Closely fought, some excellent touches, and wonderful entertainment. Wasn't the football good yesterday?

Oh, no, I meant to say the Hecklers debate about non-domiciles on Radio 4. Honestly, I did listen to it, and I haven't just spent the morning trying to get hold of it to write about it here.

Did you listen? Having now heard the full debate, I thought it was a good run-through of a lot of the different issues, and there were some striking points made.

Have you ever heard Mike Warburton say that he thinks Gordon Brown is 'one of our most successful chancellors'? It's a nice try, Mike, but I don't think you'll be getting an invite to Number 10 just yet.

Richard Murphy was proposing dropping the non-dom rule, and heckled by Mike, by Tim Congdon of Lombard Street Research, Julie Meyer of Ariadne Capital and by Michael Cole, the former spokesman for Harrods and well-known non-dom Mohammed Al-Fayed.

There were a couple of arguments that merited airing. Mike said that successive governments have looked at the issue and decided not to drop the rules. He says because they came to the sensible conclusion not to. I think there's an alternative explanation.

Tim Congdon made the point incessantly and impatiently that there was no viable alternative. I think Richard's argument that there are every other tax system in the world has an alternative, bar one (Ireland) dealt effectively with that.

Julie Meyer, Michael Cole and Mike all made the point that we would throw away our competitive advantage over the US and other countries in financial services and other things if we dropped the rule.

Richard's argument that if the government really thinks the UK is such a great place to do business, the people coming would come anyway. I like that argument a lot. Is all that nonsense we get from Gordon just guff, if he thinks we need tax rules to bolster us? Probably.

I also liked Richard's rallying line: 'Fly the flag, pay the tax'.

All in all, I think the hecklers lost, at least in the way it was edited (I'm told some of the controversial stuff was left out). They were too quick to accuse Richard of being envious or xenophobic apart from anything else. I don't particularly think he's either of those things, and accusing your opponents of base motives didn't seem particularly courteous.

They landed some hits, but I thought Emma Chamberlain's contribution at the end (she was in the audience) summed a lot of it up for me. She said the debate was hampered by poor data. If we want to ditch the rules, we need to know what effect it will have.

She added that there were plenty of US people who came to the UK who didn't benefit from the rule, one reason for thinking a lot of people come here because it is a good place to do business. She also outlined some compromise ideas, the Swiss negotiated tax idea and also time limits on the rules.

Personally, I think the rules are indefensible and should be ditched at once. What's your view?

And if you haven't heard it yet, you can listen again here.

August 23, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

What will you be doing at 8pm tomorrow evening (Wednesday)? Probably watching the football, I'd have thought.

But if you can't be bothered to see another pointless friendly (even if it is the Germans) you could opt to stay in and listen to some good natured shouting at Richard Murphy, the tax campaigner.

Murphy is on a programme called Hecklers on Radio 4. He is arguing against the non-dom rules or, as the Beeb puts it, 'that Britain should stop trying to woo the foreign super rich with tax breaks.'

I understand that the privilege of shouting at Richard, which is something many tax advisers will probably have wanted to do at some stage, goes to Mike Warburton of Grant Thornton and Michael Cole, Mohammed al Fayed's former spokesman.

Mike is a doughty defender of the rules as good for the UK, while al Fayed is probably the best-known non-dom, so both should prove a good foil for Murphy's arguments. There are two other guests, but I best not steal the BBC's thunder entirely by giving them all away.

Richard is already boasting on his website that he found 'considerable support' for his arguments in front of what he calls a hostile audience.

Needless to say, a full and unbiased review of who won and who lost will appear here on Thursday morning.

August 21, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

The taxman has put out a very stern and unforgiving briefing on taxis home, and when they qualify for tax exemptions. By the standards of tax briefings, it's quite good fun, though unintentionally, of course.

The issue is all about whether or not a taxi hime late at night is a benefit, and taxable, or not.

There are circumstances in which it is not. You have to satisfy three conditions: you have to be working later than usual; it has to be an irregular occurence; and public transport has to have stopped working, or it be unreasonable to expect someone to use public transport.

If that's not schoolmasterish enough, it gets worse. Indolent employees who are too lazy to get public transport are in for some stern words.

The brief says that the conditions for it being 'unreasonable to expect someone to use public transport' do not include where someone;

has to travel home from work in the dark; or/and

has had a long working day and is tired, or/and

has a heavy briefcase, or similar, to take home with them; or/and

travels by public transport to a station that is unmanned.

Does Ebeneezer Scrooge work for the taxman these days, I wonder? You can almost feel the scorn for the pathetic excuses for late night taxis the taxman has to handle.

I'm sure the latest brief will help cut the amount people claim on their tax bills, but it's surely a little unforgiving?

It also raises a number of other points. Does the start of the night bus service mean that public transport has stopped working? And if our taxes were better spent on a better transport system that worked through the night, the taxman wouldn't have to handle any of these exemptions at all...

August 8, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)