Britain Has More Billionaires Per Capita Than Any Other Country

This sounds like remarkably good news, that the Old Country has more #billionaires per capita of the population than any other country. It must mean that the folks at home are managing to do something right. Sadly, that something isn’t creating the world’s most dynamic economy which then produces more billionaires than anywhere else. Nor, thankfully, is it that Britain is the sort of plutocracy where the multitudes have nothing but scraps while the billionaires swim in their pools of currency, a la Scrooge McDuck. No, rather it’s because the place is a beacon of civilised society, and a place with reasonable tax laws to boot. The #UK has thus become the destination of choice for those who have been able to make their money in rougher climes.

Of course, The Guardian isn’t happy about all this:

The super-rich want to live in Britain because of “culture, financial services, nice tax regime, good education for their kids and a nice lifestyle where they meet their friends”, Philip Beresford, the study’s author, told the BBC. London has more billionaires than any other city in the world with 72 – far ahead of its nearest rival, Moscow, which has 48.

Quite: and a country that can offer those things is likely to be a pretty good place for everyone else to live in too. But this being a Guardian report there must be something wrong with the situation:

Many of the list’s members pay little or no income tax because they are not domiciled here.

Which leads us into a little diversion around the British tax system. People do not pay or not pay income tax because of their domicile, the situation is more complex than that. We have two points that determine whether tax is payable in the UK, residence and domicile. If you are resident in the UK then you pay UK income tax on income arising in the UK. This is as it should be, if you live in a country then it seems logical enough that you contribute to the costs of running that country from the money you earn there. If you are UK domiciled and also UK resident then you pay UK income tax on your worldwide income, minus any amount that you might have got stung for elsewhere. The quartet of possibilities repeats itself on the other side as well. If you are UK domiciled but non-resident (say, born and bred in the UK but working or living somewhere else) then certain of your UK income is UK taxable but everything else is taxable in wherever it is that you are resident. However, if you are UK resident but non-domiciled then it is only your UK income which is UK taxable. If you have foreign income, income which you do not then bring into the UK, then that is free of UK tax.

And if we’re honest that seems like a very fair tax system. It’s difficult to see why the UK taxman should have a claim on the income of a foreigner, who earns it in a foreign country, and it stays outside the UK in foreign places. Just like it is difficult to see why the UK should have a claim on the income of a Briton who does not live there.

Yes, I’m aware that the US does it differently but it is only the US that does it in that different manner, taxing all US citizens wherever they live.

That little diversion through the details aside, the fact that so many foreigners wish to come and live in Britain is rather an advertisement for the place to my mind. There must be something to it if so many people who could live absolutely anywhere at all decide they want to be there, don’t you think?
Source: Forbes News