It's the non-doms, Darling

Just occasionally, you read things in the newspapers that surprise you. For example, these figures in The Independent:

The furore over non-doms has highlighted an issue in fiscal policy as old as the hills, which is the extreme difficulty of taxing the super-rich in any meaningful way without having the opposite effect to the one intended and making the public purse poorer, rather than richer.
A few figures neatly illustrate the nature of the problem. Back in 1978, with still ruinously high marginal rates of tax for those on high incomes, the top 1 per cent of earners paid 11 per cent of the total income-tax take, and the top 10 per cent some 35 per cent.
With much lower rates of tax for high earners, these figures had by 2001/2 dramatically changed. The top 1 per cent of income earners were paying 23 per cent of total income tax, with the top 10 per cent accounting for more than half. These proportions will almost certainly have grown further since then.

I find these figures hard to believe, but I have no way of disproving them. My own inclination is to squeeze the greedy bastards until the pips squeak - so it's probably just as well that I'm not the Chancellor of the Exchequer.


Btw, and not for the first time, poor old Alistair seems to be making a right horlicks of it. But what can you expect from someone who went to Loretto?