amenity
Joined: 22 Nov 2006
Posts: 775
Location: Dovercourt
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 Posted: Mon Feb 11, 2008 10:24 pm Post subject: The Rich |
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Seen in Lloyds List today.
By David Osler
Monday 11 February 2008
IF THE shipping community is going to secure the retention of the non-dom tax break, the acid test is going to be how well its arguments play in the average boozer. If my local is anything to go by, it won’t be an easy sell.
Among those I enjoy the occasional pint with is the erstwhile drummer in my teenage punk rock bank. Steve left school with few qualifications at 16 and got a job in a bathroom fittings warehouse; some while ago he set up for himself, and now does excellent trade in the supply of designer bathroom fittings to a wealthy North London clientele. Boris Becker bought one of his bog seats for two grand.
One doesn’t like to ask such things of old pals, but I rather suspect he is a millionaire, or at least was until his ex-Missus’s lawyer and the Child Support Agency got their hands on a fair slice of his hard-earned dosh. Steve, by and large, plays his tax affairs by the rules. I mean, if you are a mate and pay cash, he‘ll knock his stock out wholesale and we can forget about the VAT, can’t we squire? That’s how come I’ve got such a conspicuously posh bathroom, thank you for asking.
I’m also certain that his accountant is a consumate loophole artist; that’s because I use the same chap myself. But the point is, once his tax bill lands on his doormat, Steve coughs up pretty much what the government demands.
As I know from his grumbles over those white wine spritzers he quaffs these days - yes, he’s moved a long way from his working class roots - he is one of the many small business owners who was worried about recent proposed detrimental changes to capital gains tax. If I were to tell him that wealthy foreign individuals are griping at the offer of seven years of residence free of income tax, followed thereafter by payments that proportionately work out at a fraction of the 40% he pays, I can imagine his response. Because www.lloydslist.com is a family website, I won’t say more.
Even if I were to argue that these people deserve such treatment because they are entrepreneurs who bring business and jobs to Britain, I would still get short shrift. Steve would - not unreasonably - point out that he, too, has done exactly that.
Also joining us sometimes is one of his employees, a young bloke called Piotr. Better known as Pete, he is of course a Polish plumber. No, really. They do exist. Pete’s been here a few years, and to hear him tell it, there actually is something in those stories we have all heard about plumbers and bored housewives.
Pete is a foreigner who is in Britain because this is where he can maximise his earnings. No crime in that, is there, non-doms? He laps up all the overtime Steve can give him when there’s a rush job on for some poncey git with more money than taste.
Accordingly, he has been paying tax - and national insurance - from day one. I can just hear him now, in that east European accent of his, wondering how he can declare himself a non-domiciled plumber and qualify for seven tax free years.
Now of course the Baltic Exchange, the Chamber of Shipping, Maritime London and the Joint Hull Committee are right to point out the huge benefits that non-doms shipowners bring to the UK economy. However, that isn’t the end of the story.
Most non-doms don’t drink in the sort of pubs I do, of course. But they can take it from me that there is a growing backlash among ordinary Londoners at the social effects of the influx of the global super-rich in recent decades, and an increasing feeling that they are not properly paying their way. In equity, the should make a contribution to society, and any campaign on their behalf has to take that on board. The argument that, if not granted total tax exemption, these people will simply up sticks is not the trump card proponents fondly imagine.
Put it like this; if I were to explain such a threat to Steve and Pete, I suspect they would express in blunt Anglo-Saxon terms the sentiment that these gentlemen are more than welcome to leave
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