Actually, the rich pay lots of tax. But on income, not their wealth | Patrick Collinson

Rather than cut income tax, the government would do better to tax the country’s real wealth

We know that giant multinationals are engaged in industrial-scale tax avoidance. We know from the Panama and Paradise papers how some individuals will use every offshore trick to dodge taxes. We know that billionaires flock to Monaco to hide from any responsibility to their fellow citizens back home. But let’s not deceive ourselves about who is paying which taxes and who isn’t.

HM Revenue & Customs this week published an analysis of the income tax paid in the UK by salary band, region and gender. In total we paid £174bn income tax in 2016-17, the latest year for which figures are available. But of that, £52.5bn – nearly a third of all tax raised – was paid by the 381,000 taxpayers who earn more than £150,000 a year. The tax paid by those 381,000 individuals (overwhelmingly male) was more than all the income tax paid by the first 20 million taxpayers.

Continue reading...

from Property | The Guardian https://ift.tt/2Jb69cK
via IFTTT