The Rich According to the Guardian

[Judy1234]

www.guardian.co.uk/money/2008/aug/04/workandcareers.executivesalaries

smallwhitecat, I guess Dittany, who knew and worked for this guy, knows more about his whereabouts than you do.

Thing is, it is entirely possible for the people at the top to work the system to their benefit. And they cream off a lot more money than the so-called scroungers that everyone gets excited about. And have less excuse - the 'benefits cheats' the D Mail goes on about are not earning millions of pounds and can't afford private education for their kids or private healthcare.

can you really just not pay tax to anyone if you can afford to travel around enough? [naive emoticon]

As expat says, interesting that this kind of thread gets so few replies. People like that canoe bloke and his wife are crushed by the law and the press, but the very very rich who do tax avoidance on a regular basis are left alone.

"Many people, like teachers, don't do things for the pay. But you won't find a teacher that works as hard as we do"

[speechless]

The 35k tax bracket is wholly unfair and should be reduced imho

Tax is theft actually.

There are a very limited number and it's strictly monitored and there is now the flat £30k a year they pay or else choose to have foreign income taxed here. That's the law. Of course people move if tax gets too high if whey we get some French people here and why people I work with move to various places. Why shouldn't people do that in a free market?
Bulgaria has a 10% flat tax if I could learn the language and tolerate the corruption it might be attractive and even the rate in the place where I own the island is better than here but at the moment on balance I will stay. When the top rate here was 99% (I kid you not in the 60s/70s) not surprisingly people like Mick Jagger did have to be abroad for several years. It's a delicate balance.

But what is clear is most of those UK domiciled lawyers and bankers on £500k - £2m a year if they are employed they are paying huge amounts of tax under PAYE just like your average council worker with little scope to avoid it. It's those who can buy and sell businesses, pay capital gains tax at, now, 18% and don't need an income to live on whilst they build up the business who make the greater profits and can more easily move around the planet.

People seem to think the world is fair. It isn't. Some of us are born very clever or very pretty or very lucky. Others not. That's life. It's tough if you feel jealousy for others but it tends not to make you happy. It's best just to realise things are as they are and get on with it.

What gets in my craw about this piece is that I don't think someone like Polly Toynbee is really one to talk. She is only a bit poorer than some of these bankers and what she knows about those who live in poverty, you could write on an ant's bum with a thick pencil.

It's not the fact that the super rich are out of touch which surprises me or even enrages me - 'twas ever thus. But it's the ignorance and the apathy/complacency of some of these people - viz, the guy who didn't know how his taxes were spent but ASSUMED they were misspent.

I'm all for people improving themselves and being rewarded for hard work, but when will more privileged people realise that for some people, the dice are loaded from the start?

my god!!
xenia i should have known. athough im a little confused.... are you rich or poor????
as i read a post by you a while back when you were saying you had just cooked a £2.99 chicken, because you were a single parent, and that was all your budget stretched to!!!
your posts quite frankly piss me off.

Actually swc, I think it is probable that he doesn't pay any income tax anywhere. The UK rules allow you to avoid tax if you're away for a certian number of days per year. They can be short business trips to different countries, so you can have your main base in the UK, but go out of the country for a required days (e.g. on trips to different countries). You then end up not qualifying for UK income tax, but are not liable for taxation in other countries as you're not resident there either. This is not the same as avoiding double taxation.

They've certainly done so quite deliberately to attract the rich, smallwhitecat. But Dittany's dead right, it IS unfair that people who live here can avoid paying taxes by skipping over the channel for the odd day.

If you don't want to contribute to this society, then fine, live somewhere else. Rich people who avoid taxes they could very easily pay really are scum. Why should the people who clean their offices fund their lifestyles?

It's the rich robbing the poor.

And Xenia, it's ages since I heard anyone who could be quite so wholehearted about the verse in All Things Bright and Beautiful about 'God made them high and lowly And ordered their estate'. But it is worth attempting some level of fairness, however difficult and imperfect it is. Out of basic morality but also ultimately out of self-interest. Because an unjust society breeds crime and disorder and all sorts of undesirable things.

I would say that Polly Toynbee knows more than most journalists about poverty in this country after her stint on the minimum wage a few years back.

Xenia, this must be the third or fourth time I've come across your "life isn't fair" line on here ("Some of us are born very clever or very pretty or very lucky. Others not. That's life...") I still fail to see your point.

Is your idea that, because there will always be poverty in any society, governments should not do anything to alleviate its effects? I assume you apply the same logic to your domestic affairs and don't bother heating your house in winter "that's life - it gets cold in winter" or going to the doctor if you are ill "Disease? That's life."

If not, please explain.