Quote:
The British government introduced a higher tax rate on the rich in 2010, promising that it would bring in added revenue. But, as any sensible person could have guessed, just the opposite has happened.
Gordon Brown's Labour Party government launched the 50% rate in income taxes allegedly as a means to bring in more revenue.
The London Telegraph reported earlier this year that Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs estimated the British version of the Buffett Tax would "show a 'surge' in revenues totaling hundreds of millions of pounds from the first year."
The "surge" wasn't even a trickle. In fact, there was actually a reversal. Collections fell by $800 million compared to income tax payments a year earlier.
As Francesca Lagerberg, head of tax at the accounting firm Grant Thornton, told the Telegraph this week, the apparently unexpected outcome "highlights the fact that high tax rates don't always deliver high tax revenues."
But shouldn't they? Yes, if nothing else changes. But things change. They always do.
As government sources explained to the Telegraph, the lower revenue is the result of "well-off Britons" changing their behavior so they could "avoid the new higher rate."
Despite the inverted results and the obvious problems they will cause, the British left is insisting that the rate remain in place. Why? Because, the Telegraph reports, the left believes that "it is important to demonstrate that the rich are paying their fair share."
The jealous urge to punish the rich and to enforce a subjective fairness that blinds lawmakers in Britain is the same disorder afflicting politics in this country.