Mr Davis told The Sunday Telegraph the Government must draw up an “alternative”, pro-growth policy with radical cuts to tax, regulation and public spending.
Mr Davis is right, of course. What is needed is not more profligacy, not more squeezing the “rich” so that government has even more money to piss up the wall, but some serious belt tightening on the part of those who waste billions of pounds on information campaigns, NGOs, quangos, fake charities, overseas aid and poking about in our personal lives in an attempt to micromanage us. Slash and burn the government and that will leave more money in our pockets to spend on the real economy.
I wonder how things would have turned out if Davis had won the leadership election?
As I see it, nicking more of our money and expanding the government is very easy to do. Going the other way is very difficult. The problem is that the extra money that we would get from lower taxes would need time to have any effect on the economy, the effect on the economy from drastic government cutbacks such as mass unemployement and huge numbers of people on a reduced income would be immediate. This unavoidable misery makes the government unpopular which is a problem when we have to have an election every five years.
Regarding wasting money. A few months ago we had one bloody quango working on how we could avoid kids suffering from low self esteem because they were obsessed with body image while another one was going around schools weighing kids and invariably telling them that they were too fat.
Well, I never said it was going to be easy. Kicking an addiction never is and always involves the pain of withdrawal.
Apparently we are Never Taxed Enough. They’ve just forced through full VAT on storage facilities (obviously a luxury item). First I heard about it was from my storage company. So there’s more money for government urinary incontinence and less money for me to expend as I see fit. Brill. 😡
It’s hard to say what would have happened. On the one hand Davis would have picked up a lot of votes from certain quarters, i.e., conservatives, classical liberals etc (presuming he had been able to take the party in his direction), but he would have been relentlessly hammered by the establishment media, whereas Cameron was given an easy ride. Maybe the result would have been a coalition of Labour and the Lib Dems drinking the poison chalice, with a strong conservative opposition. Ah, the joys of parallel universes!
Rather than another tax, why not enforce the current taxation system to the full. We could start by doing away with the nom-dom rubbish by insisting that all UK passport holders pay UK taxes on all their income, with due allowances made for tax actually deducted elsewhere; no pay tax no have passport! Then all the tax avoidance schemes beloved of footballers, comedians and store proprietors should closed down, and any new ones closed immediately. Just think of all the tax avoidance / evasion brain-power that would be put to better use!
As for Goverment expenditure, we could start with total transparency in all things, no more hidibg behind “Commercial Confidentiality” once the contract is awarded. As a start, ALL the figures from the four bidders for the WCML should be published, together with the DFT’s comments.
I don’t think so. If someone moves abroad and earns all their income abroad, paying tax in their new domicile, it is way out of order for the old country to come knocking on the door asking for a cut. Well out of order. If you don’t earn in the UK, you shouldn’t be paying tax there irrespective of the origins of your passport. Bear in mind that after 15 years, expats lose the right to vote.
But if you have never paid UK taxes like the rest of us, why should you be able to call on the services of the UK Consulate in an emergency? Why should you be entitled to return to the UK and be given medical care by the NHS or have your home care paid for by the Local Authority?
If you want to earn abroad and not pay UK tax then become a citizen of the country where you earn your money!
There is also the point that a lot od “nom-doms” actualy earn their money in the UK and not where they “live”.
When living abroad I earned my income in the UK, so completed two tax returns, one for France and one for the UK, which was right and proper. So, as a non-dom, living abroad and earning in the UK, I paid tax in the UK. I did not pay tax in France.
As for citizenship in another country, it isn’t straightforward (although that was the plan). If you earn in a country, that is where you should pay the tax and that is where you should be earning benefits – although as I discovered, that isn’t straightforward, either. You become a non-person in two states.
If you return to the UK, then you become tax resident and pay the relevant tax in the UK and therefore are entitled to the relevant benefits of doing so – having transferred from having done the same thing when living abroad.
The reality, as I discovered, is that despite paying tax in the UK, I was entitled to no help whatsoever from either the UK system or the French one when I really needed it.
If I pay more in taxes in Australia than I would in the UK, do I get a rebate from HMRC?
I got one one year from the French tax office as their 40% rate kicks in later than the UK one. Came as a bit of a surprise – but I didn’t say no to it.
Strawbrick; Hold on. What if you are already paying tax locally and haven’t been back for more than six weeks in the last five years? As for paying UK tax on top of the local taxes I pay, you’re ‘avin a larf, encha? I don’t use UK services, so why should my hard earned subsidise the UK (non) tax payer?
Give me another bloody year or so and you can stuff your UK passport; and the EU.
The USSA do this taxation abroad con-trick.
A lot of US expatiates effectively, cannot ever go home, because of the taxes they supposedly owe, even having paid taxes in the countries in which they are/were resident.
Yes Greg. It’s only a recent development that all US passport holding expats have to file IRS tax returns, no matter how long they’ve been out of the USA. Started two years ago according to one of my co-workers, an American Expat.
What is needed is not more profligacy, not more squeezing the “rich” so that government has even more money to piss up the wall, but some serious belt tightening on the part of those who waste billions of pounds
Couldn’t have put it better.