Ten EU Nations Vote For Financial Transaction Tax
The FTT is one of those ideas, that might well come into being in the next few years. But if it does come into being it has to be universal with every country charging the tax, otherwise financial transaction will move to the areas of lowest tax.
So the decision of ten EU countries to introduce such a tax is in my view not the best idea. Read about it here on the BBC. I doubt if this proposal will work very well as two of the shrewdest countries using the Euro; Ireland and The Netherlands are not joining. Obviously, we aren’t as why should we disadvantage the City of London with respect to New York, Dubai and Tokyo?
One question that I have about the limited EU proposals is what do you get charged if your bank is head-quartered in a country, that levies an FTT. I don’t bank with a bank that is, but say if I banked with Santander, I’d be moving my account tomorrow.
On a personal note, an FTT on all transactions might possibly harm peer-to-peer lenders like Zopa, so in fact it might be a block to innovative financial developments in countries within the net of the tax.
I give a non-worldwide FTT a couple of years at most, as it will disadvantage companies in countries within the tax.
If the EU wanted to raise more tax, they could clamp down on illegal cash transfers between countries in the Euro. How do these fall within an FTT? Many houses, too in places like France are sold in part by bank transfer and by cash to avoid the capital gains tax.
Should Well-Off Pensioners Pay More Tax?
I’m not in favour of the proposal of the Liberal Democrats that well-off pensioners, like myself should pay more tax.
If the government keeps the money, it’ll only spend it on something of which I disapprove, like more quangos to employ the so-called great and good, many of whom have never done a real day’s work in their lives.
I prefer to give more than equivalent donations to charities of my choice, which I do on my birthday each year, in thanks for surviving another twelve months!
Has Sir John Got It Right Again?
It must be sometime in the mid-1990s, when I saw John Major give a speech and take questions in the Cambridge Chief Executives Club. He gave his views on Black Wednesday, Kosovo and the Euro amongst other topics. To say it was impressive at the time, would be an understatement, as most of the things he said would happen did.
So the fact that Sir John is now saying the worst might be over, may in itself be indicative of the fact that it is! He spoke on the Andrew Marr show this morning and this is an extract.
Recovery begins from the darkest moment. I’m not certain, but I think we have passed the darkest moment.
There are some oddities in the figures at the moment: Why in the depths of this recession is employment growing? Why is industrial production going up? Why has the stock market risen?
“There are things happening out there that will become apparent and we don’t quite know why or how. My guess – and this is something a minister can’t say but I can – is that in due course we will find that we passed the bottom.
The first time was twenty years ago and no-one believed him. Let’s hope this time, that the voters do! But then voters always vote for those who promises them the most.
I think, I’ll form the Pie-In-The-Sky Party!
No-one will pay any Income tax but companies will may 70% Corporation Tax. There will be absolutely no immigration and the NHS will be free, with no prescription charges to all those living here. Oh! And there will be no more subsidies for trains, but we’ll build motorways everywhere, where we can drive cars, that will not have any Road Tax and severely reduced fuel taxes.
At least with all the cars, we’ll be able to drive ourselves to Hell in comfort.
Flash Cars Drive Me Crazy
This is the title of a piece by Nick Curtis in today’s Standard. Here’s an extract.
Why do people who own the most expensive cars not know how to drive? On the way to the Standard’s Kensington offices
I run the gauntlet of bankers’ wives in Chelsea tractors who make the morning commute feel like a video game as they mow down pedestrians, street furniture and small buildings.
This week I was on a bus that was held up three times by executive saloons performing kerb-crunching, bumper-nudging three-point turns.
I know the feeling. My bus today nearly had a serious altercation with a Mercedes 4×4 with the registration number, WF08 ATY. Let’s hope that when the driver wants to sell it, possible buyers see this and feel they don’t want to buy a car that’s been driven and possibly looked after badly.
Nick’s suggestion was a new wealth tax, whereby anybody seen driving badly in a big expensive car should have to buy a Smart or a Skoda and give the price difference to the Exchequer.
it might be a deterrent to bad driving though, if when you got say six points on your licence, you had to drive round in a car say yellow with purple stripes, so that other drivers would know the twats to avoid. You’d certainly see them when crossing the road.
Nick Clegg Loses The Plot
Nick Clegg’s call for the rich to pay more tax is just plain daft.
One large group of the rich are probably people like me, who are retired and have a good pension pot built up over the years.
So if I was asked to pay more tax, I’d probably leave the money in my pension fund to avoid the tax and then not spend it. After all, I may have bought a new washer-dryer, but my large purchases these days are few and far between. So how does that benefit the country?
After I sold my first company in 1972, I had an offer from a large American company to go and work for them, at an enormous salary. If we increase taxes, all of those brains thinking up new ideas, will be on the first plane out.
No wonder we need a new runway in the South East.
Rangers Get To Play Football In England
This is how the BBC put it in a long article.
Rangers’ old ambition to play league football in England was realised in circumstances they would not have imagined until the club’s summer of financial turmoil.
As they crossed the border to sun-kissed Shielfield Park, memories in the capacity crowd returned to that famous victory in 1967, when the Wee Rangers caused one of the biggest shocks in Scottish Cup history with a 1-0 victory over the men from Ibrox.
Rangers only drew and now are fourth in the Scottish Third Division.
Just thinking, but have Rangers paid their tax bill yet?
If Scotland Votes For Independence, Where Do Orkney And Shetland Go?
Only now, with the referendum on Scottish Independence now being seen on the horizon, do people start to think about the real problems of the vote and what happens afterwards.
This article in the Guardian lays out the problems of the northern islands. This quote is given.
All the Shetland ever got from Scotland was dear meal and greedy ministers.
It may be true and I have heard something similar all over Suffolk, as people always feel that other areas of the UK get better treatment. In Suffolk’s case that usually means Norfolk.
Somehow, we must find a better way to spend taxes all over the UK.
MPs Don’t Like Google’s Tax Affairs
According to this article in the Daily Telegraph, Google only paid £6m tax on revenues of £395m.
Obviously, it is not in the interest of the UK, that major international companies pay so little tax. It’s also not in the interest of small UK companies, who perhaps pay high rates of tax and see their foreign competitors in the UK, paying very little.
Years ago, I was involved in monitoring the perception in the press of major companies. After a couple of quarters bumping along at the bottom, companies quickly picked their ideas up.
So perhaps a publicly available table on the Internet, showing the turnover, tax and a few other figures of companies, might not be a bad idea.
Suppose say it was obvious that a well known restaurant chain, was paying a very low rate of tax. Would it mean that customers went elsewhere? Possibly, but it might mean they did other things to justify the low rate, that were of benefit to the UK.
French Target Foreign Property Owners
I’m so glad that C and I sold our house in Antibes in the South of France some fifteen years ago. I think I’d be paying a very large sum of French taxes now, if Francois Hollande gets his plans to tax foreign property owners implemented. It’s all here on the BBC.
The Anonymous Widower 