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Incentives Matter: Britain Is Raising Taxes, and the Productive Are Fleeing
Red State ^ | 09/01/2024 | Ward Clark

Posted on 09/01/2024 8:18:54 PM PDT by SeekAndFind

One unshakable law of economics is this: What you reward, you get more of, and what you tax, you get less of.

The government of the formerly Great Britain doesn't seem to understand this fundamental law. They are proposing to hike taxes and fees, and high-income and wealthy (which are not always the same thing) Brits are looking to the exits.

We can hardly blame them.

An exodus is being reported by bankers, financial advisers and business chiefs with experts warning that the Chancellor risks ruining hopes of faster economic growth with a widely expected increase in capital gains tax (CGT).

It comes after Sir Keir Starmer warned last week that those with the “broadest shoulders” would carry the burden of fixing Britain’s ailing public finances.

Ceri Vokes, a partner at law firm Withers Worldwide, who works with entrepreneurs and private equity executives, said a number of her wealthy clients had already moved overseas this year, with the election “the main driver”.

She added: “People with hundreds of millions of pounds [are leaving] because changes can be more impactful for them.”

Those packing their bags and moving overseas are typically entrepreneurs and private equity executives in the top income bracket, she said. Italy, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Switzerland are among the most popular destinations.

This should surprise any of us on this side of the Atlantic, and there is a similar exodus happening here, from blue states to red states.

Incentives matter, and the United Kingdom and a lot of our blue states are getting those incentives all wrong. That's why the productive are fleeing.

As one Brit points out, the very people being targeted in these tax hikes and new levies are the people who are most able to pack up and split.

Brent Hoberman, the founder of Lastminute.com and Founders Forum, said: “Entrepreneurs are very mobile. Many of them will leave or, maybe even worse, not come to the UK if they aren’t creating entrepreneur-friendly policies.

“The combination of a potential move on non-doms, inheritance tax, CGT and VAT on private schools as a lesser issue, all those things when not married with any figurehead supporting entrepreneurship, valuing entrepreneurship, so far from this Labour Government I don’t think we have had anything backing the country’s entrepreneurs.”

Two-Tier Keir claims that the British subjects "with the broadest shoulders” should carry the burden, much the same kind of stupidity as an American politician claiming the "rich must pay their fair share." The problem is that high-income earners in the United States are already paying far more than their fair share. But that doesn't matter; not to liberal pols in Britain or the United States. For all of the left’s prattle about “making the rich pay their fair share,” these politicians don’t mean it, and they know they don’t mean it. They can’t mean it. The rich are the most capable, after all, of making use of tax shelters. They have off-shore accounts, batteries of tax attorneys, and every other possible means of shielding income from taxation. The middle class, especially independent business owners, have no such resources, and it is always - always the middle class on whom the burden of this taxation-which-is-theft always falls.

Incentives matter. Britain and the blue states here don't understand that, and their economic woes will only grow worse until they figure it out.



TOPICS: Business/Economy; Government; Society
KEYWORDS: britain; europe; exodus; goldbugs; keirstalin; keirstarmer; labour; malthusians; socalledhardmoney; taxes; uk; unitedkingdom

1 posted on 09/01/2024 8:18:54 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
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To: SeekAndFind

I recently asked a wealthy man about his essential wisdoms. He keeps most of his money mobile, so he can scoot in minutes.


2 posted on 09/01/2024 8:32:38 PM PDT by lurk (u)
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To: SeekAndFind

So they KNOW it doesn’t work. Is it just a soundbite for them? Or is there some overarching goal here? Maybe get all the productive high income individuals to leave, and then blame that exodus for your problems and then demand a 1 world government where there’s nowhere to run to? Or at least uniform tax rates Europe-wide, nationwide and/or worldwide?


3 posted on 09/01/2024 8:34:31 PM PDT by FrankRizzo890
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To: FrankRizzo890

It is why the left wants a world government. So there is nowhere to flee. and maybe the real reason Elon Musk wants to go to Mars.


4 posted on 09/01/2024 9:00:53 PM PDT by Fai Mao (The US government is run by pedophiles and Perverts for pedophiles and perverts.)
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To: lurk
"I recently asked a wealthy man about his essential wisdoms. He keeps most of his money mobile, so he can scoot in minutes."

There was a line in "Gone with the Wind" after Miss Scarlet asked Rhett Butler for money where he answered (to paraphrase) "My money is in Liverpool."

When I heard that line in the movie theater as a punk kid it changed the course of my life, although my focus came to be in South America. It's harder to do that these days, as foreign banks seem to not want to do business with Americans.

5 posted on 09/01/2024 9:26:37 PM PDT by The Duke (Not without incident)
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To: SeekAndFind

Ah, yes. I remember El Rush-Bo talking about this. After Rush escaped high tax New York for Florida, some NY politico bragged “heck, if I’d have known this would get rid of Rush, I would have raised taxes a long time ago.” A few years later, after many more followed Rush’s example and left NY, another politico actually admitted that NY was chasing away too many of the people that pay most of the taxes.


6 posted on 09/01/2024 9:56:07 PM PDT by Ronaldus Magnus III (Do, or do not, there is no try)
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To: SeekAndFind

do brits pay tax on worldwide income like us citizens?


7 posted on 09/01/2024 10:26:51 PM PDT by joshua c
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To: SeekAndFind

“The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”
Margaret Thatcher


8 posted on 09/01/2024 10:41:24 PM PDT by citizen (Put all LBQTwhatever programming on a new subscription service: PERV-TV)
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To: SeekAndFind

“The productive are fleeing..”

The WEF/NWO elites that rule Britain and the West don’t give a damn about that.
It is all about population replacement which is working out beyond perfectly !


9 posted on 09/01/2024 10:58:31 PM PDT by A strike ("Rise Peter, kill and eat.")
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To: The Duke
It's harder to do that these days, as foreign banks seem to not want to do business with Americans.

You probably know why that is. It's not that they don't want to do business with Americans - rather, it's that they don't want to (be forced to) do business with the U.S. federal govt.

Regards,

10 posted on 09/02/2024 1:24:11 AM PDT by alexander_busek (Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.)
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To: SeekAndFind

They got what they voted for


11 posted on 09/02/2024 5:48:53 AM PDT by SMARTY (In politics, stupidity is not a handicap. Napoleon Bonaparte I)
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To: SeekAndFind
I want to be the first in this thread to say:

"Who is John Galt?"

12 posted on 09/02/2024 6:05:13 AM PDT by Oberon (John 12:5-6)
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To: A strike

I am amazed how fast “Great” Britain is falling. We’re not far behind.


13 posted on 09/02/2024 7:00:28 AM PDT by stevio (Fight until you die!)
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To: SeekAndFind

Socialists are in control.


14 posted on 09/02/2024 7:41:57 AM PDT by Brilliant
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