Budget relief
Thursday 23rd April 2009, 3:00PM BST.
RBC's Richard Brooks at a breakfast meeting to discuss implications of UK Budget
JERSEY’S economy has come through yesterday’s UK Budget ‘largely unscathed’, analysts said today.
The Island could even gain from the new harsh tax measures — including a 50% tax on individuals earning more than £150,000 a year, which could drive the wealthy offshore.
Richard Brooks, the head of tax at RBC Wealth Management, said that he had been ‘quite relieved’ after hearing UK Chancellor Alistair Darling’s announcement.
‘I feel that at last, despite all the offshore posturing and people saying that offshore centres were responsible for the global financial meltdown, Jersey has come out pretty unscathed,’ he said. ‘There are only a couple of minor changes that will affect us.’
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“including a 50% tax on individuals earning more than £150,000 a year, which could drive the wealthy offshore”
Hhhmmm, why would that push them offshore…. oh yes! Because that would mean they could avoid paying the tax!
But hang on, aren’t our States members always baning on about how we aren’t a tax haven?
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1. Marx agreed, we are an extremely well regulated, transparent offshore financial center. Some mite even call us a place to avoid tax.
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Apologies for the socialist overtones but I don’t see what the problem is if people earning over £150K pay more tax. It’s not like they will have to sell the car or take less holidays – just a few less zero’s on their bank accounts.
Better that then grind the working man further into the ground, like we do in Jersey.
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Excellent news. I saw the same point about the new budget saving the economies of Luxembourg, Switzerland, Jersey et al in a Times article yesterday too. Brown can’t even get his pet policies right.
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When will these financial experts take their heads out of the sand.
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I hardly think it fair that someone earning 150K + should have to pay such a fierce tax rate, its not like they are going to get anything extra back from the Goverment or need extra support. The high salaray will take care of them and their family, however those “working man” people will at some point require some kind of financial support at some stage of their life.
As far as the “grind the working man” you would be even more burdened by tax if you lived in the UK especially under the communist leader Brown
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What on earth are you reds on about now.
Are you saying it should be illegal to move house
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Do you really think the UK are going to risk losing their wealthy to places like Jersey. I don’t think so. They will clamp down even harder on jersey’s Tax haven, Tax avoidance, money grabbing or whatever you want to call it.
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Marx – if an individual actaully moves to Jersey, then of course he or she should pay Jersey tax, and not UK tax. There is only potentially avoidance or evasion going on if an individual moves his money to Jersey for tax raesons while personally remaining resident in the UK. People can live wherever they want (subject to immigration laws) and pay their tax in the country they move to. If Gordon Brown wants to keep these people in the UK he has to make things attractive for them, both in terms of the tax regime and other aspects of life.
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Why would high earners come here, to live in a bedsit for 12 years and wait for their quallies?
Comment 7 PJG “What on earth are you reds on about now.
Are you saying it should be illegal to move house”
Are you commenting on the same post as everyone else!!
Ben comment 6 – why would the working man require financial support? I’ve worked all my life and never had any.
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The person earning £150K + will not move to jersey for the following reason.They may being paying less tax in Jersey but they will paying more in the following:
1. Housing
2. Electricty
3. Water
4. Phone
They are more like to move to Monaco or Cyprus
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Trev #11 – the cost of living may be higher in Jersey than the average in the UK, but it is not higher than London (where most of the higher earners would be coming from). As someone who has recently made that switch myself – for personal not financial reasons – I know I am better off on a day to day basis here. There are also many other reasons which might cause a UK national to choose Jersey over Cyprus or Monaco. Language, schools, and ease of visiting family and friends back in the UK spring to mind.
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We shouldn’t be rubbing our hands thinking these “financial geniuses” from the city might relocate here for tax reasons. Following New Labour’s decision in 1997 to turn the UK into a cross between a hedge fund and an offshore centre with an “innovative financial services sector” and light touch regulation, it was these “financial geniuses” in the city who helped wreck the UK economy. 23years to pay off the extra debt the government has had to taken on. They should stay in the UK and pay that 50% plus tax as penitance for the damage they have wrought.
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Forgot to add the lack of jobs without 5+ res
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Budget relief = relieving the strain from a group of caged budgies.
A bit like Live Aid, Budgy Aid is coming soon to this Island to help the caged non quals Budgies, and set them free. They will be set free of 12 years quals and soar high above the evil dictorial Jersey Government who have had it good for so long.
Budgy Power!
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I think the UK want them to leave!
And why shouldn’t they come here? are they any different to the doctors/nurses etc that come here for better pay and less tax?
Oh no stop me there, we need those so they are ok but not other people just for tax reasons they won’t cure our sick and help our leading businesses, oh and farm workers yep they are ok cos very few locals want to work a field a 6 in the morning in the wet so they can come, oh and i want to go out for a meal tonight so best let those nice foreign workers work in the restaurants and hotels cos we need them but not those tax dodgers earning over £150k per year!!
What if the £150k was set at £20k in jersey how many would stay then, how many local people would be happy if they had to pay 50% on their earnings, its immoral and no I don’t work in finance and I don’t earn £150k per year but if I did I wouldn’t want to give half of my salary away and I don’t care what you say neither would any of you!
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Come on!!! Gary Bryant and all the others using such absurd logic.
If you earn £150,000 and you lose half of it in tax you will still have £75,000 to live on (quite comfortably, to put it mildly).
If you earn £20,000 and lose even 20% in tax then you would not have more than £16,000 on which to survive. Note my change of lifestyle description from “live” to “survive”.
Please can some of you try to see how those who are considerably less fortunate than yourselves have to struggle. You don’t hear them saying that they can’t see much wrong with how things are so why change. That is the mantra of the comfortably off.
If by chance you are all actually in the poorer bracket I then have to ask you why you feel the need to suck up to the wealthy who may not have got there “through hard work” but by taking advantage of the unqualified support of their serfs.
If you are wondering where I got my “leftie” views from, the answer is simple. They started thanks to some excellent teachers at Hautlieu in the early sixties who taught us to question almost everything “establishment”. I also came down from the ivory towers with a bang when I first left Jersey and joined the real world.
With regard to the rich either going to live in Jersey or deciding to stay in Jersey, how about this for an idea?
Make it only marginally more atractive finacially for the wealthy to live in Jersey rather than the UK.
Then we would see straight away who truly wants to enjoy what the rest of us regard as a unique lifestyle.
Anyone rich who leaves will vacate a high end property which I am sure won’t stay empty for long.
The tax revenue wouldn’t drop that much especially if all high earners pay a
realistic amount.
What the hell if they do go to Monaco or Cyprus?
I can assure you that there will never be a shortage of reasonably wealthy people with better reasons than tax avoidance for wanting to live in the Channel Islands who would gladly settle here if only they had the chance.
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