to ask how you would stop companies and investors leaving the UK?

[LargeDeviation]

AstraZeneca (the UK's most valuable company) has said they are thinking of delisting from the London Stock Exchange with a view to list in America. Other companies like Invidia, TUI, have also delisted. ARM is of course another one that got away.

At the same time, billionaires and centimillionaires are leaving the UK at the greatest rate ever.

Each delisting leads to redundancies or lower future growth. Each billionaire lost needs the equivalent of thousands of median income taxpayers to make up the tax lost.

What would you do to stop the rot? My solutions:

1. Incentivise listings: Allow extremely large bonuses and executive remuneration as long as they are tied to long-term performance. Remove stamp duty on shares. Bring back reduced oversight for AIM etc so small companies can easily list. Actively invest government funds in high-tech incubator companies (as long as it's done by the likes of the Vaccine Taskforce, not by idiot civil servants whose idea of good governance was to try to obstruct the OneWeb investment).

2. Incentivise share ownership in UK companies. Reduce dividend taxes. Revive the idea of the British ISA from Jeremy Hunt. Introduce low long-term capital gains tax rates (as many other countries have) to encourage long-term investing. Simply cutting Cash ISA allowances won't help.

3. Encourage entrepreneurs and the rich to come to Britian rather than leave. Reverse the non-dom changes. Large increases in IHT allowances, cut the top rate of income tax. These tax cuts can be conditional on providing a large number of jobs to British workers to make them politically palatable.

4. Cut corporation tax back to 20%. Sunak made a huge error in increasing corporation tax.

5. Ditch the Rayner changes which makes Britain even more uncompetitive.

Of course Labour won't do any of the above (or even acknowledge that companies/investors leaving the UK is a problem)...

Theres a lot of hate in this country for those who make money. We can reduce taxes on wealth but the hate will be even worse. Newspapers now talking of a possible wealth tax will lead to more leaving and all of those will be net providers. We can’t afford to lose them and yet the hate continues. No one wants to live in a country that despises you…… I don t think reducing taxes will help a lot at this stage. Only the population can

The idea that rich folk are leaving the UK has been widely debunked - it came from a press release put out by a firm that... helps rich folk move abroad, which is a bit like asking a car salesman if you need a new car: https://taxjustice.net/press/millionaire-exodus-did-not-occur-study-reveals/

The best thing the UK could do is rejoin the EU if it wants to stop companies listing elsewhere, but that's probably not what you want to hear...

Ah yes, what a horrific state we would be in if multimillionaires and corporations paid their fair share of tax. Won’t someone think of the millionaires and billionaires? 🙄

Scandinavian entrepreneurs and companies seem to be doing ok in a relatively high tax environment.

Doesn't America make Americans pay taxes wherever you are?

The best thing the UK could do is rejoin the EU if it wants to stop companies listing elsewhere, but that's probably not what you want to hear...

This

I would question that - I heard that nobody actually knows how many are leaving the country because there isn’t the data collected to know.

Maybe the population don’t hate them so much. Perhaps there’s less vitriol towards them. If you experience hate in an environment it’s natural to move away from it.

Putting aside the question of whether this would be a good idea, practically the US has the clout to do this and the UK doesn't. If HMRC tried to demand the records of UK citizens from foreign financial institutions it would be told to sod off.

UK citizenship is also a lot easier to revoke than US citizenship.

Let's fawn over billionaires oh however will we cope without them and their tax avoidance schemes 😱 please stay and pay your workers pittance as you siphon your money abroad!

As pointed out above, rejoining the EU would be a good starting point.

Good. I’ll wave them off with my tiny violin.

This thread is an excellent example of why the wealthy might choose not to settle in the UK. The utter loathing for wealthy people - who pay all tax due as much as the next person - is plain to see.

A great example. But when they’ve all left you might have to sell that tiny violin. I’ll be taking my viola with me

Hi Rachel! 👋👋

Rejoin the European Union.

The country won’t cope without them. Just check out the stats.

Can anyone really see that happening any time soon and if they can it won’t be soon enough. Once businesses and individuals have left it’s unlikely they’d move back again. Why bother.

I’d join with many other countries (the EU would be nice but not holding my breath) and work on saying that companies and people can’t make money in ANY countries without paying a decent amount of tax in that country. The Canadians are trying it with their digital tax but can’t get it off the ground because the Americans are shitty, money-grubbing bullies.

Everyone needs to stand up to people who make money and don’t pay taxes.

You need to stop getting your “stats” from GB News.

Check out the Global Minimum Corporation Tac Rate. This is already happening

That’s a rude comment and as such demeans all credibility. Of note. I get my stats from the ONS.

Rejon the EU.
And wages. I read somewhere ages ago that even at top level jobs the UK is far behind other countries. As a result the really talented people in finance and industry are moving country for better paid jobs and better standards of living.

....

the whole jist behind Trumps tariffs were to stop digital taxes such as these. Nothing can stop him doing it. It’s shitty, but the tariff will hurt the economy much more than is raised in DST. You have to think through the full consequences of every tax policy, not just go with what seems fair if you want to maximise tax take.

It goes both ways though, which I imagine is part of the problem.

The very rich that I know look down on people who earn minimum wage and assume that they’re lazy, incompetent losers. Have seen this attitude an awful lot - anyone can strike it rich if they just work hard enough (from someone who inherited millions). This attitude spawns the returning attitude that these rich people, racing to set their businesses up on foreign soil to take advantage of low tax rates to avoid paying yet still benefit from gaining business here.

I’m sure I read about Jk Rowling, who is one of the UK’s top tax payers, say that whilst she has stupidly high tax bills it’s a privilege to be able to pay them.

Some wealthy people are decent and happy to pay their way, some are greedy psychopaths and give others a bad name.

I’m afraid every very wealthy person leaving to avoid taxes are part of the greed. Then it’s all blamed on disabled people anyway, not scummy people who run away in order to hoard their wealth.

I think the full implications are not just about tax revenue. But creating a culture of preventing tax avoidance. Trump will only last 4 years, and hopefully so will the tariffs. But if the rest of the big markets can get their shit together, that could last a while.

I will admit I know very little about it though!

AstraZeneca is Swedish-British rather than a purely British company, and its major markets are the USA and the EU, so it is going to list where the major markets are, partcularly since the UK left the EU.

TUI is German and has been for decades. The London listing was as a result of historical mergers with Thos. Cook and Thomson, but the HQ has always been in Hanover or Berlin and the company's major markets are the EU countries as well as the UK.

ARM was sold to SoftBank of Japan in 2016, meaning that there were no longer any shares to list anywhere. Conservative chancellor Phillip Hammond approved of the deal, mistakingly believing that the UK would benefit. Years later when SoftBank decided to offer some shares to the open market, it decided to list in New York.

What is "Invidia"? If you mean Nvidia, a company that was looking to invest in ARM, this is an American company that has never been listed in the UK.