To think that we should all boycott the businesses of billionaires until they sort the situation of kids starving to death due to famine and war?

[mumofoneAloneandwell]

They can literally afford to fix this issue.

Enough is enough.

Prayers for Sudan 🇸🇩 and to all those suffering across the world.

One of the more daft threads on MN - and it has some very strong competition!

Lol! You crack on with that!!😂

Exactly. ‘Boycotting’ Nestle etc is purely to make individuals feel better. And it’s fine to avoid products from them as much as possible but it’s not a boycott in any meaningful sense of the word.

It's not worse than 100 years ago, it is worse than 50/60 years ago within living memory. We are going back to the Gilded Age. We don't have as much social housing and the NHS has long waiting lists, public services aren't as good as they used to be as there isn't the money. Taxes were higher for the wealthy back then and that made it more equal. I'm not saying that some people can't have more, more that people like Jeff Bezos etc should actually pay a fair amount of tax - they often don't take a salary but borrow against stock so it isn't classed as income, therefore it isn't taxed. They shouldn't pay less than everyone else does.

But the UK has no jurisdiction as to how someone who lives and is tax resident in a different country pays their taxes. We're in an international marketplace now and the mega rich can choose to live in a tax haven which means the likes of UK's HMRC havn't any means to charge tax on them when they don't even live in the UK. We'd need Worldwide agreement to standardise taxes across all countries and that will never happen as the tax haven countries won't give up their tax haven status as they rely on the mega rich living there and paying tax there. Short of a nuclear bomb, military takeover or paying billions in compensation, they're not going to suddenly decide to charge the same rates of tax as everyone else. It's not even miles away, the Isle of Man is a tax haven, and to some extents so are the channel Islands and Gibralta, all of which are closely linked to the UK/British Isles/Crown. Isle of Man would be a shadow of it's current self if it didn't have lots of rich people living there as a tax haven nor it's extensive financial services industry based around it being a tax haven.

it is worse than 50/60 years ago within living memory.... the NHS has long waiting lists

Fifty or sixty years ago many of the people now on waiting lists wouldn't have been on a list because the treatment they are waiting for didn't exist.

Yes, but also lots of people wouldn't have been on waiting lists because they'd have got their "treatment" virtually immediately within the GP surgery or local cottage hospital when they were more akin to "one stop shops" rather than gatekeepers.

I can't believe things like being able to nip down to casualty to get a broken limb x-rayed and potted in one go, when nowadays it seems to be 2 or 3 different visits on different days firstly to get a review for a referral for an x-ray and then maybe several days wait before you get the referral to the fracture clinic!

Same when I had an ingrown toe nail - easy to get an appointment with the GP who took one look at it, phoned the local casualty department whilst I was sat there, to tell them I was on my way, so I nipped over, and they examined it and then removed it there and then. When my son got an ingrown toe nail, it took literally weeks of farting around with the GP doctors and nurses suggesting different things, then they finally referred him, which took a few weeks for the consultation, then another few weeks to schedule him in to have it removed. Overall, took several months, on various waiting lists to have exactly the same thing done that was all done and dusted for me in an afternoon, with no waiting lists.

We do seem to have gone backward with the fragmentation of the NHS.

We'd need Worldwide agreement to standardise taxes across all countries

But incomes aren't standard across all countries. And in many countries people have to pay out of their incomes what is provided out of tax revenue in other countries. People in the US (and elsewhere) have to buy health insurance, for example.

We're talking about the super rich who won't, generally, be using public services, and will usually be making their own private arrangements, especially for the likes of healthcare where they'll travel to the "best" healthcare providers rather than rely on the local hospital on whatever Island they officially "live" on.

My point was that unless there is standardised tax agreements across ALL countries, the mega rich will always choose to base themselves in a tax haven where they pay less tax, maybe not the lowest tax, if say, it was a war zone or suffered earthquakes or hurricanes regularly, but certainly, if they could find a nice Island with good weather, flexible/convenient for travel (air or yacht) to more developed countries, relatively safe, etc., that's where they'd go.

Look at Tyson Fury moving to Isle of Man - couldn't get more convenient for getting back to the UK mainline, so also good for onward travel to USA, Europe, Carribean or wherever else he'd like to holiday etc. He's only gone to "live" there because it's a tax haven, not because he likes steam trains and trams!

A country can easily benefit by reducing the taxes breaking through agreement and having the billionaires flock to their nation to invest and build companies

It is baffling to me that people claim that they wouldn’t do the same.

Yes, indeed. Pure virtue signalling, and I guarantee the vast majority who say they'd like to pay more tax, wouldn't move abroad, etc., would beggar off abroad to a tax haven if the logistics etc worked for them.

I remember maybe 20 years ago, I had a teacher client who was the school's union rep and Labour party member, who'd often virtue signal about tax avoiders etc., when we had meetings about his "side hustle" business. Funny that when his little business got bigger and he found himself liable for higher rate tax rates for the first time, he couldn't wait to incorporate his business as a limited company so he could benefit from the old beneficial dividend tax system and "share" his profits with his non working wife by giving her some shares in his new company! Don't blame him for doing it, lots of people did at the time due to Gordon Brown's tax incentives for limited companies, but to see/hear him in the media whinging about tax avoiders really stuck in my throat when I knew he'd done exactly the same thing, despite his "leftie" rhetoric!