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The millionaires who want to pay more tax
Stefanie Marsh, Times Online
Let’s try to imagine, against the odds, that this is a story set in Britain: a group of wealthy heirs, industrialists and entrepreneurs, men and women who are rich enough not to work, who have enough money, property or dividends to allow them to live comfortably for the rest of their lives, decide instead to give their money away.

They decide to do this not out of guilt but because they believe that their wealth carries with it responsibility and because they are seriously worried about the widening gap between rich and poor that they see opening up before them in the society in which they live. They want to give their money away, but they do not want to do so in occasional fits of philanthropy, or through endowments, or via the series of charity bashes that has always formed the backbone of the wealthy person’s social calendar, but quite systematically — by publicly campaigning to pay more tax.

Taxation, in their opinion, is unfairly skewed in their favour, that is to say, in the favour of the rich. And this, they claim, creates distortions. It means there are fewer funds reaching those who need them most, in schools, in hospitals, in social housing, which in turn creates a more unstable society. Indeed, it is precisely because they are not paying more tax that this group of wealthy individuals feel implicated in the broken society that they see forming around them.

Could it happen in Britain? One very much doubts it...
(9 Dec 2009)

This tax on the City is a bonus
Will Hutton, the Guardian
For decades British governments have been giving tax breaks to the City while the rest of business has got little or nothing – an industrial policy for financial services but largely unalloyed market forces for everyone else. New Labour continued the tradition – until now. The pre-budget report is a symbolic moment. Bank bonuses are singled out for a one-off 50% payroll tax while companies that generate real wealth by inventing new patents will pay only 10% corporation tax on any profits.

Nor is that where the new bias against casino capitalism and in favour of productive business stops. The chancellor is now pressuring the banks and investment banks to come up with £500m for a capital growth fund – and rolling over another £500m of the enterprise finance guarantees. The City is being reminded that its vocation is financing business innovation and investment – and not paying large bonuses for the economically and socially useless activity of being a nano-second faster than someone else to buy or sell a pre-existing financial gambling chip.

The pity is that it has taken so long – and even these moves are tremulous and small scale. The short-lived bonus tax is a five-month wonder which will have expired by next April unless it is extended, and the government has eschewed any wider reconstruction and reform of the City. It is a sign of the financial community's sense of power, entitlement and detachment from reality that even so many of its spokesmen and women feel able to threaten that there now may be an exodus of financial services executives. They talk of the City being a national asset and a success story; of having to pay football star salaries of necessity; and that any insistence that the banks accept that they have obligations as well as rights to bailouts will be met by an exodus of talented staff to other countries...
(9 Dec 2009)

Tax rebate plan for 'green' drivers and homeowners
Andrew Grice, the Independent
Tax rebates for people who "go green" by installing solar panels or wind turbines on their homes or swapping their company car for an electric vehicle will be announced by Alistair Darling tomorrow.

Although his pre-Budget report will include few giveaways as he promises to rein in a £180bn budget deficit this year, The Independent has learnt that the Chancellor will give householders and drivers a financial incentive to play their part in saving the planet.

At present, people who sell electricity to the National Grid are taxed on the income. In future, it will be exempt from tax. A householder on basic rate tax selling £900 of electricity to the grid from April would receive the full amount, instead of £720 as at present...
(8 Dec 2009)