London will soon be the least competitive major financial centre in the world when it comes to personal taxation for top bankers

PuppetMaster

This is a non argument. Banksters have been responsible for the biggest looting of the taxpayer in history. They are busily transferring the wealth of the middle class to themselves. I fail to see how the taxes they pay is an issue. If they didn't steal so much from the rest of us, they wouldn't have to pay so much tax.

THX1138

I'm just about to pay myself a whole
years salary in one go to avoid the 50% tax rate & I have mate who is being paid 4 years up front this mth..Suck on that Darling!

Dirty Euro

Why should the economy be run for London?

General Zod

Because London pays for the whole economy, Dirty Euro.

We'd happily become a city state and stop subsidising the rest of you.

London Calling

Let them leave London and go abroad, plenty more where they come from, fresh blood may revitalise the Banking System. Paying an awful amount of tax is not the same as earning an awful amount in wages and paying an awful amount in tax leaving you an awful amount to live on. ..

Sorry Boris I was with you on this one, but times have changed and competitive means nothing on the shock exchange if you’re always weighing and measuring the size of your smalls…

London Calling

PS…

Not your smalls Boris…the Wiff Waff’s Waffling on, who belong in Ping Pang Pong…

TomTom

Banking used to be a Utility serving Industry and Households before it went beserk and destroyed Industry and fleeced Households. The Housing Boom was deliberately created to bail banks out of the Dot.Com Fiasco.

We have had 15 years of Stimulus Packages for banks. Greenspan led the way with Bank Bailout Economics and the deregulated runt of London that runs behind the regulated US system followed.

Finance needs to get a lot smaller and if it had not found Dunderhead Brown to fund it with the entire GDP, we might have had a real economy instead of being simply a recycling centre for imported capital and a GDP-backed insurance scheme for bank liabilities

Richard

@ THX1138
March 8th, 2010 10:40pm

I'm just about to pay myself a whole
years salary in one go to avoid the 50% tax rate & I have mate who is being paid 4 years up front this mth..Suck on that Darling!

Now let me see, this would of course effect "Oik" if the tories won. This action is one of a true patriot.

I could possibly see this as a legitimate protest if you then said you would pay, to charity, the amount that would be due!

If the people who, like you, think tax avoidance is a sport actually paid their fair share then we would not have a defecit at all. I think Greece have a similar problem too.

2trueblue

We will all be paying more tax. This government have found it very useful to divert the focus on to the bankers, with whom they themselves ate, drank and adored for the 13 years whilst they leveraged OUR future. They adopted wonderful ways of putting the debt under the radar and it is not impressive to see how gullible people have become to accept the line that it is all someone elses fault. At least the bankers did pay their taxes during this time, whilst our great MPs avoided this process and it went straight into their bank account without going through HMRC revenues system that we all have to go through. And they have 5yrs to reconcile their situation.

Europe are delighted that Brown has handed them another way to kill our economy, well done Liebore.

THX1138

Richard my family paid in excess of £200K in tax in 2009/10 I think we have paid our fair share don't you?

Chris lancashire

Labour never learns does it? People will only pay tax up to the point which they judge fair and reasonable; beyond that they begin to seek ways to avoid it. Take Company cars - once the tax became unreasonable those of us who could bought our own cars and charged mileage - result the Treasury lost the lot and I have no doubt the overall tax take fro Co. cars has gone down. The same will happen with the 50p tax. BTW, well done THX1138 - don't let New Labour have it - they'll only waste it.

stephen

We had a banking crisis in 1974 followed by some crpto communists taxes and a socialist incomes policy; the Lib Lab pact collapsed and the IMF came in! Sound familiar?

But then there was Mrs T. Sadly our Dave with his preening bunny hugging Notting Hillers just don't connect with the Tory grass roots nor what the country needs 5 years is a long time to wait!

Marbury

THX1138: Has somebody explained the concept of "share" to you?

SUSAN HILL

If you paid as much tax as that think how much you earned and be thankful.

THX1138

Marbury to quote Sam Seaborn

"Henry, last fall, every time your boss got on the stump and said, "It’s time for the rich to pay their fair share," I hid under a couch and changed my name. I left Gage Whitney making $400,000 a year, which means I paid 27 times the national average in income tax. I paid my fair share, and the fair share of 26 other people. And I’m happy to, ‘cause that’s the only way it’s gonna work. And it’s in my best interest that everybody be able to go to schools and drive on roads. But I don’t get 27 votes on Election Day. The fire department doesn’t come to my house 27 times faster and the water doesn’t come out of my faucet 27 times hotter. The top one percent of wage earners in this country pay for 22 percent of this country. Let’s not call them names while they’re doing it, is all I’m saying."

Olaf Rye

THX1138: My God, your family paid that much ? I am surprised that you have bothered staying in the UK. You are a better man than me !

Richard

THX1138
March 9th, 2010 9:31am

Richard my family paid in excess of £200K in tax in 2009/10 I think we have paid our fair share don't you?

If you want me to be honest then the answer is No......for the following reasons.
What ever you have paid you have retained far more for a start.

If you are paying at that sort of rate then you will of course be employing a tax consultant....who will reduce your liabilites and maximise your investments with an eye to providing a secure longterm future for you all.
This means you are not paying at 50% at all.
Now take the lesser people like me who still pay at the top rate but have far less options we pay as a percentage more than you.
Go even further down the food chain and you will find people actually paying at a rate of 70% on their earnings I will not go through all the cals here but it is well documented on the web just how this happens.
Now I remind you that you enjoy a fortunate position, and for capitalism to work it requires the top few to show a care for the less fortunate....without this you would end up with a revolution and you would be lucky to escape with much at all.

Chris

This is clearly not a zero sum game.

Dirty Euro and Richard would like to think that you can tax any amount and you will see the same tax return. Certainly not - it can be shown that where tax percentages are reduced more tax in total is taken from the rich, and therefore less has to be paid by the poor.

However lefties want to penalise success and this undermines what they would presumably want to see.

The rich clearly have an incentive and means to relocate and pay taxes in different locations. They may wish to stay here but if I could live in Zurich, for example, and including costs I would be much better off at the end of the year then I would consider it. It may not be my first choice, but it would have to be considered.

2trueblue

Richard. Your spelling has improved and you text on some matters holds a different script......... "Now I remind you....". Interesting, even scary. Who are you fronting for??????

On the latter part of your latest missive tell me what some of the Liebore lords have contributed? Lord Ashcroft does indeed contribute positively, but of course that is not of any interest to you or your masters, who spin the negative of which you are a master.

Richard

@2trueblue

Thanks (blush)

2trueblue

Richard, it was not a compliment. You failed to supply examples for the 2nd part.

Marcher Baron

Richard, there is nothing wrong with minimising your exposure to tax (avoidance). Any sensible person should do it; it's no worse than getting the best interest rates on any savings. If tax levels were reasonable, the incentive to avoid (not evade) tax would be much less worth the bother. I will avoid as much tax as I legally can (and I'm on a pension), largely because the government taxes me too much.

Adam Smith

@PuppetMaster - Grow up! Bankers have “stolen” nothing. Two years into this economic predicament and your careful analysis of events still yields a “blame the banker” view of the world. Simplified, short-sighted and wrong.

Beer Moth

Please God bring on the day when I am forced to pay 50p from every pound I earn.

On that day, I will be able to afford a modest but reliable car, holidays, nice clothes, perhaps take the wife to a quality restaurant once a month.

I will be a very grateful man indeed. I will not whinge about the squeezing of pips and the politics of envy. Most of all I will not allow myself the vain deceit that I did it all myself.