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)...

@DonnaHadDee

We can, and hopefully will, do much better. It starts with education and training our people.

Nail on the head. STEM and technical/manual skills is the future. We need to downscale the "soft" university degrees (yes, still essential, but we don't need too many who never actually work in their field). Massive improvement in STEM at ALL levels of education, secondary through to FE through to HE and restore adult education. Yes, to training in manual/technical skills, trades, etc., but also investment in those industries to weed out the "male" attitudes and make them more female friendly. And yes, incentives/subsidies/grants for employers to take on youngsters on trainee schemes, apprenticeship schemes, etc., even more importantly out in the regions away from the prosperous London/SE areas.

With the advent of AI, "soft" skills, office work, admin work, etc is going to be adversely affected far more than skills in "making and doing" things like science, manual/trades skills, etc.

All these billionaires and immensely wealthy companies have not obviously contributed to a reduction in destitution and wretchedly poor communities. Try spending a couple of afternoons in some of the town centres where I live in the north east of England - the presence of the richest people, living somewhere in the rest of the country, has made no difference whatsoever. There are jobs, of a sort, if you don't mind low-wage, precarious employment, but far too many people live right on the margin, with chronic diseases, early mortality and hopelessness. I wish wealthy corporations and individuals were taxed a little more to spread the nation's assets a bit further - if they are so offended by that minimal ask, they can sod off and buy an estate in Switzerland.

"minimal ask" lmao

What do you think is a fair top tax rate?

For what or who? For a multinational, earning 100s of millions in the UK but registered for tax somewhere else? For the shareholders of Thames Water, taking their bonuses from a £3bn public subsidy? For an SME employing 15 people? For a non-dom, enjoying all the pleasures of London and an expensive tax accountant? For someone earning 40k in a standard 9-to-5? Fair taxation rates should ensure that public services work and the neediest are looked after.

I would reverse the increase to employers’ national insurance contributions for a start, and reverse the recent changes that were introduced to non doms.

It all depends what people class as "fair". The water thing fair enough, because it's taxpayer subsidies. But I don't think that means all dividends and capital gains should be super taxed.

A multinational would get a salary in the 100s of millions? Probably not. They'd have assets equating that, probably after running a successful business.

As for non-doms, I mean why sure why would you want all Ur global income taxed here as well.

This. If you have money you can live anywhere. What the fuck is here for them anymore? Hated for paying huge amounts into the system for many people who chose not to work. Their success should be celebrated not envied.

I wasn't taking about the salaries of people who work for multinationals, but the tax these corporations provide to the Treasury. In the case of Amazon, for example, they paid £18.7mn in corporation tax in 2023. But that was on revenues of £6.9bn - a tax rate of 0.27%. They always quote a far higher tax contribution, but that includes VAT, which people would pay anyway whether they bought their goods from Amazon or anyone else. Amazon earns a vast amount from UK consumers, but shifts its profits to Luxembourg. How is that fair?

If its a simple sounding as above, why aren't we doing it?

We aren't a good place to invest and no companies are coming to save us with offers of jobs. Where it seems to be heading is automation and AI which will drive some growth to keep us bumbling along.

That's another option for how this could pan out, but I think we would need to reach financial ruin before we rejoin the EU.

You cant have different minimum wage rates for different types of employer!

Corporation tax is on profit not revenue.

They'll be paying VAT on revenue and employers NIC on wages and business rates on premises and fuel duty on their delivery vans.

what did these communities do to help themselves? or they just wait for redistribution?
if it's so bad there, why don't people move elsewhere to get better jobs? this country hate migrants who move countries and continents to get better life.

Dunno about hating the rich - some sure do hate the poor.

It's down to the wealthy that the NE is so deprived. Whole industries closed down because it was cheaper to make the products overseas. So the wealthy pay people in China, India etc a stupidly low wage so they can increase their already huge profits, and remove tens of thousands of jobs from a region, and your suggestion is that people should just move continents?

Businesses moved to China, India etc decades ago because you as a customer would rather buy a t-shirt for £10 than for £50 that it would cost to produce it here.

I don't suggest NE to move continents, please don't twist my words, but there are plenty of vacancies in the UK, and not only in London.

When a business decides on location some of the most critical considerations are political regime, tax regime and quality of workforce. Oxbridge belt attracts the best scientist in the world not because of some special water there but because of concentration of likeminded people, it's a self fulfilling cycle.

No business will voluntarily move operations which require highly skilled labour (means high paying jobs) to an area where there is no such labour and people just sit bitter about their lives and wait for wealthy to give them something.

ETA:
@JE001
I wish wealthy corporations and individuals were taxed a little more to spread the nation's assets a bit further
it's only about spreading, right? nothing about actually trying to do something yourself?

Fully agree. This needs saying more and more.

The UK is where it is now because successive governments have solely catered to the crabs in a barrel segment of our population. It’s time the focus was put back on the voices of the middle class.

No country in history has done well off the back of following the lead of the underclass (most of the loudest permanently aggrieved class take more than they contribute to the economy). They won’t be happy until the whole country resembles Jaywick.

The government needs to stop listening to their cries of ‘sneering’ and cater to people who actually contribute and are raising kids who will also contribute.

...and what happened in the 2 years prior to 2010?

Debt went from 35% of GDP to 65% of GDP. Under Labour.

So:

• 2 years under Labour to go from 35% to 65%, a 30% increase
• 10 years under Conservatives (and LD for part) to go from 65% to 88%, a 23% increase (and it peaked in 2015 and was on it's way down)

Oh yeah, Labour are so amazing aren't they?

Debating increases in debt without considering major external factors like the 2008 financial crash, Brexit, or Covid is pointless. Those are the main things that have driven increase in debt, not some individual politician or even whole party's beliefs.

It is concerning to me that Labour, and many posters on this thread, seem to think that "the rich" are just going to keep paying more and more to support the less well off, especially when many of those are just not even trying.

Agree and with @OldLondonDad

Well, the point is that Labour had a global financial crash to deal with, a collapse of retail banking would have been horrendous for us all, but with support from the Tories at the time, Brown dealt with it.

There was no such crisis between 2010 and 2020.

If debt was falling again in 2015, that was the time to ease Austerity, instead they continued it.... debt went back up again

Brexit was a Tory policy decision, if it helped wreck our finances, its down to them, hough to be 30 to 40 billion per year.

Then there is Truss.... that cost the UK billions, increasing QA adding o interest rates and trebling Gil yields and hence deb costs.

No Labour are not amazing but the country was a lot more stable and generally speaking a nicer place to live than it is now..... not all on the Tories but they had a massive negative effect.

We did the digital services tax first as well. Other countries started to copy it which is why there is now considerable push back - the UK tax only comes to about a billion which is small beans to big tech companies. But other countries doing the same is a bad sign if you are a large company that doesn't want to pay tax.

The global minimum tax is a good idea but it requires large countries in particular to hold the line. If the wrong parties get in (not naming names) they can disrupt this.

I actually think the next decade or so is.going to matter a lot.

Are they worried about the next mayor?

Debt wasn’t falling in 2015.

Public borrowing was falling nicely
UK government borrowing at 11-year low - BBC News

I'd suggest you read your link....

A quarterly drop doesn't doesn't affect the over year on year trend.

The Tories massively increased our debt, no serious commentator says otherwise.