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)...

No I’m a chartered tax advisor. I don’t work in personal tax but I didn’t pass the exams too long ago so have quite a bit of recent knowledge . How are income taxes being avoided / evaded now?

No, you’re right. I meant my post to demonstrate and balance all the hate and name calling towards disabled people currently, but it didn’t come across well.

It seems whoever you are and whatever your position there is a large element of judging those who are not like you, and I think that’s a large part of the problem. We’re so disconnected as a country. That’s what I meant, but it didn’t come across that way!

Very well said

Portioning up businesses into smaller ones and registering them in low taxing countries seems to be a popular strategy.

ISA's are a very useful "loophole" used for tax Avoidance but I doubt many of these "tax the rich more" posters would view them in the same light......😏

It’s not billionaires you have to worry about. They avoid tax quite successfully. It’s the millionaires and those on 6 figure salaries - who need to take a salary or dividend. It’s those on over 100k (like experienced doctors) who are going part time because it’s not worth going over the 100k threshold for tax. It’s entrepreneurs who want to grow a business but already pay so much in corporation tax and national insurance (on their employees). 25% of people pay 75% of tax. And they are leaving if you tax them more - whether we like it or not.

But that's perfectly legal! Companies exist to make money. Being tax efficient is financially sensible and what every GOOD business should do!

Governments role should be a balancing act - raise tax revenue BUT be attractive to businesses and investors.

Didn't Ireland make an attractive deal with Amazon some years ago to the fury of the EU or did I dream that?

Well, I suppose it depends what you think “good value” is. There aren’t that many large pharmaco in the UK, if you want to push them away fine … and then what?

The VPAG agreement is incredibly unfortunate to the UK pharma market attractiveness - and as we are not in EMA anymore that adds a layer on top

It is a global economy - it really seems that many cannot see it sadly - if other countries play the game better than the UK then we lose the companies, tax revenue, jobs, and all the downstream service roles supported by those jobs and companies

@nearlylovemyusername

So you think that Osborne, Hunt, Kwarteng, and Sunak did a great job during their 14 years in power?

A bunch of incompetents wedded to economic theories that have long-since been debunked. A group who somehow managed to increase public borrowing by trillions while at the same time overseeing a decline in vital public services and national infrastructure. A party that decided that leaving the EU would result in greater prosperity when in fact it has meant a 4% loss of GDP - or almost £100bn a year for the last 9 years. At least the pro-European Hammond had the decency to resign rather than back Johnson's Brexit delusions, and the likewise pro-European Javid resigned rather than have policy dictated to him by the unelected Cummings.

This.

we are talking about RR though? why switch to other people?

Can you please enlighten me about competent decisions she made? the ones that promote growth?

@pickywatermelon "Well, I suppose it depends what you think “good value” is."

It depends on what the Treasury calculates as being "good value" for the taxpayer. In this instance, the Treasury decided that the terms did not represent good value.

"The VPAG agreement is incredibly unfortunate to the UK pharma market attractiveness - and as we are not in EMA anymore that adds a layer on top"

The VPAG agreement was made by the previous government; the same government that took the UK out of the EU and the EMA - although the market for drugs in the UK covered by the UK VPAG agreement is not really a deciding factor when considering where to list a company, as companies sell their products globally.

"It is a global economy"

Indeed, and in a global economy the biggest and most powerful groupings hold all the cards. The Brexit backers thought that the UK standing alone would, in the words of Boris Johnson,"prosper mightily" but so far they have been proven to have been wrong.

It's not just the listing. It's also choosing not to invest.

How does Reeves haemorrhaging £40 billion of tax payers money in quantitative tightening represent good value for money?

The horse has bolted regarding any thought of rejoining the EU. We would never get the same terms we had before, and all the business that has left the UK would likely not return anyway. I worked for one of the big for investment banks, who immediately moved thousands of people out of the UK to Frankfurt, Madrid etc. If you go to Canary Wharf, that big building with HSBC on it won't have HSBC on it much longer if it hasn't already gone.

Then there is employer's NIC...

I think the government are recognising the issues, however they shot themselves in the foot promising not to raise taxes, and by publishing stupid fiscal rules that they didn't need.

And they are worrying about the billionaires leaving the UK. As someone said above the overall tax revenue will drop significantly as the wealthy leave.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c0lnzx73pl3o

I’ve left already.

your point 1 says you still believe the State has a role in setting pay rather than leaving it to shareholders. That’s an issue.
it’s not hard to stop the departures but this government has no interest in doing so. They are about to find out you soon run out of other people’s money

The truly rich don't care about what other people think of them. They will do whatever is best for them. The difference between them and the rest of us is that they have the choice where to live and pay taxes. Whilst I'd love the rich to pay more, they have the choice where to live and pay taxes. If the tax regime is hostile, they will move. Total revenue will fall and those on the levels below will end up paying more.
The rich can move and companies can move. The solution is that companies pay taxes in the country where profits are generated. Starbucks and Amazon aren't going to withdraw from the UK market.

I’m sure I saw something about them now giving visas to people who move here and invest a large sum of money

Do you have any idea about difference between revenue and profit?

Both Amazon and Starbucks generate significant revenue here, but due to corporate structure they don't generate much profit. Through legal entities set up their profit is accounted for in lower tax jurisdictions.

If you attempt to change and tax revenue instead of profit you effectively nuke the entire country economy. And this would apply to local businesses as well.

And business do exit countries if they don't consider them profitable.

Tier 1 Investor visas (Golden visas) to the UK were abolished awhile ago.

Farage proposed Britannia card which would allow foreigners to pay £250k and settle here without paying any taxes on global assets/income. Scum from all over the world, Russia etc would be there in a week.

Yes - I completely understand the difference between revenue and profit. Large companies extract profit by calling it a licence fee and move the tax liability to a lower tax jurisdiction. That is the dodge that needs closing.
Agree that taxing revenue is not the answer.

This so called dodge won't be closed in our lifetime. The entire global business is based on this. And there is also daddy Trump who will put you on naughty tariff step if you dare to touch his American businesses.

There is a discussion about harmonisation of corporation taxes across developed world though.

What you could do for now is to reduce corporation tax drastically, but ideology won't allow this.

It's not marginal tax avoidance in the super rich that causes most of the problems, it's the fact that a third of working age adults pay no tax whatsoever.

We need to focus on both ends of the spectrum!

Fine, but won't they eventually run out of customers who can afford whatever it is they're selling?

Your comment is self-contradicting. If you don’t want profits going abroad you are basically saying you want less reliance on foreign capital. That’s what the OP wants too. If UK-based firms list overseas then the profits increasingly go overseas, as that where their investors are. And who do you think pays more UK tax: a billionaire who lives here or one who has left?

Cut taxes