Not too taxing for the rich

The Sunday Times commissioned Grant Thornton, the accountancy firm, to calculate the scale of legal tax avoidance by the country’s wealthiest people.

UK billionaires paid income tax totalling just £14.7million on their £126 BILLION combined fortunes, and only a handful paid any capital gains tax. - and the bulk was paid by just one man , £9m of the £14.7m from James Dyson, the inventor , worth £1,050m

Out of the 54 billionaires in The Sunday Times Rich List , 32 of the individual billionaires or family groupings are calculated not to have paid any personal taxes on their fortunes .

Of the 22 billionaires who paid tax, this was mostly on share dividends paid by their companies. The wealthy usually choose to pay themselves in dividends rather than with a conventional salary — as the tax on dividends is at an effective rate of 25% rather than the 40% higher rate of income tax.

42 of the 54 billionaires make use of havens such as the Channel Islands, Switzerland and the Caribbean . Sir Richard Branson has a complicated series of offshore trusts and companies that own his business empire. Branson, whose wealth is calculated at £3,065m, pays relatively little tax as his wealth is tied up in these companies. Yes , that British patriot for all things British - except British taxes .

The Irish authorities release similar figures, which show that 184 people earning more than £1m last year paid no personal taxes.

The Socialist Party's condemnation of capitalism is not based on the workers being robbed by paying too much tax ( or see here for more detail ) . It is because we are exploited and get robbed at the point of production , to pay those capitalists their share dividends .

But the above is a useful reminder when we hear all that cant from the privileged about the scroungers and the fiddlers that the real culprits on a grand scale are themselves .