Simon Jenkins makes many excellent points supporting the removal of the “fiscal archaism” that is non-dom status (Don’t stop at non-doms – stamp out all the tax tricks, 9 April). His use of New York as an example of a city with a “far more severe tax regime”, yet not short of thousands of “super-rich” residents, is particularly pertinent in view of scaremongers’ suggestions that the rich will leave the UK, bag and baggage.
However, Jenkins also makes a surprisingly ludicrous point, that George Osborne can claim to be “tougher than any of his predecessors on tax avoidance”. Can this really be true of a chancellor who has overseen the cutting of staff at HMRC by 20%, and who, for all his “morally repugnant” rhetoric, has done nothing to reduce the tax gap, which even Jenkins acknowledges to be approximating £70bn a year? Is it nearer the truth to state that Cameron and Osborne only broached the subject of tax avoidance after being put under pressure to do so after excellent work by investigative journalists and Margaret Hodge’s public accounts committee? Osborne’s much-vaunted Google tax is only estimated to be collecting £557m by 2019, and accounting firms, having representatives on Treasury tax committees, are still allowed to profit to the tune of billions through “advising” on tax avoidance. Does this really sound as though a government has been hard at work for five years tackling the problem?
History will almost certainly judge Osborne as the chancellor who spurned the chance to gain massive public support by tackling tax avoidance properly; consequently, he well may be seen as the man who cost his party the 2015 election.
Bernie Evans
Liverpool
• Simon Jenkins is right to ridicule the legal principle of nom-domicile status based on the “place of intended burial”. He might also have mentioned that the legal presumption underlying the determination of that likely intention is sexist, based on where one’s father was born. To deal with the pragmatic requirements of special arrangements needed to address questions about the taxation of transitional residents, most countries have legislation dealing with these matters and need not fall back on a medieval sexist concept of domicile which also gives rise to egregious acts of tax avoidance.
SP Chakravarty
Bangor, Gwynedd
• The possibility of getting rid of non-domiciled status has been lobbed into the general election campaign (‘We’ll end non-dom tax status’– Miliband, 8 April). Whether or not one has the right to non-domicile status is often far from straightforward. If there is an intention to clarify and simplify that right, for example by the introduction of a statutory domicile test, similar to the statutory residence test recently introduced, that would be helpful. It would also get rid of some fairly dubious claims.
If the intention is full-scale abolition, a substantial number of non-doms who have no particular ties to the UK will leave. Some with greater ties will stay. However, there will certainly be a substantial flight of capital from the UK. Rather than get rid of the baby with the bathwater, could we not link morality with prudence and target abusive claims?
Andrew Watters
Director, Thomas Eggar LLP
• Simon Jenkins is spot on in saying that all the tax tricks should be stopped, but mistaken in saying that Europe is the worst culprit. A Canadian documentary film by Harold Crooks, The Price We Pay, so far released only in Canada and France, demonstrates amply that it is the UK, specifically England, and above all the City of London, that is the source of the rot. I left the cinema in Paris where I saw it a couple of months ago with my head bowed in shame. The film is in English. I cannot imagine why it has not been shown here. Perhaps Simon Jenkins or the Guardian could use their vast network of contacts and influence to secure a release for it before the election. At the very least, it should be compulsory viewing for every politician.
Judith Martin
Winchester, Hampshire
• So critics think the abolition of non-dom status will lead to an exodus of wealthy entrepreneurs, by implication costing the UK money? Pull the other one. Where do I start to demolish such baseless rubbish? Leaving to one side the moral argument for the move, which is incontrovertible, many of the beneficiaries are UK citizens born, schooled and raised here at taxpayers’ expense; where would they go, since we are the only country daft enough to pander to the rich in this way? This also applies to those non-doms who were not born here, since wherever they go they will be expected to pay their taxes on the same basis as everybody else.
These are some of the richest people on the planet, many of them billionaires, who want to live in this country but on favourable terms not available to the rest of us. Not all wealthy entrepreneurs have earned their fortunes by the sweat of their brows – if indeed any of them have. Many of them certainly haven’t, and would be hard put to up sticks and find a better quality of life than here. You couldn’t make it up!
Brian Gibson
Rotherham, South Yorkshire
• It is shaming that protection of non-doms has attracted so much political attention when one considers that our RAF personnel have received a 1% pay rise this year only to find that their RAF accommodation costs and on-base meal costs have risen much in excess of their pay rise following the modest increase. We apparently value non-doms more than the people who fight for our way of life. Strange old world.
David Newton
Hope Valley, Derbyshire
• I could never convince my late father, a Labour “capo” in Stirlingshire’s post-war county council, of the amoral logic of what is now known as the Laffer curve. In my US business school 55 years ago, the idea came from treasury secretary Andrew Mellon’s claim in 1924 that “lower tax rates generate higher government revenue”. For socialists, taxation has a moral element and the suspicion the wealthy were “getting away with it” riled my father in a way it did not a pragmatic one-nation Tory like me. I suspect the non-dom farrago is also a moral issue and the fact that 115 non-doms pay £9bn in income tax – and the government could lose serious money – doesn’t matter. Not all non-doms are Tony Blair’s plutocrat chums: many are high-flying professionals with foreign ties and we could lose their talents and their industry as well as their taxes.
John Cameron
St Andrews, Fife
• I earn just less than £11,000 a year and I have to pay tax. I was horrified therefore to read in your paper that the multimillionaire Lord Rothermere claims non-dom status because of French ancestors. Does this mean that many English citizens could claim, as their ancestors were Normans or Vikings?
Glynnis Jones
Llandudno, Clwyd
• Non-doms and condoms: both are a flexible artificial barrier to avoid taxing consequences.
Chris Baker
Minety, Wiltshire
