An ode to economics and the tax system

Really Mark, would it really make a massive difference to you if you had 6 or 8 billion pounds in the bank? I would be more than happy (as I do) to pay my taxes in a country that gave me a great education and health care for free. Where I can say what I want without fear of persecution, where I can walk the streets at night safely, where I don't feel the need to lock my doors 24/7 and most importantly where I don't have to live among the perma-tanned, designer clad, surgically inhanced individuals who know the cost of everything and the value of nothing.

Really Gillian, I like the sound of the Country you speak of, for sure you can't be talking about the UK though! The health system is terribly inefficient, the work ethic of many is none existent and if you are living in the UK, I suggest you start locking your doors and remove you rose tinted spectacles.

PS with that much money would you trust the NHS with your health? Would you entrust the education of your children to state run schools? Would you feel safe walking the streets at night and would you be happy to leave doors and windows open when your house is not occupied?

Yup, UK! I'm in my mid 50s, lived abroad for the first 10 yrs and have lived in various countries throughout the years. Married to a foreigner for 10 yrs and I really appreciate England. It's always been fashionable to knock the UK and we have a media who like to portray this as a third world country. I've lived in a 3rd country and believe me there ain't no comparison.

The NHS isn't perfect but they don't insist on seeing your insurance documents before re-starting your heart!

However better weather would help!

@Gillian, noted, now here is what I would do well before getting to be worth billions in cash reserves. First off I would become resident in a Country with very low tax, maybe Lichtenstein or Andorra. I would send my kids to the best private school in the world, possibly Eaton. My health care would be private, I would employ the best in the world. I would have homes in many countries, Britain would be one of them. I would employ private security. I would locate my businesses in countries with strong work ethic and low taxes. I would import talent if I could not find it locally.

So that's the plan, I just need to make the money now and that's it, I'm off!

One thing is for sure, if/when I make it I will not be giving huge chunks of my wealth the UK government to distribute and surely that's the point of this ode?

By the way, if anybody in another country has achieved everything I aspire, is reading this comment and needs my talents then I may be available for hire. Please get in touch.

@Maslow - there's a great story written in your name called "The Heirachy of Needs", perhaps you should read it.

My view is that most people who do not work are in fact capable of work. They choose not to because the benefits system is too generous. Migrant workers do the shitty jobs because they don't get benefits, SIMPLES!

Now let me tell you my story. I was born into a working class family. ALL of my relatives were working class and lived in Council Houses. My parents both worked and my grandparents looked after me during the day whilst my parents were working. When I was five years old my parents were the first in their family to purchase a house. Not from the Council but a new build from a developer. They stretched themselves to buy it and they arranged for neighbours to get me to school until I was old enough to be a "latch key kid".

Their work ethic rubbed off on me and by my early teens I was financially self sufficient. I had my own car valleting business and I also earned money as a professional break dancer.

When I was 17 my parents moved from the Midlands to East Anglia to get better jobs. Again they stretched themselves to buy a better house. I followed them.

At the age of 19 I purchased my firt home. By 21 I purchased my first investment property. I retired from corporate life after having built a business which started in my bedroom. I took it to #38 in The Times Profit Track 100. During this time I built my property portfolio and thank goodness I did as my retirement was forced due the the collapse of my business as a result of the credit crunch in 2009.

I have used several; legal tax schemes to reduce my tax, not because I don't have a social conscience because I do. I have raised a lot of money for Charity. I also signed a check to the Inland Revenue for corporation tax for 7 figures for one of my businesses. That very weekend I visited the Midlands and saw how the money would be spent, I was NOT impressed.

Other members of my family stayed in the Council Houses. Decent jobs are hard for them to find as many of the businesses in the area have now moved to other countries where it is more efficient for them to operate, i.e. no minimum wage or high tax regimes. The few jobs left are filled by migrant workers. I have relatives who have never worked and never will, their children have more children whilst they are in their teens to be sure to bring in a bit more money and find themselves accommodation. They consider themselves to be caught in the benefits trap. If there were no benefits they would have to work to feed themselves and may become more motivated to do what I have done. These relatives see me as being rich, some of my school mates are in the same position as them and would much rather run a key down the side of my car than think of getting a job. I'm glad to be out of that environment, my family aspired to get out of it and they did. I aspire to get out of the UK tax system and maybe one day I will achieve that. If not, I'm damn sure my offspring or theirs will.

As I see it, driving production out of the Country and creating an unaffordable welfare nanny state was the wrong thing to do. You spoke about those who fought in the first and second world war, is this what they fought for?

Just one more thing, you say you are a landlord. That means you have worked hard and/or smart to be in a position to own more then one property. We are much the same in that way. Now if you were me, would you give a property to each of your relative who consider themselves to be stuck in the benefits trap?

I'm with you Gillian. We could do a lot worse than living in this country, weather aside, though actually even that isn't too bad. I couldn't tolerate year round sunshine. I work for the NHS (and learned about Maslow's Heirarchy of Needs as part of my basic training) For all its shortcomings, the NHS is there for us when we really need it, and for when the private sector can't cope, such as a really serious cardiac emergency, when the patient is usually blue-lighted straight to the nearest big NHS hospital with a specialist cardiac unit. That's when the insurance companies get cold feet. The food and hotel services in the private sector might be better, but not the experience or expertise of all the medical specialists. A reasonable proportion of medics in the private sector are the ones who couldn't cut it in the NHS, or just want to earn lots of money with less pressure. Not all of course, some of the NHS's best also consult and do routine work in the private sector, but often have to bring their patients over to NHS facilities to access the latest and best equipment, which doesn't come cheap and would seriously eat into the profits if the private sector had to buy their own.
I can't understand the mentality of wanting to avoid paying tax at all costs. Yes if you are not earning enough to make ends meet, or if you are just beginning to turn a profit in business and would like to keep your hands on some of it for a little while, but once you have reached the stage of earning well over £100k, never mind several millions, why on earth would you grudge putting some back into the common kitty, so we can all have roads, services, schools, hospitals, transport etc. It's not as if it will cause you the slightest hardship to do so. How exactly do the people who would like to pay NO tax on their massive incomes expect the world to pan out around them? What is their vision as to how the rest of us would live, since clearly we can't all be multi-millionaires or there would be nobody doing any work. The rich don't miraculously descend from Heaven with their millions and kindly bestow their beneficence on our humble country, bringing us jobs and the means to scrape a humble existence. Most of them make their money by creaming a little bit off the top of the work of many hundreds or thousands of others, which is not in itself a bad thing, except when they start to delude themselves and others that this somehow makes them better than everybody else and worthy recipients of this bounty. Few people can make a LOT of money genuinely from their own talent or efforts alone. I suppose an exception would be the popular singer who makes a penny from every record, but sells so many that he becomes a millionaire. Not so sure about premier footballers- they seem to command massive salaries even though their teams are losing or their clubs are threatened with bankruptcy. Not logical. Likewise chief executives who still get massive bonuses and golden handshakes even when they resign in disgrace.
I'll never be rich, because I can't hand over to other people who might not work to my standards, especially now that there is so much regulation. I'd be held accountable for my agent's shortcomings, so I can only manage so much on my own. I'll just have to keep them ticking over until the market recovers, hopefully before I retire. The only way to make lots of money in property, like most other businesses, is to detach yourself and delegate, let others do the work for you, increase your total holdings so that you can make a smaller profit on each one, but accrue much greater numbers to increase your income. That's mostly how the rich get rich.

@Maslow - don't get me wrong, I like more things in the UK than I despise. What I do not like is inefficiency of the welfare state. I don't like laziness and I especially don't like the negativity in British society towards those who have achieved wealth. Most people strive for four things, health, wealth, happiness and wisdom. Why do some people despise the wealthy then do the lottery every week?

Apologies to Freda and Simon, whose comments I mixed up with each other’s.
Mark, the example of footballers, whilst being an anomaly in that it is far more meritocratic than most of UK society, actually supports your argument better than any other. I believe you are right and that many good footballers would leave the country, as they do now. However, I still maintain that we would be better off without them. OK, the UK would lose some merchandising and viewing income but the harm done by redistributing the wealth from the relatively less wealthy fans to the extremely wealthy players is clearly harmful to society. I have already provided the link to the The Equality Trust but here it is again http://www.equalitytrust.org.uk/research because it is academic research by a UK university showing how more equal societies do better than less equal ones on measures such as drug abuse, teenage pregnancies, violent crime, education, physical and mental health, imprisonment, obesity and social mobility.

We have already seen that the great innovators such as Newton, Pasteur, Einstein and Hawking were not motivated by money so, given the evidence of the Equality Trust, why is it so important to keep high the rich in this country?

Incidentally, I can see why you would need to employ private security to protect you from the desperate poor that unequal societies always have, and the people who want to key your car, but why would you send your kids to private schools? If the UK is such a meritocracy, why would they need an advantage over other kids?

@Tom - I sent my daughter to a private school for two reasons. I did send her to a state school at first because I thought to myself, "I did OK". However, she was getting bullied for having "rich parents". Having sent her to a private school I feel she had a better start in life simply due to the level of attention she got. There were never more than 10 children in her class.

You cannot blame those who rely on the welfare state for it's inefficiency. I find very few people despise the rich, they all want to emulate Jorden, the Ecclestone girls, footballers and WAGs etc. Hence the enormous queues of those with very little talent at every TV reality show audtion.

There are those of us however who despise Govts who kowtow to the mega rich, allowing them all the privileges of living and working in this country while contributing the mimimum amount, arranged by tax avoidance lawyers. They even get away with stamp duty on their Kensington mansions by buying them through offshore companies, Starbucks, Amazon, Philip Green, Bernie Ecclestone, Roman Abramovich - the list is endless.

John Cauldwell, (phones4u multi millionaire) doesn't understand why those who make their money in this country aren't prepared to sacrifice a bit more of their untold riches to ensure the stability of their UK marketplace. He thinks it's worth it. I'm a penny or two behind him (I wish) but I agree.

It's up to the Govt. take a stand on this but it's far easier to batter the poor.