War on Britain’s aspirational classes March 5, 2012 THERE is something very wrong with Britain’s tax system. Imagine you are an aspiring, successful hard-working individual; after several years putting in the hours, you now earn £42,475 a year. You’re already a victim of the tax system: you pay no tax on your first £8,105, but then face 20 per cent tax on the [...]
Taxing homes more isn’t the answer March 4, 2012 HERE is my factoid of the day: Italians have just replaced Russians as the top foreign buyers of prime central London properties, ending years of oligarch dominance, according to Knight Frank. The only reason the Greeks aren’t ranked higher is that there are too few of them. Analysts interested in predicting financial crises and unrest [...]
Taxing homes more isn’t the answer March 4, 2012 HERE is my factoid of the day: Italians have just replaced Russians as the top foreign buyers of prime central London properties, ending years of oligarch dominance, according to Knight Frank. The only reason the Greeks aren’t ranked higher is that there are too few of them. Analysts interested in predicting financial crises and unrest [...]
All tax rates are too high in Britain March 1, 2012 IT was good to see yet more entrepreneurs and small business owners joining in the campaign to scrap the 50p tax rate yesterday. But supporters of the tax were also out in force yesterday; they deployed three main arguments. The first is that “bankers” (in modern parlance, anybody who works in finance, including fund managers, [...]
Entrepreneurs finally fighting back February 29, 2012 BUSINESS people have a tendency to run scared of political debate. They rarely want to criticise politicians on the record (though they are often extremely outspoken in private). They very rarely agree to give interviews to discuss controversial subjects. This is a great tragedy: capitalists are failing to speak up for capitalism, allowing those who [...]
China’s bad debts will fuel next crisis February 29, 2012 THERE can be no doubt that China’s story is one of astonishing economic success. Ever since they started to embrace capitalism in the late 1970s, the authorities in Beijing have presided over the greatest, most extensive wealth creation and poverty reduction experiment in history. But the remaining elements of central planning at the heart of [...]
Remember UK Plc’s vast contribution February 27, 2012 IT is sometimes argued, including by government advisers, that the state should promote small firms above large ones. These people even argue that small, insurgent entrepreneurs are morally superior to larger, more bureaucratic multinationals. I disagree, but I can see where they are coming from: I too would much rather work for a small, nimble, [...]
Soaring oil prices the great unknown February 27, 2012 IT was Donald Rumsfeld, the Bush-era defence secretary, who loved to separate events into “known unknowns” and “unknown unknowns”. Even the former can have a huge impact. One key trick is to spot possible risks as they shift from one category to the other. In recent weeks, with the novelty of the Eurozone crisis wearing [...]
Osborne must not tax pensions more February 23, 2012 WANT to add some money into your pension? You’d better hurry up, as there is intense pressure on the chancellor to slash tax relief on pension contributions. If Lib Dems gets their way, 40p and 50p taxpayers will lose their tax relief, which would fall to just 20p for everybody. This would be a further, [...]
Bonus row now completely irrational February 22, 2012 UTTERLY absurd: that is the only way to describe the debate on bonuses. Here is why. Imagine a salesperson at a widget company so brilliant that she brings in £10m a year for her firm. She is the best widget salesperson in the UK and her firm’s biggest asset. Her company, unfortunately, is loss-making – [...]