High-earners could find tax regime to liking
Thursday 23rd April 2009, 11:30AM BST.
GUERNSEY could see an influx of high earners into the island after the UK increased its upper tax limit to 50%
Chancellor Alistair Darling made the announcement during yesterday’s Budget speech.
People who earn more than £150,000 a year will see their income tax payments jump from next year.
The move overtook plans announced in last year’s pre-Budget report to tax high-earners at 45% from 2011.
Fran Snoding (pictured), director at Fortis Reads Private Clients, said the Budget as a whole was clearly aimed at tax collection from high-income households, similar to Labour budgets of old.
‘This is demonstrated by the fact that UK high-earners will now give up approximately two-thirds of their income in tax and national insurance contributions,’ he said.
‘This could be the final straw for some of the more mobile UK resident individuals who could well seek to relocate from the UK to kinder tax regimes, such as Guernsey for example.’
- To read Guernsey Press stories in full click here for subscription details. Individual editions are now available online.
Campaigns
Voice For Victims
Voice for Victims is a campaign aimed at promoting the rights of those affected by child sexual abuse.
This is Guernsey
Guernsey Press
Wait until the budget after the next election in 2010. Given the massive deficit in the UK’s budget, taxes will jump across the board and then you’ll see a real exodus.
Report abuse
I agree Bert,
and it is now we the Islanders must stand firm and say No.
If we don’t stand together; then Guernsey will become little England. and that wpould be dreadful.
Guernsey people will become less than second class citizens; with those rich shouldering Islnders aside.
No more into our Island>: they have ruined their own country, with their know all actions, now let them suffer the consequences of their ill gotten gains.
Stand up all Guernsey peiople and if the CM doesn’t listen to us then Kick him out- He must remember no man is an Island, we are all human beings nand nby that have the right to judge whom shall live in our Island-
They didn’t give a tupenny cuss about us before, now let them know we don’t give a cuss about them; Pay your country their dues as they did for you.
Report abuse
Guernsey is a lovely place to live, but if I were rich enough to be forced out of the UK I’d go somewhere with a better climate!
Report abuse
It’s a great example to the kids, isn’t it? The UK is in a hole caused by a political devotion to private enterprise promising that since ‘the Masters of the Universe’ are in control then nothing should be done to interfere. Well done them, have a sweetie. Taxes need to be raised so the obvious place to start is with those that can most afford it. But no, these people aren’t living to be part of a functioning society. They’re not in it to aid progress or to witness a wider dynamism. They’re in it for the cash. They’re in it to build personal monuments to themselves, to worship their unsustainable delusions.
Do we really want to be attracting such sociopaths into our island? Do they add value to an already splintering community? And when the hand-rubbing politicians talk about them bringing employment, presumably they understand that these new hedge fund managers (how are they doing?) and PE whizzos will only poach from existing firms because there just isn’t enough local talent to fill the tens of jobs they may create (at the expense of others elsewhere).
It is the very notion that these types want to escape their responsibilities and yet demand to be listened to at a political level through over-reaching powerful lobby groups that tips any balance of social justice on its head.
The vitriol poured on the wayward antics of a tiny minority of people on the Bouet is completely disproportionate to the wider social crimes caused by the rich trying to feather their nests, absolve responsibility and bend reality to their whims – while mocking the poor – and the Guernsey Press serves as a propaganda tool for those most complicit in all this; the accountancy and ‘tax planning’ firms, by giving constant column inches to the most bias vested interests one could possibly find to comment on these issues.
Loyalty to the community, something utterly lacking in both vandal and avarice camps, is worth more than money. We want to attract people that will muck in in the bad times not run off when they are needed the most. The difference for the antisocial poor is that they are basically imprisoned by a lack of funds.
The system is a failure at both ends of the spectrum. We need to tax the rich top percentage more in order to fix the system for the bottom percentage. We need to lose this cap-doffing tendency towards anyone that earns a lot. It doesn’t mean they are good people, or indeed, anymore a a hard worker than their neighbour. It doesn’t mean anything.
So while we have a shortage of nurses and difficulties in maintaining continuity in teacher provision, let’s clap our hands in glee that we will at least be able to attract individuals that are basically on the make, more likely than not peddling wares to help others avoid paying their dues also.
This is Guernsey.
Report abuse
well done arnald i agree with everything you say,these people that may come here after this latest budget will say they are fleeing a harsh immoral and unfair tax regime.but while being taxed at 50% may one end of an extreme guernseys tax regime is at the other end of an extreme,they say it is a fair low tax system,but it is so only for the high earners.they will only be taxed up to 200,000 of earnings,after that they can make any amount of money tax free.the states are now talking about possible tax rises but i can only see these being targeted at those within the 200,000 threshold.i feel that they will not higher the tax threshold as they fear some of the wealthier people might leave guernsey.
Report abuse
paul
You may have misinterpreted the maximum tax rate.
I think the 200K threshold means that no-one will PAY more than 200K in tax which means that they would be earning in excess of £1,000,000 per year
Report abuse
Ray, well done for pointing out Paul’s error. I wish people would get their facts straight before posting here.
Arnald: I don’t think I agree with a single word you have posted! Have you not considered that by increasing our tax take we might have more funds to pay for extra nurses and teachers? (Unless the States waste it on “project”…and lets face it, that is quite likely!)
Report abuse
Greg
It’s quite simple. Those that run away from social responsibility are not wealth and job generating entrepreneurs. They’re spivs that want to screw the system. They’re no better, in fact they are more costly, than benefit fraudsters. The difference is one group get rightly vilified but the other get molly-coddled and feted as superior.
Really, what we want is a non finance entrepreneur that is not running from the UK because of a more progressive realignment of the tax burden, but from the miasma of corruption, sleaze and laisser-faire, narcissistic business models that benefit no one in the long term except for the very few. We want people that are interested in Guernsey for business’ sake and not just for tax mitigation purposes.
Report abuse
Are posters above assuming that the rich and tax-evading UK residents fleeing to Guernsey will be buying open market properties and paying tax here? If so then I say ‘bring it on’. If, however, they are going to be asking for licences to live here, buying local market housing and increasing the costs for local residents already struggling at the bottom end of the market then i say ‘NO’. The rich and influential know how to avoid tax and we will just be pawns in their game. This lovely island is already becoming over populated and I for one say now is the time to stop and take a look at what is happening.
Report abuse
Some interesting questions from Merlin.
I suspect that most of the gain from any financial exodus will be in the electronic bank acounts of those using the island.
I also suspect that the PR orchestrated howls of protests that those earning over £150,000 don’t want to pay extra taxes as “it will go on the 3,000000 or so layabouts” might well backfire on tax havens.
The somewhat selfish excuses for not paying taxes, as well as the emphasis that they caan easily avoid paying extra tax might lead to a backlash that includes tax havens as specific targets.
Will Pa Brown and Mr Darling be able too avoid a real, rather than a paper attack, on tax havens and tax avoiders.
Might well be a case where the sympathy vote the avoiders so dearly covert, might well result in increased public pressure to cleanse the tax havens.
Report abuse
I still see that people are falling for the old line that open market englishman in some way benefit the island. They don’t, get over it.
Report abuse
Jackie
So we don’t their £200k a year (albeit capped) Guernsey income tax then ? Nor do our tradesmen want the work renovating and extending many of the largest properties on the island ?
Report abuse
The bands of ‘cash-in-hand’ workers who do not pay any Guernsey taxes like the wealthy residents of Guernsey.
Report abuse
Eric- God loves a Xenophobe.
Did you not see the massive contradiction you spouted??
“Were all human beings”! So, by that rhetoric it shouldnt matter who lives on “your island” then should it??
I dont particularly want the island innundated with more fantastically wealthy people taking more from the island than what they give back, but you are bordering on fanatical.
Report abuse
David
The point I was trying to make, albeit badly, is that too much emphasis is put on the o/m as some kind of saviour. Many, if not most o/m houses are not likely to attract the the 200k contributors; those houses that will are either occupied. As for the benefit of employing locals, those houses haven’t been created for the o/m, they were, in the main, there before o/m and l/m was separated.
Report abuse
Maybe so “THE MAN”
At least I put forwards my views on that subject.
I saw and lived with what their cousins did to our Island traces are still visible.
When we needed them they weren’t there, now they need us, well in my way of thinking we don’t need them; I refer to those who just dodge paying their dues in their own country.
I stand by what I wrote.
Report abuse