I had no intention of insulting you and nor would I

as you have been good enough to make a sensible contribution.
Apologies for not remembering you - you have reminded me now.
I don’t find Gary Stevenson remotely credible and this is not because of his clear extreme left wing views.
He simply doesn’t understand taxation - you only need to watch the clip of him with Daniel Priestley to see how poor a grasp of taxation he has.
He gets his arse handed to him on a plate in that interview.
How can you take him seriously when he is preaching about taxation when he has a very poor understanding of the subject? (In the Priestley interview he cannot understand how income tax differs from trust taxation or capital gains taxation).
He is also not particularly reliable in telling the truth - his ‘top trader’ claim has been shot down by several former colleagues at Citibank.
I am vaguely aware of Zucman but my line of employment does not require a total understanding of all proposals made by economists - I will actually make an effort to read up on this.
I think the biggest issue I have with wealth taxes is they are generally driven by the politics of envy and resentment.
They might be dressed up as altruism but in virtually every case they are driven by an envy or resentment of somebody else.
If somebody has worked hard and paid a fortune in tax to get where they are, rewarding them with annual wealth taxes does not encourage the next man to try and copy them.
And where do you stop? Start at those with £1bn but they will all be mobile enough to go somewhere more favourable.
Where do you then target these taxes?
I’m sorry but we won’t ever agree on this.

Posted By: JoeyDeacon, Jun 24, 14:52:10