I’ve worked with the super-rich my whole career. I worked for more than a decade as a lawyer advising high net worth individuals, and many of the people I worked with had assets worth more than £10m.
And now you're writing articles in 'the Guardian'? My, I guess you weren't all that good at it...
Many of the super-rich have ties all over the world, decamping to homes in the south of France in the summer, or their Alpine chalets for ski holidays. Some have constructed more contrived connections to places like Singapore or Bermuda to reduce their tax bills. But regardless of their undeniable worldliness, the super-rich love living in the UK.There is a prestige to owning property in the UK. A bolthole in London allows you to visit the Frieze art fair in Regent’s Park or sit on Centre Court at Wimbledon. On the practical side, many are enticed by how easy it is to set up and conduct business in the UK. Of paramount concern to certain ultra-wealthy families is that the UK offers peace of mind in terms of affording them refuge from those who might otherwise see them as a target for kidnapping in other jurisdictions.
Is it just me, or is there a faint whiff of envy emanating from this article?
This hasn’t stopped the Times from publishing endless doomsday prophecies of a wealth exodus on an epic scale. The endlessly repeated trope is that the ultra-wealthy will flee at the first signs of higher taxes, taking their tax revenue and business investments with them, and having the overall effect of lowering growth. However, recent research by Tax Justice Network, with Patriotic Millionaires and Tax Justice UK, discredited previous, similar claims as vastly overexaggerated.
Ah, I see where we are going now....
We have an economy in which work doesn’t pay – the income of people who work for a living is taxed at higher rates than that of those who earn money from simply having money.
Any normal person would therefore suggest the answer is to reduce the amount of tax on people, but of course, this is the 'Guardian', and so their solution is to rob from the rich.
Before becoming a private wealth lawyer, I hadn’t realised that the way the ultra-wealthy earn their income is quite different from the majority of us. While the average person earns money from their daily work, the ultra-wealthy make eye-watering sums simply from owning assets. They generate wealth from investment funds and rent and sales profits from their property empires.
And do investment fund mean that the money disappears? No, it's invested in other businesses!
I now work with people focused on giving away their wealth.
There's a big need for prople like you? What do you do? Hold their hands as they write a voluntary donation cheque to the Treasury?
They recognise the privileges they have and acknowledge that they have benefited from a tax system that protects their wealth at the expense of ordinary people. Many of them tell me they see their responsibility of paying higher taxes on their wealth as merely practising good citizenship and contributing to the benefits of living in the UK.
Well, nothing to stop them. The Treasury accepts donations, after all. But of course, it's not enough for those motivated by the politics of envy...
The moral and pragmatic case for a wealth tax is clear. Those with the broadest shoulders can and should contribute more.
And if they don't want to do it voluntarily, they must be forced to.
