Wolf news

From the BBC:

Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a number of species disappeared from the Swiss Alps: the brown bear, the lynx and the wolf. The high mountain environment, so often regarded as pure and untouched, had been ravaged by one particular predator - humans.

Now all three species are back. The bears and the wolves returned naturally*, the lynx has been successfully reintroduced. But the dream of people and animals living harmoniously side by side has turned, for some alpine farming communities, into a bit of a nightmare.

No shit, Sherlock. Our ancestors had good reasons for wiping out wolves, it wasn't just a whim...

Just this month a sheep farmer close to the Swiss capital Bern woke to find seven of his 35 sheep dead, their throats ripped out by a wolf that had apparently jumped over the electric fence designed to protect the flock.

And inevitably...

Farmers are increasingly impatient. Last year they called a referendum demanding the law be changed to make it easier to hunt and kill problematic wolves. Swiss voters, most of whom live in cities, said no.

The French on the other hand seem to be taking a more robust approach. From The Daily Mail:

A zoo in southern France has been closed down temporarily by local authorities after a pack of wolves escaped from their enclosure and roamed around the site during visiting hours.

A total of nine wolves escaped from their enclosure last weekend at Trois Vallées Zoo in Montredon-Labessonnie, roughly 60 miles east of Toulouse. Four wolves were shot dead due to 'dangerous behaviour', before the five remaining animals were anaesthetised and returned to their enclosures by local officials who were called to the scene.

* The article says that wolves came up from Italy. Wiki says it has been strictly protected in Italy since the 1970s, so this is on them. The bears seem to have come from the east, via Austria.

Is the UK going to stay in the EU?

Yes. Regardless of whether there is a Yes or a No vote (or Cameron bottles it and claims enough of a victory with his renegotiation).

Okay so, admittedly Douglas Carswell has a great sci fi vision vision of a beefed up Singapore and at least he's honest on migration:

“Our grandparents’ generation had to get to grips with the idea of importing strawberries from Spain and mangetout from Kenya. Today we live in a world where labour mobility is inevitable, and unless you want to become like North Korea you need to accept it. You can no more ban labour mobility than food imports.”

And diet Trump (Nigel Farage, obvs) has a slightly more scary vision of a little England (and to a Scot it sounds very England centric, odd that to a Scot he seems to want his own mini EU) that restricts migration and withdraws from the common market to regain control of "sovereignty". I get that there are people left behind by globalisation. I just don't have a lot of sympathy. Across my facebook these seem to be mostly the idiots who dicked around and thought that leaving School in the 90s at 16 and going to work in the box folding factory was a job for life. Under the UKIP migration plan the UK population would shrink by hundreds of thousands of people a year. And a falling population would mean a downsized economy. Which will probably bite all the UKIP voting pensioners who didn't save for their retirement (and sure as buggery didn't pay tax for things like free bus passes and TV tax exemption but somehow this is fairer than not forcing kids into brain mortgages). 

And of course Corbyn was quite anti EU until recently. I would imagine a Leftxit would involve a lot of doomed industrial activism and rapid nationalisations and probably some sort of nightmarish. beardy, geography teacher looking revolutionary guard. 

And while all that sounds great, if you are pitching something to Netflix to take on Amzon's the Man in the High Castle, it's probably not what is actually going to happen. Or at least not what is actually contingency planned to happen. 

The most likely outcomes are; 

1. Can we be Switzerland?

2. No? Okay we'll be Turkey then. 

Switzerland first. Switzerland is a Schengen signatory and accepts free movement (though they have some restrictions on new entrants). Switzerland signs up to almost all EU law, and pays almost as much into the EU as the UK does. Being outside the EU it can choose not to apply EU regulations but in practical terms, i.e. because it would lose access to the EU market in those areas, it has have never actually done this. The big disadvantages here are no voice in EU decision-making and no access to the EU's international trade deals.

Turkey next. Turkey has a customs union with the EU. It neither benefits from nor offers free movement to the EU, and doesn’t need to apply all EU law. However, it doesn’t get access to the single market or EU global trade but is still forced to open its market to everyone the EU strikes a deal with. 

The idea that the UK is going to become some isolationist bastion in the Atlantic and somehow ignore the huge trading block 20 miles as the celeb swims off the south east coast is just delusional madness. 

So Turkey or Switzerland (Switzerland is proxying for the whole EFTA). For me, Switzerland is the most likely outcome of a no vote but it is also the version that will feel identical to a Yes. 

Life outside the EU

1. I am not dead.

2. Point of disclosure I live in Switzerland (if the UK wants to bum rape slum kids made good to pay for Essex millionaire grannies it can do so without my triple mortgaged brain footing it. Interesting legal point for another day, if born into society have you "accepted" to abide by the law or is it foisted on you?).

3. I am not really anti Europe. And if you stopped reading here then I will take comfort in fact that you have probably gone off to rot your brain with corporate welfare pleadings dressed up as news in the Telegraph.

But enough of that. As you may know Switzerland is not in the EU. It is in another odd little club with Norway, Iceland and the only German speaking country to not border Germany, Liechtenstein, called the EFTA (European Free Trade Association). If you were going to say EEA, then make a dunce hat and wear it. WEAR IT I SAID!. Fun fact: the UK used to be a member of this too, from about 1960 to 1973 but decided more cash could be made from the EEC).

For the people who cry "but Britain would be something circa Mad Max Fury Road" (really awesome film but terrible place to live) Switzerland, and to be fair the other members of the EFTA, present something of a problem.

First off, some quick background. Switzerland is only about twice the size of Wales, fairly mountainous and with a population of about 8 million. It has 4 (well 4 and a half) languages of which German is the most prevalent, followed by French, then the Italian speaking canton of Ticino and lastly a few bits of Graubünden where Romansh is still in use. (the half is English because it is basically the default for forrins too dumb to learn German).

Swiss unemployment hovers around the 3-4% mark with half of that broadly acknowledged to be people with serious conditions like non functioning alcoholism or drug dependency who are never really going to hold down a job anyway.

The median household income is in the region of £50,000. The average in Germany, the richest country in Europe is about £30,000.

The biggest export partners for Switzerland are Germany (about 20%) and the US (about 10%) and like most small European countries (looking at you Sweden, Netherlands and Lux) it has a very active and approachable diplomatic service that is quick to assist and support domestic businesses in their foreign adventures.

Much to the almost constant ire of the US, Switzerland point blank refuses to criminalise people who download copyrighted material and has successfully resisted various barbed demands over the years to change this policy. Make of that what you will in the "But how can we stand up to the US" arguments, apparently all it takes is a spine. (though if you post copyrighted material expect a serious bill in the post with a fairly blunt but polite note).

While the apparently still shooty UK can press its military reserves if really needed for a combined weight of about 250,000 personnel, thanks to a history of giving every teenager an assault rifle and pointing them at the nearest border the Swiss can mobilise almost 3 million troops surprisingly quickly. Almost every Monday morning my commute is met by a dozen or so late teens/early twenties boys with huge kit bags and aforementioned assault rifles slung around their persons. My neighbour explained that if you are issued with a gun you need to keep 50 rounds of ammunition with it just in case for example France decides it wants to have a go. the 50 rounds are to get you to your barracks where you "tool up". He then pulled out something that looked like it was the prototype for the blunderbus, but in fairness he is bluddy ancient, and waved it around until his tiny wife called him an idiot.

It should also be borne in mind that Switzerland (along with Iceland and Liechtenstein) is not oil or particularly mineral rich so has no easy money (like the slovenly Norwegians who really have caught the resource curse) to smooth the road and so must rely almost entirely on international trade for its wealth.

All in all therefore life outside the EU is pretty decent, even when you are literally surrounded by the EU.

Except, it's not the whole story. The really odd thing is that the rabid, EU can do no wrong loons, would love the UK to look like Switzerland while those in UKIP's core vote who have that whole "let's go back to the 50s, I like my food boiled and boiled some more and was rampant racism all that bad" would absolutely hate it.

The Swiss rejected the EU in the early 90s and the economy did suffer growth was certainly slow but the country did not become an economic waste land by any means. One of the biggest grudges attributed to that decision was the fact that Swiss Air got gobbled up by the rampant monster Lufthansa (which now has its own legacy problems, so go figure).

The Swiss therefore did what any sensible European country outside the EU would do (hint) and that was to spend 4 years arguing about association agreements. the upshot of this is that Switzerland today has borders which are more open with the EU, than the EU member UK has. i.e. I don't have to go through stupid passport control when I fly to the Netherlands for business or Austria for a cheap McD's (since I can throw a stone from Sumo HQ) but to go back to the UK I need to add an hour onto my journey time to stand in a boxy room and be stared at by a bored guy who we all know failed police school who doesn't even record the entry and exit.

I do need a work permit, but because I am an EU citizen I can hang around for 3 months looking for work and if I apply for a permit I am guaranteed to get it. No quotas (well there has been a referendum so circle back in 18 months, generally west of Vienna = okay). I also have access to the Swiss benefit system which, unlike the complex "throw various packets of cash at everyone unless they have a beard and then bitch like a child who had to share the toys they weren't using" UK system, is simple and sensible. If you work for (I think) 18 months then you are eligible for benefits if you become suddenly unemployed. This stops people turning up and demanding benefits. This stops teens living on the dole post school and this stops any argument about discrimination since everyone has to meet the same standard. As it is very easy to hire and fire that unemployment has to kick in quick and because nobody wants to piss around with lots of benefits, the unemployment benefit is just 80% of your salary from the year before you were canned.

It's a nifty trick because by not handing out things like housing benefit nobody is getting a private landlord to give them a house and no bank is giving a mortgage, meanwhile if you were employed you can still pay your rent but that 20% will be biting.

While the Swiss legal system is quite open, business friendly and pretty much WYSIWYG, many things, such as Art.253b of the Swiss code of obligations gleefully slap rent controls into an otherwise quite free market economy.

So there we have a quick over view from outside the EU, nowhere near a disaster zone, in fact, in comparison to much of the EU, things "actually work" however the UK would be starting from a very different position and would certainly need to endure some initial pain as it found its feet and got its house in order. It very unlikely that the UK would cut all ties to the EU and that pretty much means that free movement of people is never going to go away.

Tee hee. And give that man a pat on the back.

From the FT 9 October 2010:

Sir, The FT report on hedge fund managers moving to Switzerland (“Hedge fund shift costs UK £500m”, October 2) gives the impression that there will soon be a glut of empty offices in Mayfair and the City of London as hedge fund managers stampede to move to Switzerland.

In reality, this is not the case.

Frstly, immigration requirements in Switzerland are complex and not everyone from London will be eligible to work there. Secondly, for the principals of the business, relocating to a new country will be fraught with family and domestic considerations notably spousal consent, continuation of schooling arrangements for children, etc. Thirdly... the actual rate of tax savings on attributable non-Swiss earnings, on a marginal basis, is unlikely to be more than about 15 per cent [etc]

Joe Seet, Senior Partner, Sigma Partnership, London EC3.

From the FT, 12 July 2015:

Brevan Howard is moving some of its most senior traders back to London from Geneva, reversing a high-profile decision by the $27bn hedge fund to leave the UK and bucking concerns that the City’s status as Europe’s leading hub for the industry was under threat.

The decision comes as a number of other large hedge funds are also planning to expand or launch in the British capital, in a sign that international investors continue to gravitate to London.

Hedge fund managers and investors argue that low tax rates have failed to win over traders to the merits of life in Switzerland, with many leaving their families behind in London.

Rent Controls abroad (well if everyone else is throwing their hats into the ring)

The Swiss have a civil code legal system rather than a common law legal system (unsurprisingly). Broadly what this means is they look up their gigantic book of obligations or other area of law and apply what that says. In England and Wales you look up what Judges have said about the vague witterings of parliament and in Scotland you look up what Judges decided to do on that particular day and try to figure out if your judge will be subject to the same whim. 

As regards unfair Rents, Switzerland tacks this onto the end of the general obligations in relation to leases. I am not sure why just transplanting something like this to the UK would not work. 

OK, forget Land Value Tax, Swiss "lump sum" taxation is the way forward.

For some reason we can't fathom, a lot of people go mental when you suggest raising revenue from the rental value of land rather than earned income, they always wail on about "hard working, hard pressed home owners being clobbered" etc.

There is a clever way of collecting LVT, which is what most Swiss cantons do with wealthy non-domiciles, aka lump sum taxation. What they do is take the rental value of the home you live in, times it by five and treat that as your total income for income tax purposes, you don't need to declare any of your actual income, you just pay tax on the notional amount.

Clearly, common sense tells us that the highest amount of tax you can get out of anybody is equivalent to the rental value of land they occupy; if you try and get more then people won't pay it and/or it will have a damaging effect on the economy. And basic maths tells us that the tax payable by these wealthy non-doms is pretty much equivalent to the rental value of their home.

As these people have loads of money and want to live somewhere nice, they will do so and pay large amounts of tax quite voluntarily; they still get a better deal than in most other countries. This demolishes the KLN that "wealthy people and high earners will avoid paying LVT by moving abroad/trading down into the smallest homes."

(The UK's system is much more primitive, the top few thousand non-domiciles resident in this country just have to pay £30,000 or £50,000 a year each, depending on how long they have lived here; but by and large, we can assume that it comes to much the same thing in £-s-d as just making them pay LVT on the rental value of where they live.)

Some cantons have been ignoring these simple rules and hiking the multiple from five to six, or increasing the income tax rate on the notional income, which has led to wealthy people moving to cantons with lower multiples or a lower tax rate or moving elsewhere (i.e. the UK).

The OECD hates the system of course, as do the Lefties because they think that the non-dom's are not paying enough; which is sort of true but only if you start from the wrong end: the correct analysis is actually that normal Swiss residents are paying too much .

But there's no reason why we can't do exactly the same in the UK.

Instead of taxing people on their actual income, you tax them on a similar amount of notional income. The site premium (that element of the rental value that relates purely to the location rather than the bricks and mortar) for UK housing is very easy to establish to within a reasonable margin of error, it's about 3% of current selling prices, which is a total of £200 billion for all UK dwellings.

By happy coincidence, UK income tax revenues are about £150 billion and Council Tax, SDLT, IHT, CGT and similar quasi-wealth taxes are nearly £50 billion, meaning we could replace the lot with a full charge on site premiums.

All this means is working backwards from the site premium and taxing each household on a notional income figure which produces the correct tax liability.

I've crunched the numbers and what we end up with is this (assumes single earner and one personal allowance, 2013/14 tax rates):

Value of home/Tax bill/Notional income
£100,000/£3,000/£24,440 (bottom decile)
£200,000/£6,000/£39,440 (median/average)
£300,000/£9,000/£47,945 (top quartile)
£400,000/£12,000/£55,445 (top decile)
£500,000/£15,000/£62,945
£600,000/£18,000/£70,445
£700,000/£21,000/£77,945
£800,000/£24,000/£85,445
£900,000/£27,000/£92,945
£1,000,000/£30,000/£100,445 (top percentile)

As a reality check, according to the CML, the average house price and income for first time buyers are £173,000 and £42,000, for "home movers" they are £261,000 and £62,000.

With UK lump-sum taxation, their notional taxable income for homes of that value would be £35,000 and £45,000 respectively, so they'd be paying a few thousand less in tax each year and there would be no disincentive to earning more.

So this would genuinely help people "get on the property ladder" and reward "hard working households" by giving them a tax cut; and the harder people work and the more they earn, the lower is their effective average tax rate, which demolishes another couple of KLNs.

What's not to like?

For vacant homes, second homes and private rented housing, you can achieve exactly the same with a flat rate charge of the 3%, the figure we first thought of. If landlords want to agree with their tenants that the tenant will register to pay the same amount in 'income tax' as the landlord would have paid in the flat rate charge, well so be it, that's a private agreement and does not really affect the incidence of the tax.

But by doing so the landlord is cutting off his nose to spite his face; if he just pays the "vacant home charge" or "second home charge" then HMRC can politely turn a blind eye to the fact that he probably has some rental income, so there'd be no need for landlords to declare their rental income and pay tax on it etc, and tenants wouldn't have any income tax deducted from their wages. There will be a significant tax saving to be split between the two of them and the tax collected from a privately owned home will be exactly the same whether it is rented out or owner-occupied.

The Swiss Airforce - Please leave a message.

On Monday morning the hijacked Ethiopian airplane entered Italian airspace and was duly met by an escort of Italian air force jets. The Italians passed the escort over to the French on Monday morning as the plane entered French airspace and then as the plane approached Swiss airspace, its final destination being Geneva/Genf, the French attempted to hand the escort over to the Swiss airforce.

Unfortunately it was by now only about 6 am and it turns out that the Swiss airforce does not come to work until 8 am (week days).

"Switzerland cannot intervene because its airbases are closed at night and on the weekend," spokesman Laurent Savary told AFP.

It also appears that airbases close for 90 minutes for lunch.

Time for a change of career me thinks.

Nearly there...

What is particularly annoying about aeroplane hijackers is when they hijack a flight en route from A to B; force the pilot to land in C instead; and then demand safe passage to D.

Why don't they just get on a 'plane to D in the first place; or having hijacked it, ask the pilot to land in D instead of C?

From The Evening Standard:

An Ethiopian Airlines jet with 202 passengers and crew on board was hijacked today by its co-pilot.

The 30-year-old man landed the Addis Ababa to Rome flight safely in Geneva before climbing out of a window on a rope and asking for asylum.

So at least he landed where he wanted to end up, but…

a) Is Switzerland more generous with asylum than Italy, where the 'plane was headed anyway?

b) Why didn't he just get himself on a flight to Switzerland in the first place? Geneva's quite a bit further than Rome, so he might have run out of fuel, which would have been embarrassing for all concerned.

c) Why the window/rope stunt? Why didn't he just go down the stairs with everybody else?

Direct democracy doesn't care what business or Government thinks

Which is why we won't get it in the UK, just more Strictly Come fcuking Dancing and other shiny shiny, look over here shit. 

Anywhose; passed by 50.3% Switzerland has decided to tear up the bilateral free movement treaty it has with the EU and impose quotas for EU immigrants (there are already non EU quotas). The measure, which doesn’t specify how high those quotas should be, passed by fewer than 20,000 ballots in a national vote yesterday (Sunday). The government has three years to impose new rules, which will primarily affect workers from the EU, many of them highly qualified (like me FFS!). 

To be fair to the Swiss, (and while there is definitely a fair bit of “well we just hate people with a sun tan”) I get the impression that the border cantons, Ticino/ Schaffhausen etc are a bit fed up with the watchmakers bussing Germans and Italians across the border daily for what are poor Swiss wages but quite good Italian or German wages. Of course the French bit is all for this because it has sour grapes that those cantons generally always got a kicking from Bern and were only grudgingly let into the Confederation in the first place. As such they don’t like the rich German parts and their imported smart people that keep them rich. 

It will be interesting to see how the EU responds to this. By interesting, I mean, how dickishly. The consensus being that the EU might take the chance to be difficult, to try to show that “leaving” the EU (even if you are not really in it at all) is a bad idea, especially when you have no ports and all your exports have to go across the border into the EU (unless you export to both of the permanent residents of Liechtenstein I guess).

Possibly time for the UK, Luxembourg, Austria, Switzerland and the Nordics to actually put their heads together for once. Since they all have the same complaints against Germany and France. 

Swiss to take on excessive executive pay at polls, again

From Expatica

In comparison to the UK, Switzerland is terrifyingly democratic, you cannot move for gigantic political posters, broadly all of which demand that the Federal Government does not interfere with the business of the various Cantons, adorning bus shelters and railway platforms. Getting a referendum requires only 100,000 signatures, something a few people might not mind having in good old Blighty.

So on 24 November  a radical proposal, dubbed 1:12 after the ratio it seeks to set between the highest and lowest salaries in a company, will be put up for a referendum. It was originally put forth two years ago, and received more than the 100,000 signatures needed to put any issue to a popular vote as part of the aforementioned ferocious direct democratic system. Unsurprisingly the initiative has also received widespread support from Swiss unions.

Although the Confederation Helvetica has largely dodged the implosion of various EU economies (just don't mention the UBS!) public anger has risen over what is considered abusive levels of pay and bonuses for top bosses.

Last March, nearly 70 percent of voters came out in support of a new law flat-out banning golden parachutes and excessive executive bonuses.

That vote came amid national outrage over a 72-million-Swiss-franc ($79-million, 58-million-euro) golden parachute deal for Daniel Vasella when he stepped down as chairman of pharmaceutical giant Novartis in February.

While top executives in the country on average made just six times the salaries of their lowest-paid employees in 1984, the gap swelled to 13 times more by 1998 and 43 times more in 2011, according to the Swiss transport union.

At food giant Nestle, for instance the top executive was reportedly making 73 times the salary of the person on the bottom rung two years ago, while the lowest-paid employee at Novartis in 2011 would have to work 266 years to make the highest earner's annual salary.

Last month polls were suggesting the vote on 1:12 rule could be close, but in recent days the no campaign – backed by the government and parliament – appears to have turned the tide. A survey for Swiss television released on Wednesday pointed to a 54% to 36% defeat for the proposal, with 10% so far undecided.

Executive Salaries

There's a head of steam building up about executive salaries. Not only has Oxfam decided to weigh in on the side of the Living Wage, but, as Matthew Lynn reports in Moneyweek, the Swiss have decided to tackle the subject head on.

A referendum this year forced companies to get shareholders' agreement on top salaries and another later this month will, if successful, force them to limit the highest salary a quoted company pays to twelve times the lowest. (Although currently that ratio is ninety-three to one in Switzerland, it's over two thousand to one in the UK.) It's hardly surprising that our governments only allow us a referendum once every forty years or so, if that is the sort of laws they produce.

Of course, all the over-renumerated executives are prophesying an exodus of big companies if the Swiss vote in favour of the twelve to one ratio, but if that's the way the vote goes, then their bluff may well be called. After all, Switzerland is one of the richest countries in the world and the most lightly taxed: it's hard to make a case for moving elsewhere if this is going to land the company with not only higher salary costs, but a much greater tax bill as well.

Also, it is very hard for the same overpaid executives to argue against the first referendum result. This can't be simply passed off as a result of the politics of envy. The shareholders are the owners of the company and if they are happy to vote the top management massive salaries, who's to complain. They, the shareholders are, after all, paying for it. If they are not happy, then why should they not be able to do something about it, directly. It would end the scam where a small group of of the same people sit on the boards of some companies and occupy senior management positions in others and routinely vote each other huge pay rises, at the expense of the shareholders.

"Pop go Geneva house prices"

Emailed in by the Sumo King, from the FT:

It’s been a long time coming, but Geneva property owners desperate to sell are finally beginning to slash prices after a summer season characterised by a bitter standoff between buyers and sellers...

Some market specialists are blaming uncertainty over future tax breaks for wealthy foreign owners...

Aha, thinks the reader. Those dastardly Swiss Commies will have increased property taxes or something, attacking our wealth etc.

Nope:

As the Telegraph explained this week:

"The system allows foreign nationals to pay a flat fee — called a forfeit – to their local canton. It is worked out based on the rental value of their property rather than their income or assets and is paid in lieu of ordinary wealth and income taxes.

Ordinary federal and cantonal tax rates are applied to the rental value and there is no obligation on forfeit holders to declare worldwide income or assets The forfeit tax provisions are specifically aimed at financially independent persons who are not seeking employment in Switzerland – so those taking advantage of it are not allowed to earn an income there."

What the 'forfeit' system boils down to is this: they take the rental value of the home you live in, times it by five, use that as a proxy for your total income and charge (say) 35% income tax on it. Rents are capitalised at a multiple of (say) twenty, so if the home you live in has a rental value of CHF 50,000, it is worth CHF 1 million and you pay CHF 87,500 tax.

In other words, this is like Domestic Rates or Land Value Tax of 8.8% of the selling price, end of discussion and no back-chat, no further tax payments demanded.

Really rich people love this system of course, they don't mind paying this tax if they spend less than a fifth of their total income on rent or if their annual income is more than a quarter of the value of their home, because they are still paying less tax than they would be anywhere else.

What these people are worried about is that the 'forfeit' system is going to be scrapped and they will have to pay tax on their world-wide incomes instead, , meaning that they will have pay a lot more tax if they decide to stay in Switzerland.

So what lessons do we learn from this?

1. Really rich people don't mind paying LVT and they hate declaring their incomes and paying income tax.

2. Ultimately, all taxes are borne by landowners. A really rich person who was renting a home in Switzerland and paying the forfeit can now reassess the position and go elsewhere (or haggle a lower rent to compensate him for the higher tax bill); it is his landlord who takes the hit in terms of lower selling prices and/or lower rents.
-----------------------------------------------
The UK has something vaguely similar to the 'forfeit', but it is done in the usual cack-handed British fashion. Non-domiciled individuals can opt to pay a flat fee of £30,000 or £50,000 a year each in return for not having to pay tax on their world-wide income. Only about 5% of 100,000 registered non-doms pay this tax, the rest just pay tax on all their income just like anybody else.

If the non-dom levy were based on the rental value of the homes they own or live in, this would raise a lot more revenue because lots of really rich people would be flocking from Geneva to London to pay it. Thought experiment: what happens if the UK decides to cut down on the administration, scraps taxes on income or private wealth and just says that everybody just pays tax based on the rental value of the homes they live in..?

What a Swizz!

Missing millions: Osborne's £3.2bn tax raid in doubt after finding fewer secret Swizz bank accounts than he hoped

The Daily Mail often change their headlines, but usually not the URL.

Doh! .... actually, a lot less dough*

The Swiss declaration is not only embarrassing for the Treasury, it also knocks a sizeable hole in public finances as the Office for National Statistics controversially included the £3.2bn levy in May's public accounts.  The levy contributed to a narrowing of government borrowing from £15.6bn in May 2012 to £12.7bn.

Swiss declaration?

According to the Swiss Bankers Association (SBA), the deal does not apply to most UK nationals who keep their cash in Swiss banks because they are not domiciled in Switzerland.

The SBA said banks would pay the minimum levy agreed with the UK of CHF500m (£347m) after individual banks found only small sums from UK citizens were caught by the deal.

* I have grabbed my coat and am headed doorwards...

"Coach in the water"

From azlyrics.com and 20min.ch:

We all came out to Montreux
On the Lake Geneva shoreline
Sight seeing in our mobile
We didn't have much time
All the tourists with their cameras
Were at the best place around
Driver forgot the hand brake
And the bus kept rolling down...
Coach in the water, driver in the shite

They dived in and they pulled it out
It died with an awful sound
Funky Claude was running in and out
Helping them winch it back onto the ground
When it all was over
We had to find another place
But Swiss time was running out
It seemed that we would lose the race
Coach in the water, driver in the shite

We ended up at the Grand Hotel
It was empty cold and bare
But we did a roll call just outside
And had our picnic there
With a table cloth and a few old chairs
We made a place to sit
No matter what we get out of this
I know we'll never forget
Coach in the water, driver in the shite

Presumably with a twelve-boar shotgun

From The Metro:

Switzerland: An injured boar attacked his father and his two sons as they played in their garden. The 90kg (200lb) animal bit Markus Lainer in the leg before fleeing. The 37-year old said: "I tried to fight it off, hitting it until it let go. It ran off and I noticed it didn't have its back feet."

Police in the northern village of Adlikon later shot the boar and said it had been injured in a collision with a train.

Makes a change from "the prisoner fell down the stairs", I suppose.

"Woman killed in Basel bull attack"

Spotted by Witterings in The Local:

The tragedy occurred at around 8am on a farm in Liestal, the canton’s capital, cantonal police said.

The woman was in a pasture when a three-year-old bull, weighing about a tonne, charged her, police said. The farmer died from the injuries she received.

The exact circumstances of the attack are unclear, police said. The incident is being investigated by cantonal police and the prosecutor’s office of Basel-Country. A cantonal care team provided psychological support to those close to the farmer.

Police said the bull will be euthanized in the next few days.

The incident marks the second time a farmer has been killed by a bull in Switzerland in less than four months. A 71-year-old farmer was knocked over by a bull at a farm in the Bichwil-Oberwil region of Saint Gallen on August 16th. Medical attendants were unable to save the man from the injuries he suffered.

"Hit-and-run driver collides with six cows"

Spotted by Witterings in The Local:

A drunken hit-and-run motorist swerved off the road and drove into six cows before fleeing the accident scene in a rural area of the canton of Vaud near Montreux over the weekend.

Two cows were instantly killed and another two had to be put down because of severe injuries, police said. A decision will be made on Monday whether to destroy one of the two other cows, which suffered pelvis injuries.

The motorist, a Swiss man in his 30s, was later arrested at his nearby home after Vaud Riviera police tracked him down, according to press reports. A licence plate* came loose from the vehicle in the accident, which occurred early on Saturday morning on the road between Saint Légier and Châtel Saint Denis, a town in the canton of Fribourg.

* Hardly CSI, is it?

"I've found a suspicious looking number plate. Shall we dust it for fingerprints, sir?"

"Nah, let's just look it up on the computer... ah, here we go. Let's go an arrest a Swiss man in his 30s at his nearby home in Vaud Riviera. Bring the breathalyser kit and some snacks."

"Do you think he'll be hungry, sir?"

"No, I'm just feeling a bit peckish. You drive and I'll eat them on the way there.

Killer Arguments Against LVT, Not (240)

Mr G at HPC:

I am not dismissing the case for LVT but I am still of the opinion that the political elite will simply use it as another means of shafting the majority instead of a means of fairer taxation.

True, but that's just a question of voting for proper pro-LVT party which intends to reduce the total tax burden to its barest minimum, i.e. to only levy taxes on state-protected wealth transfers, so the only publicly collected taxes are taxes on those taxes which are currently collected privately, primarily land rents but also certain specific categories of state-protected monopoly income (patents, airport landing slots, radio frequency etc).

We don't need to re-invent the wheel each time, as Switzerland has a perfectly good working model for such a "tax cap" or "lump sum taxation" based on the rental value of land you occupy:

Non-working foreigners resident in Switzerland may choose to pay a "lump-sum tax" instead of the normal income tax. The tax, which is generally much lower than the normal income tax, is nominally levied on the taxpayer's living expenses, but in practice (which varies from canton to canton), it is common to use the quintuple of the rent paid by the taxpayer as a basis for the lump-sum taxation. This option contributes to Switzerland's status as a tax haven, and has induced many wealthy foreigners to live in Switzerland."

So if wealthy foreigner chooses to live in a house with a rental value of CHF 50,000 a year, his notional income is CHF 250,000 and he pays tax at the normal rates (between 30% and 40%) on that, so he pays CHF 75,000 - CHF 100,000 a year, end of discussion. It matters not whether that foreigner actually earns CHF 1 million or CHF 10 million a year.

There's no reason why any country couldn't do this for everybody, it would be an administrative nightmare, but just as a thought experiment:

a) Each business works out how much PAYE, VAT, corporation tax, Business Rates it would have to pay and compares this with a "lump sum" of (say) double its Business Rates bill (Business Rates being pretty close to LVT) with a full refund of input-VAT incurred. Ninety-nine per cent of businesses would prefer to pay double Business Rates (which would be about ten or twenty per cent of its normal tax bill, that's just a fact) and pay out salaries gross and retain all profits tax-free.

b) Then each employee has the choice of having full PAYE deducted from his salary, or to pay whatever the notional LVT would be on his home. Clearly, low paid people in expensive houses will prefer to just have PAYE deducted, but for most people, the LVT amount would be far less, that's basic maths.

e.g. a couple earns £20,000 each and owns an 'average' house currently worth £200,000 on which the notional LVT is 7% x £200,000 = £14,000 minus two personal allowances of £3,500 each = £7,000. The compare this with two lots of PAYE of £3,868, meaning that they will have to ask their employer to also pay £1,727 in Employer's NIC, who will respond by giving such people lower pay rises in future; and such non-LVT payers will also have to pay normal Council Tax.

c) Tenants own no land, so their notional LVT bill is quite clearly £ nil and they will just be paid gross. No doubt landlords will bump up their rents accordingly, but the landlord will have to pay the tax instead. Or he can quote a lower net rent and agree with the tenants that they pay the LVT, that does not affect the economic incidence of the tax.

d) The Homeys will then counter that "everybody will scramble to sell his house and rent a house with the lowest rental value" which is nonsense of course. That's like saying "If second hand Vauxhalls were cheaper than new Mercedes cars, then all rich people would stop buying Mercedes cars and buy second hand Vauxhalls instead".

e) I can't be bothered to do the calculations for the change in the amount of tax collected, but over time we would observe that people choose to live in houses on which the tax bill is slightly lower than their current PAYE + Council Tax bill. This is exactly the same as observing that housing is a normal good; the mortgage which first time buyers apply for is a fairly fixed multiple of their incomes at any one time, so people are quite voluntarily paying privately collected tax (mortgage repayments) which are a fairly fixed proportion of their net income (about thirty per cent), even though they could reduce this by buying somewhere smaller or in a less desirable area. There's no reason to assume that this will change, just because of the fact that mortgage payments are much lower and the publicly collected tax thereon is higher, especially if people have a lot more pre-tax income to splash around.

f) Hey presto, over the years, paying LVT will become the "new normal" and then all that remains is to sneakily bump up the income tax rate towards 100%, which will affect fewer and fewer people as most people's tax liability will be capped anyway.

Things which are not surprising at all and are not really proof of anything one way or another

The TPA are wailing on about the council pensions timebomb again:

The TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) can today reveal for the first time a substantial rise in the number of former council staff drawing pensions compared to the number in work and paying into the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS).

That's excellent news, it means that in future, there will be fewer ex-council employees claiming pensions than are claiming now. So these pensions will become more affordable for the taxpayer.

Previous TPA research has found that the equivalent of £1 of every £5 of Council Tax goes on pensions...

So what? Pensions are just a kind of deferred salary. If it turned out that councils were spending nearly all their income on salaries, that is in itself neither good nor bad; it all depends on what its employees are doing. If they're all teachers, coppers, lollipop ladies, dustbin men, social workers etc, then great. If they're all five-a-day climate change awareness group directors on six-figure salaries, then hiss boo.

And given the level of pension they are promised compared to their salaries, we would expect councils to be spending about a quarter as much on pensions or pension contributions as they do on salaries. So this "£1 in every £5" figure is also meaningless; as we'd have to know how much of the other £4 goes on salaries and much more importantly than that, what the council's employees are actually doing.
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Dan Hannan asks

What will William Hague's audit [of the costs and benefits of EU membership] show? That depends partly on who conducts it, obviously...

That's the problem, isn't it? I try to be as objective as possible as most things and I am quite convinced that the disadvantages of full EU membership outweigh the advantages. So if I did the audit, the result would probably support this. And people would say "Ah yes, but you're against EU membership, you were going to say that anyway."

You can be part of a free market in Europe without being a full member of the customs union. It's true that you then 'have no say' over how the regulations of the single market are set, but this doesn't bother the Swiss, whose exports to the EU, in per capita terms, are 450 per cent of ours.

He's used that 450 per cent figure before to say "Look how successful the Swiss are outside the EU, they export far more to the EU than we do; therefore we should leave as we'd export more to the EU than now!" but the statistic is arrant nonsense and doesn't support any such conclusion.

The point is, the smaller the unit (i.e. a country) you are looking at, the higher are imports and exports as a share of that unit's GDP. If Eastbourne became an independent state, we'd find that its imports and exports from "rest of EU" would be far higher as a share of Eastbourne's GDP, or per capita for Eastbourne residents than they are for Switzerland.

That is not an argument for the newly created state of Eastbourne to leave the EU and more than it is to create that state in the first place.