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Sunday, February 17, 2008

The tax-free rich

...According to the BBC business editor, Robert Peston, the top 50 UK-based billionaires paid just £15 million in tax last year on a combined fortune of £126 billion.
In fact, most accountants say that for the modern rich - the 4000 Britons earning over £1 million a year - taxation has become largely voluntary, as there are so many ways of avoiding it.
The man likely to take over Northern Rock this week, Richard Branson, is a champion in offshore tax farming...
...This impoverishment of the middle classes has been disguised by the boom in house prices which gave people an illusion of wealth, as they were "eating" their houses by equity withdrawal - another name for debt...
... As people find out more about the way banks have been manipulating the system to pay themselves stupendous bonuses, attitudes are hardening. British society is no longer in thrall to wealth. Only this time it's the middle classes, not just the working class, who will be taking to the barricades as their living standards decline...

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