The real
#Zahawi
scandal isn't that he failed to pay £3.7m on his £27m, it's that he was only supposed to pay £3.7m. That is a lower tax rate than someone working full time on minimum wage
#TaxTwitter
New
@TheIFS
report out today by
@David_Sturrock
and me, looking at
#inheritancetax
, which has been in the news a bit lately
A short 🧵 on what we find
SPOILER: Inheritance tax is useful, but not for the reason you think…
#taxtwitter
Strange headline
@BBCNews
, which doesn't line up much with the content
A short 🧵 with some notes on errors made in the article, and the evidence on what we do/don't know about
#nondoms
responding to
#tax
reform
#TaxTwitter
2⃣ abolition wd be "wrong thing to do for jobs and prosperity for the UK".
📢The tax benefit for migrants applies ONLY to those who (a) specifically have a load of wealth; (b) DON'T bring that wealth to the UK; (c) promise they intend to leave us📢
Not obv. helping UK jobs
1⃣ The 3.2bn (in £2018) raised from abolishing the regime is *our* (me+
@D_Burgherr
+
@Summers_AD
) number. Labour and others have used it. But it is produced in an academically rigorous way with full receipts.
In fact this whole thing is so bloody frustrating, having to debunk 🧟zombie🧟 arguments for the regime, that I've just posted a quick explainer on the regime, including the case for reform
🚨NEW PAPER ALERT🚨
Importing Inequality: Immigration and the top 1%
Regular media discussion of low-wage migration, and impact (or not) on inequality. But what do we know about migration at the "top"? 🧐
If you follow discussions about
#tax
, here is a myth that you'll have heard: "You can only raise substantial revenue💰 from increasing Income Tax, National Insurance Contribs, or VAT📈"
Like all myths, there is a kernel of truth, but this kernel leads people to false conclusions
1⃣ I feel obliged to remind you all that ND regime is not now, and has never been, about attracting migrants. Remittance basis (inc tax benefit to NDs) was a tax *deferral* scheme from colonial times, til the cotton and sugar came onshore🏝️
And btw, if you want some corrob,
@HMRCgovuk
official figures say that the few who left when regime was prev tightened were the ones paying little tax anyway. So would be interested to hear the
@hmtreasury
challenge to that
Just to add to all this, now seen the
@BBCNews
@BBCwebsite
bit on this.
Say it with me: THE NON-DOM REGIME DISCOURAGES FOREIGNERS FROM BRINGING MONEY ONSHORE. IF THEY DO, THEY WILL BE TAXED ON IT.
If you are a ND, you wd rather do your luxury shopping ANYWHERE but the UK
In fact, we (
@Summers_AD
+
@Feli_Koenig
+
@lorenzo_pss
) explicitly have work looking at how much migrants contrib to UK. Lots of top earning migrants. Coming here to work. Mainly young. Haven't built up the wealth to get much from non-dom regime
Ultimately if you want to encourage these people to come, 🥇policy number 1 has to be expanding visa availability.
Clearly lots of other issues in migration policy, that go beyond economics, but if claim is we want them to come here, have to start by making that poss.
Also, although those of you who made it this far are the least likely to need it, here is a nice video about the regime, revenue from reform, and associated migration effects
⭐️How much revenue would be raised from scrapping non-dom status?
⭐️ And if non-doms had to pay UK tax like everyone else, would they leave?
Check out this explainer of our new findings using HMRC tax data (w
@arunadvaniecon
&
@D_Burgherr
) 👇
Video credit: Jacob Liebenberg
These top people are not mainly ones coming here to invest. They come here to work and earn. And on ave. pay slightly more tax than someone with same income who is UK born
Autumn Statement:
* Inheritance tax cuts likely, Treasury looking at cutting 40% rate to 30% or 20%
* Rates freeze for small businesses, VAT threshold to rise
* BUT benefits squeeze to come
* Fiscal headroom over £20bn, compared to £6.5bn in March
A few months back we released some new stats on who non-doms are and where they are from. We also promised figures on how much
@hmtreasury
would get from abolishing the regime.
🚨Today we release that number: it is 💰£3.2bn💰
A thread🧵
So what should we take from all this?
Use of the remittance basis is a perk that benefits the very wealthiest. At the moment there are no official stats on what it costs us, nor what the benefits are. So we're doing our own work to get some numbers, coming over 2022. 👀
N/N
Is the cut to the 45p rate going to reduce tax avoidance, bring people to the UK, or make people work harder?
You could tell us your answer based on your preconceptions.
Or you could see what the evidence says.
After the work of
@AnnaIsaac
@DanNeidle
@Independent
(and others) bringing to light this individual case, and whether everything owed was paid, time for us to have a deeper discussion of how much tax is actually owed on capital gains.
🎩𝐃𝐢𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐢𝐛𝐮𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧
🔸Benefits wealthiest: 83% goes to top 5%, who have >£1,000,000 at death
🔸They get to pass on £180,000 more after tax
🔸More than 90% get nothing at all, since don't have enough to pay IHT anyway
3⃣ If a government were to abolish the regime, we have showed there would be very little emigration as a result. People would have to respond a lot more than they ever have before, to find something different
This paper is now out. Planned before
@Annaisaac
made
#nondoms
cool again, we use confidential, anonymised HMRC data to look at🧐
🔸who the nondoms are
🔸what they do (incl a look at bankers)
🔸where they are from
🔸where they live
🧵 1/N
🚨New paper out tomorrow, looking at the UKs
#nondoms
. Ahead of that, a quick poll. What share of top earning bankers (>125k income) have benefitted from the non-dom regime?
Very cool to have shared the Young Economist award, and nice that in academia I can still be considered young!
Bonus: two out of three winners are
#vegan
, clearly this is casual
Congratulations to all award winners at
#IIPF2023
congress! 🥳💐
IIPF Peggy and Richard Musgrave Prize:
@ABergeron_econ
IIPF Young Economists Awards:
@arunadvaniecon
William Dodds (Tulane)
Ilona Tsanko (ZEW Mannheim, Uni Zurich)
Hey
#econtwitter
. Tuesday marks the launch of
#DiscoverEconomics
- a new campaign to increase diversity in who studies and works in economics
If you can be in London, come to the launch:
If not, follow
@DiscoverEcon
for updates (and RT to spread the word)
On Tuesday (15 Oct) we will be launching the
#DiscoverEconomics
campaign - a partnership between
@RoyalEconSoc
& leading economics organisations to address the serious lack of diversity in undergraduate economics. Find out more here:
For me,
@warwickecon
has been a great place to do research, and to convert that into real-world impact, for the past 5y.
Fantastic to see this recognised in the
#REF2021
, where we are up to second place!!
Full results from
@REF_2021
here ]
🚨PRE-DOC OPPORTUNITY🚨
If you are
🔸considering a future in
#econ
research, either via a PhD route or other paths (thinktanks, civil service);
🔸interested in studying Qs about the super-rich;
then come work w/me,
@Summers_AD
+ team
#econtwitter
Have to say, my least fav. way to start 'evidence' part of an article is with an interested party. This one starts by citing one tax advisor, who says potential tax changes are first topic of conversatn with his clients. I mean, 🤯? What else would you talk to tax advisor abt??
🚨PRE-DOC OPPORTUNITY🚨
If you are
🔸considering a future in
#econ
research, either via a PhD route or other paths (thinktanks, civil service);
🔸interested in studying Qs about the super-rich;
then come work w/me,
@Summers_AD
+ team
#econtwitter
As am aside, wd *love* to see the analysis on this one. Understanding any HMT method for impact on UK ecy wd help w/a paper I'm writing
Am pretty skeptical they've done any analysis, if haven't got a fig for what ND abolition raises. Latter is input to former in our approach.
Mega trend that has been totally missed: IHT revenue is going to grow A LOT in the coming years. More ppl who will die in next 10y will have high levels of wealth than those in past 10y. Tax revenue from IHT is set to *double*
(see appendix for details of comparison to
@OBR_UK
)
So how much have we been using that power to study race? Not a lot.
The share of race related work in
#econ
is half that in
#PolSci
and one sixth that in
#sociology
3/
Lots of kite flying 🪁 ahead of tomorrow's budget💰
Thought I'd pick up on the one about starting the 45p rate at 125k. This will raise a little money from richer people, but if it doesn't sit alongside some more substantive reform it will be a missed opportunity
🧵
Today we published the final report of the Wealth Tax Commission, investigting "whether a
#wealthtax
for the UK would be desirable and deliverable"
#econtwitter
#taxtwitter
🚨PRE-DOC OPPORTUNITY🚨
If you are
🔸considering a future in
#econ
research, either via a PhD route or other paths (thinktanks, civil service);
🔸interested in studying Qs about the super-rich;
then come work w/me,
@Summers_AD
+ team
@econ_RA
@predoc_org
And this is not that unusual. We showed a couple of years ago that "One in ten people taking home >£1m paid a lower effective tax rate than someone earning just £15k, rising to one in four of those taking home £5-10 million."
📢We're hiring!
If you are:
🔸considering a future in
#econ
research, either via a PhD route or other paths (thinktanks, civil service); 🔸interested in studying Qs about the super-rich; then come work w/me+team
#econtwitter
@econ_ra
@predoc_org
🚨 Exciting opportunity alert!
We're looking for a Research Assistant in Tax Analysis to join our vibrant team at the III!
⏰ Deadline: 21/01/24
👇 Apply today and be a part of groundbreaking research!
Nadhim Zahawi’s "careless" error is raising pressure on Conservatives—and sparking questions about how the UK’s wealthy are taxed
Economist
@arunadvaniecon
speaks to
@daviddmmerritt
on the In the CIty podcast
🎧 Listen in full:
So removal is actually really costly. Like “adding 2p to VAT or to Income Tax rates” costly. Doesn’t mean you can’t justify it. Just means we need honesty about the trade-off.
"Would hit" in that they would start having to pay the same as everyone else. Any tax change will "hit" someone. Getting rid of parts of current regime that create inefficiency and unfairness, while raising revenue, is a good thing. See OTS report on CGT
Worth pointing out that *if* you abolish, half the benefit goes to top 1% by wealth (wealth >£2.1m), who get an average of more than £1m each
83% of the money goes to ppl with more than 1m.
To try to correct this misperception, I've put together a little webapp that let's you set your target FiSCaL BLaCkHoLe (TM) and then select combinations of tax rises, to get some context
A thought for journalists asking politicians about non-doms
If they are going to defend non-dom status as something that is important for the ec'y & which they think must be preserved in tax sys, can you see if they can at least equalise the treatment btwn mothers and fathers??
My big takeaways from all this.
1. IHT isn’t income tax or VAT, but it raises a non-trivial amount+under status quo is growing fast.
2. growth makes it even more imptnt we get design right. We haven’t yet.
3. without radical changes, impact of IHT on social mobility will be small
Can you afford to buy and hold lots of AIM (alternative investment market) shares? You can pass that on tax free as well! 💷
And bonus, any capital gains are also wiped out. 💷💷
Spot on from
@TheEconomist
:
Public services have never been topped back up since cuts starting in 2010. If we want growth (+nice place to live!), can't cut investments in people - health, education, social support - or infrastructure. Need to look at
#tax
The
@WorldBank
Dev Impact blog is the best resource on the net for keeping up with the latest happenings in development econ.
Even if you aren't interested in development (why??), they provide the *best* summary of the latest happenings in metrics methods
#econtwitter
@arunadvaniecon
They are updated through august 2020 - go to the main development impact blog page and they will be there. We will update again this summer to cover the past year:
In context of current speculation about whether
#benefits
and
#pensions
will be uprated in line with inflation, your reminder that we:
1. couldn't afford last year's request for £20 pw uplift on
#UC
, costing £6bn
2. can afford 45p rate cut, which brought in almost £6bn last year
Congratulations to IFS Fellows
@arunadvaniecon
and
@CECrawford16
for their appointment to
@educationgovuk
’s new skills and productivity board.
The team will provide independent expert advice on the changing skills needed for a post-COVID economy.
Big pic, they:
- create inefficiency: someone holding shares they think aren’t great anymore, just bcos better than losing tax break
- create inequalities: ppl with same wealth have diff tax, depending on what assets. And benefits tend to go to richest
- cost a lot of cash
Although lots of the speculation lately has been around abolition, there are other ways to reform. One objection with IHT in its current form is that the rich don’t pay. Remember that graph of who pays – it goes *down* at the top.
Can also see that here:
A reminder as we get closer to
#Budget2023
that there is a lot of money to be raised from fixing the taxation of capital gains (and income from wealth generally). Without this, end up with very low rates for some people with very high incomes
The real
#Zahawi
scandal isn't that he failed to pay £3.7m on his £27m, it's that he was only supposed to pay £3.7m. That is a lower tax rate than someone working full time on minimum wage
#TaxTwitter
My twitter is usually strictly professional. I'm taking a break from that for today to say:
▶️don't be too hard on yourself.
▶️look after yourself.
▶️when you are struggling, talk to someone else who can help - they exist.
#MentalHealthAwarenessWeek
Lots of valuable reflection on
#EconTwitter
lately on how (& how much) economists talk about issues of race. With
@ellliottt
, DavidCai+
@ImranRasul3
we're looking at this in published research. But we also want to know what you think.
📢Take our survey📢
Do you have a defined contribution pension pot? That’s also tax free to pass on! 💷
And bonus, if you are under 75, no-one ever pays any income tax on this either! 💷💷
New official stats on
#nondoms
from
@HMRCgovuk
this morning
Standout for me is that the drop in tax from non-doms bcos of 2017 refom, is more than offset by addit tax paid by those people who are now deemed dom i.e. they didn't momstly leave, just change status
Then this famous graph based on the drop in the number of non-doms
My excellent colleague
@D_Burgherr
has said everything that needs to be said about this already.
This figure shows the drop in number of non-doms in official HMRC stats. The article claims the “UK loses half its non-dom taxpayers since 2015”.
This is misleading.
(Sidenote: the numbers used here include non-resident non-doms who, by definition, don’t live in the UK.)
2/8
Tomorrow I start a new job as headteacher of
#homeschool
. I know lots of
#EconTwitter
is ahead of me on this. For those that have started already, what are your top tips/what have you learned about making it work (for them and you)?
For ref, mine are both preschool age.
Worse: *we don't know this*.
Econs are waaay too optimistic on how much we study these questions. I mean, we're optimistic across all disciplines, but we're least well informed about our own profession: >90% overestimate
4/
The numbers here are extraordinary.
Migrants responsible for 14 percentage points of the 15% increase in income share of the top 1%
1/
via
@financialtimes
Apropos of nothing, healthcare employs lots of people, has substantial shortages at the moment, and is projected to have the highest future shortages of any sector
Given the coming NHS workforce plan, I imagine a fairly obvious plan will be to ⬆️pay?
Oh, and a quick bonus for anyone making it this far. If threshold falls to 45p, interaction with personal allowance withdrawal will give a 65% marginal rate (before considering NICs) from 125k to 125,140
@DanNeidle
will presumably make us all a nice python chart if it happens.
3⃣ The tax system is riddled with problems which are crying out to be fixed, and which would raise a lot of money alongside being good for growth and reducing avoidance. CGT is top of my list there.
Delighted that my
@DiscoverEcon
co-chair has been awarded OBE for svcs to
#economics
.
A fantastic economist + at the forefront of tackling representation issues in econ, leading
@RoyalEconSoc
women's cttee for years, before more recently setting up
@DiscoverEcon
w/me
We are very proud of our Sarahs! 🙌
Pro Vice-Chancellor Prof Sarah Purdy and economist Prof Sarah Smith have each been awarded an
#OBE
in the
#QueensBirthdayHonours
👑
These awards recognise the outstanding achievements of people across the UK 👏
👀👉
But they don't all have to leave. Even if a few do, we'd lose all the tax from them. That might still make it not worth it.
So we take this into a/c in our calcs. As it happens, most of those who leave were the ones paying the least tax
In terms of cash, IHT will raise about 7bn this year. That isn’t huge. But, if again, if you want to abolish it, you need to think about where you raise that money, or what spending you aren’t going to do.
Someone somewhere will pay for abolition, and the question is who.
Great to (a) have our research cited
@CommonsTreasury
, and (b) to hear that
@Jeremy_Hunt
is asking
@hmtreasury
to look into what could be raised from
#nondom
reform. Am hoping this research + method will be published in full
And this is not that unusual. We showed a couple of years ago that "One in ten people taking home >£1m paid a lower effective tax rate than someone earning just £15k, rising to one in four of those taking home £5-10 million."
Great to have our *pre-doc*
@D_Burgherr
presenting his solo work at
#ZEW
conference. He is outstanding. PhD programmes should look out for his application later this year
With Esther Duflo being the only second woman to win the
#EconNobel
,
@DiscoverEcon
is trying to expand the pipeline so that there is more diversity in economics from school students to Nobel prizewinners
#DiscoverEconomics
Next Wed the launch of the Final Report of the UK Wealth Tax Commission, our view on whether a wealth tax for the UK would be desirable and deliverable.
Sign up here:
This shows share of ppl with >500k in wealth who can make full use of the extra relief for housing. Getting on for half of ppl w/that wealth in Wales, NE Eng and Scot don’t fully use it
🇬🇧𝐋𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐥𝐥𝐢𝐧𝐠 𝐮𝐩
🔸One in six benefit in London, twice national ave, 8x benefit to NE
🔸Benefits largely in 'home counties' seats, which voted Conservative in 2019
🔸Labour-supporting seats in the North and West of London, and in Edinburgh, would also benefit
Very happy to have been nominated by
@CityAM
, and even happier to have had the chance to talk to so many people about the
#DiscoverEcon
campaign. Lots of work to do, but we're energised and we're going to do it.
This week's
#WERDWednesday
from
@YaleRISE
inaugural conference.
Development economists have found a number of policy interventions that can help improve the lives of the poor. How can we
#scale
these up, and what challenges does this bring?
#WhatEconomistsReallyDo
Labour are the party of economic credibility.
We will abolish non-doms status, and use that money to pay for our NHS workforce expansion, and our pledge on Breakfast Clubs.
It’s the fair and fiscally responsible thing to do.
Thanks to
@BloombergUK
for having me on.
As I said in the interview, I think the real story should be the fact that all NZ was *meant* to pay on the 27m he received was 3.7m: an effective average tax rate of 13.7%, similar to someone full time on min wage.
Nadhim Zahawi’s "careless" error is raising pressure on Conservatives—and sparking questions about how the UK’s wealthy are taxed
Economist
@arunadvaniecon
speaks to
@daviddmmerritt
on the In the CIty podcast
🎧 Listen in full:
3. Graph shows nondom claims, not whether ppl leave. Fall is bcos ppl stop claiming, but largely stay.
Credit where due,
@JoshuaNevett
*doesn't* say ppl left. But how does the graph help then? is only going to mislead given title
We find that around 10% of non-doms affected by the 2017-18 reform leave the UK.
But, crucially, the emigration rate of long-staying non-doms not affected by the reform is also 10%!
This suggests that the tax reform did not increase outmigration.
4/8
Important story here in continued presence of dirty money in UK💰
Scary thing is this really is tip of iceberg stuff. As we'll show in work coming out tomorrow👀, the register is still full of gaps, and will continue to be unless lords amendments to econ crime bill are accepted
The children of notorious autocratic rulers and their allies have been revealed as the ultimate owners of UK property worth hundreds of millions of pounds held through offshore companies, according to Times analysis of the new overseas property register.
#Nondoms
is a tricky area, so easy to get reporting wrong.
But
@Telegraph
isn't even trying here. They reproduce
@HMRCgovuk
's figure, but cut off the last year of the red line because it wouldn't be consistent with the story