The idea that the rest of us suffer because the super rich are subject to a nominal tax rate of 50p – and that’s the claim that 20 leading economists advance in the Financial Times this morning – is special pleading at its worst. What’s more, it is entirely intellectually spurious, too.
For a start, in the real world most of them don’t pay anywhere near what the 50p figure suggests. As one private equity chief admitted a few years back, many of them are able to arrange their fiscal affairs to ensure that they shell out proportionately less to the Inland Revenue than do their cleaning ladies. That loophole may have since closed, but plenty of others remain very much open. Continue reading
One has to rub one’s eyes. Britain is smack on course for a double-dip recession, the collapse of consumer and business confidence is ubiquitous, the manufacturing PMI barometer is turning down more sharply even than after the Lehman Brothers collapse, the US housing and labour markets remain extremely fragile, the Eurozone sovereign debt crisis is worsening by the day, both the IMF and World Bank are now counselling strongly against cutting debt too much too fast, and what is our myopic Chancellor’s response to this cataclysm of bad news……………..abolish the top 50% tax rate! That’s like opening an air-bag when the carburettor’s stalled to get the car moving again. He must be delusional if he thinks it’s either (i) relevant, (ii) necessary, (iii) fair, or (iv) appropriate. It’s none of them. 
It’s remarkable that the hyper-rich in France (Bettencourt and others) and in the US (Warren Buffett and others) are now calling at a time of austerity that they should be taxed more. Not a peep however out of the hyper-rich in Britain. Yet they, more than any of such wealth anywhere else in the world (with the possible exception of America), have good grounds to contribute increased taxation dues for three very strong reasons. 
According to 
