you listened to the banshee wails of angst on the Guardian.

I’m sorry, but did these fuckwits ever get beyond student union politics?

Naturally, the comments are full of the usual claptrap – what does she need all that money for and such. It doesn’t matter whether she needs the money or what she does with it. It is hers to do with as she likes. It is not for someone else to decide that she doesn’t deserve it (she probably doesn’t going by her “art”) and therefore it should be forcibly taken away and “redistributed”.

God, but I hate these people.