Just Stop Oil... price hikes?

The Just Stop Oil/ XR people don't understand science, but fair enough, they are at least intellectually consistent from there on in. They do shit like gluing themselves to road surfaces to piss off motorists.

For some reason, some people whose interests are diametrically opposite have adopted a similar rolling roadblock tactic.

If you were stuck in the queue behind all this, how would you know whom to rail against? The climate idiots or the tax idiots? (The recent price rises are apparently due to lack of refining capacity, which in turn are partly due to 'green' policies, and little to do with changes in fuel duty?)

Also, I'm looking forward to the day when the climate idiots and the tax idiots organise a joint protest; the rolling road block can slow the cars to a halt, and then the Just Stop Oil/XR people can then sit down across the carriageway and refuse to move afterwards.
----------------------
The choice of The Haywain for a recent stunt is particularly ironic. In their apocalyptic version, the trees are all dying. In truth, the amount of tree cover in that region has steadily increased over the past two centuries (as anybody who's actually been there will attest), broadly in line with increases in temperatures/CO2 levels. Trees - like most plants - thrive where it's warm and wet (hence 'tree lines').

The climate people flip flop on whether warmer temperatures mean more or less rain - but whichever it is, it is BAD. A dried out river bed is the last place you should build a new road, it will still flood occasionally. There's an old car dumped in the background - so what? That's just fly tipping and wrong anyway. And commercial planes would never be allowed to fly that close together on the same path. Deliciously wrong on so many levels...

When being wrong has never made you look so stupid.

From The Evening Standard:

Half of over-50s have had Covid booster jab... At least 6.1 million booster doses of Covid-19 vaccine have been delivered across the UK.

Half? Really? Clearly, there are about 30 million over-50s in the UK, so that's nowhere near half.

Some outlets read and understood the NHS press release, for example the North West Mail:

NHS delivers Covid booster to half of eligible people aged 50 and over

The key word here is "eligible" i.e. over-50s with underlying health issues, who care for elderly parents, NHS workers and so on.

When being wrong has never felt so right.

At the very least, the correct answer should be "All four answers" but strictly speaking, it would be "All five answers" because the answer "All five answers" is itself correct.

Crappy Labour conference proposals

From the BBC:

Labour has promised to spend an extra £28bn a year on making the UK economy more "green" if it wins power. Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves said the money would go on offshore wind farms, planting trees and developing batteries.

Waste of money.

In her speech to Labour's annual conference in Brighton, she also pledged to phase out business rates to help the Covid-damaged High Street. And she said giant tech firms would pay more tax in future.

By all means cut taxes on businesses and lighten the admin burden for small businesses, High Street or not. Simplify and reduce VAT and NIC. Scrap the 'making tax digital' nonsense. Get rid of the stupid import formalities. Plus tons of other non-tax related crap.

Phasing out Business Rates will achieve absolutely nothing in that regard, it's a straight bung to land owners.

Sure, there are lots of owner-occupier businesses, they have to pay Rates, but they are still at a huge advantage to tenant businesses who have to pay rent and Rates. If they phase out Rates, then rents will just go up to soak up the difference, making the gap even bigger. If you've an eye to helping all businesses, phasing out Rates is the worst way of doing it.

As to giant tech firms, is she totally innumerate? £28 bn for green crapola and £30 bn Business Rates lost = £58 bn.

What are the UK profits of Facebook? Maximum one tenth of global profits of $29 bn, call it £4 billion. I can't be bothered looking up Microsoft and Google and so on. Even if you managed to tax all their UK profits at 100%, that wouldn't cover a quarter of the extra spending and tax breaks for landowners. In practice, it will barely touch the sides.

On behalf of two of your constituents

Email I just sent (some typos corrected), for the record. Direct quotes from the MP's email to her constituents in italics.
---------------------------------------
Dear Ms M......

I am the Secretary of the Citizen's Basic Income Trust (formerly "Citizen's Income Trust").

Two of your constituents (I have bcc'd them in, in case they wish to pursue the matter further) have asked me to contact you regarding certain unsubstantiated claims you have made about Basic Income in general and our research in particular.
--------------------------------------
"The question of feasibility is one we should consider. No matter how desirable a UBI-style programme might be, it must also be feasible in the present context of our economy. When considering feasibility, we must address... whether it could be introduced in a manner that prevented losses amongst the most vulnerable in our society."

We agree entirely!

We assume that when you say "the most vulnerable" you mean existing welfare claimants. Three points here:

1. It would be easy to set the basic income at a level which such people's welfare payments do not fall significantly or do not fall at all. Whether we call it "income support" or "universal credit" or anything else, £1 paid out as "basic income" costs the DWP LESS than £1 paid out as "income support" or "universal credit" because there is little or no admin cost involved (short of basic fraud detection, which as we know from Child Benefit is nigh undetectable with flat rate benefits).

2. These people are particularly vulnerable because they know that benefits are very conditional, if there is the slightest administrative hiccup or they inadvertently breach a certain condition, they can lose their welfare income for weeks or months. A reliable non-withdrawable weekly payment of £90 each and every week is worth far more than knowing you will get £100 in most weeks but sometimes you will get nothing at all for a month or two.

3. You ignore the most "vulnerable" of all. For example those who have just lost their job, those who do irregular low paid jobs (zero hour contracts), and many more who do not receive any welfare payments at all because they do not meet the bureaucratic requirements (the homeless), or are discouraged from claiming because they know - or reasonably believe - that they might have to wait for several weeks to receive their Universal Credit, by which time they might have found a new low paid job and have to pay everything back, thus compounding the misery.
------------------------------------
"could dramatically increase the number of children living in poverty (as was also found in modelling by the Citizen’s Income Trust)"

We have published lots of examples of Basic Income systems. Some replace most existing mainly means tested benefits with a single payment; others replace fewer such benefits and pay the Basic Income in addition, which automatically reduces the entitlement to and cost of means tested benefits. It would have helped your constituents in forming a decision had you actually provided full details of the particular example you were referring to.

Some of our examples do indeed show that certain groups (in particular unemployed single mothers) would receive £10 or £20 less a week. Others show that they would be largely unaffected. It is up to the government of the day to decide which system to choose.
--------------------------------------
"The report found that the additional tax revenue required to support such a system could be as much as £160 billion. Such a figure would indicate that UBI systems would be unaffordable..."

I will let Compass and JRF speak for themselves.

In none of our workings has the additional "cost" amounted to anything like that much - and none has required any change or at least any significant change to the rates of income tax and National Insurance (depending which example you choose).

Clearly, most adults are in steady paid employment and earn more than the income tax personal allowance of £12,500. We have always said that the Basic Income would be a straight swap for the personal allowance and the NI lower earnings threshold, so most adults would barely notice a difference - they receive a Basic Income of £70 - £100 per week, but pay extra tax of £70 - £100 per week. This could be dealt with via PAYE (as was the case in Ireland until recently) so this is not an extra "cost". It would be foolish to consider the £160 billion as a cost and the extra £160 billion as extra tax revenues.

(So this step is purely administrative - for the time being, it is easier just to exclude people in steady jobs from Basic Income and let them keep their personal allowance and lower earnings threshold, but they know that Basic Income is there if they suddenly need it. As the Adam Smith Institute has pointed out, for the majority of people there is no difference between the current system, Basic Income and Negative Income Tax).

The cost of paying the Basic Income to existing claimants (group 1 above) would barely change, depending on the precise level and which benefits it replaces.

There will more payments made to group 3 above - those in low paid and irregular work, but at least half of this will be clawed back by the PAYE system (the tax free allowance and lower earnings thresholds would be zero). This clearly obviates the need for a parallel means-testing system.

As you must know, clawing back benefits via the PAYE system is already part of the UK's overall system - for example student loan repayments and the higher earner child benefit charge. The PAYE system can easily be adapted to claw back all benefits automatically by adjusting each individual's PAYE code. The simpler the benefit system, the easier it is to adjust PAYE codes, they can be uprated each year automatically.

Any residual additional "cost" can be offset against the admin costs incurred by the DWP and HMRC, including losses due to fraud and error and student loan write offs, which are in the order of £20 billion - £30 billion a year. The net cost will be a drop in the ocean when set against UK government spending overall.

And whatever system you choose, the welfare state costs this country nothing. Some citizens pay in, others get money out, some pay in and receive similar amounts (people on Working Tax Credits). Workers pay in now and get a state pension when they reach retirement age. No sensible system is "unaffordable". I pay my children pocket money. That superficially costs me money, but it costs us as a family unit precisely nothing, and clearly improves our overall happiness - £20 a week is not much to me but £10 a week each means a lot to them.
---------------------------------------------
"even when the effect on individual behaviours in the labour market are not considered... Our current welfare system, built around Universal Credit, seeks to incentivise claimants to move off benefits and to provide tailored support to help people find work and increase their earnings".

That is a major advantage of a Basic Income. There is no poverty trap. If a claimant finds a job, short or long term, low paid or well paid, they know that they will be better off. They can move seamlessly into work without having to wait weeks between their last welfare payment and their first pay cheque. If they lose their job, at least they know that their Basic Income is still coming in to cover essentials. The value of this goes above and beyond the pure cash value. It is good for peace of mind and a general sense of well being. Like home insurance - you hope that nothing ever happens and you will never have to make a claim - but it's nice to have the reassurance and it's worth a few hundred pounds a year.

Nearly everybody wants to "increase their earnings"! Most people receiving £100 basic income would prefer to have £100 basic income and another £100 in net wages after tax. Most people earning £20,000 want to do overtime or get pay rises or be promoted and earn £25,000 and so on. Persecuting low and non-earners does not add to this basic human instinct. The minority who do not want to or cannot increase their earnings because of caring duties and disabilities should not be punished. And yes, there is a residual group who live a very modest lifestyle and will stay on welfare. Trying to cajole them into work is pointless, no employer wants them. It's like expecting wealthy heirs and heiresses to lift a finger.
--------------------------------------------
May I also take you up on this:

"the new Winter Grant Scheme which will deliver £170 million of funding to councils in England to provide vital support to the most vulnerable children and families"

There are nearly thirty million households in the UK. If that £170 million is paid equally to households in the lowest decile, that means about £60 each. Over a ten week winter, that makes £6 per household per week.
--------------------------------------------
[Please note - in all our calculations we have assumed that welfare payments for housing costs and additional payments to people with a disability would continue as they are and be paid in addition to the Basic Income]
---------------------------------------------
I hope this is food for thought

Yours faithfully

Car hits house

Article and photo at the BBC.

How on earth did he manage to get the front door of the house lodged in his windscreen at that angle, all without totally wrecking the front of the car? The angle suggests that the door flew in from above and behind.

The photo appears to have been taken from here.

They (want to) own land! Give them money!

From the BBC:

... Boris Johnson has promised low-deposit mortgages to help young people get onto the housing ladder.

In an interview with the Daily Telegraph ahead of his party's four-day conference, the prime minister said he had asked ministers to work up plans for encouraging long-term fixed-rate mortgages with 5% deposits.

"We need mortgages that will help people really get on the housing ladder even if they have only a very small amount to pay by way of deposit, the 95% mortgages," he said. "I think it could be absolutely revolutionary, particularly for young people."

Haven't we been doing this for decades - ramped up with Help To Buy - and simply seen house prices increase to soak up the extra borrowing?

Stupid people who think they've said something clever

I idly watched a few minutes of Jeremy Vine this morning, they were discussing covid-19.

There was a very sensible lady called Beverley Turner who was recommending a Swedish style approach.

Iain Dale, the man who manages to be wrong on nearly everything, started bleating that Sweden has a much lower population density, 25 people per sq km, against 270 in the UK, as if that were relevant to anything.

Beverley gave an exasperated look, but wasn't given the chance to slap this down. The point being, this statistic is completely irrelevant to anything.

Firstly, the populated areas of Sweden are just as densely populated as the populated parts of the UK. The uninhabited parts are irrelevant. Most of Scotland is nigh empty - they all live in towns and villages as well - so their infection rates are the same as England's.

Secondly, what matters, as far as infection rates are concerned, is how many people you come into close contact with every day i.e. how many elderly in a care home and how many non-residents (workers or visting relatives) go in and out; how many children are in a class at school and how many teachers take each class; how many people there are in each workplace; how many people you sit near in the pub or on public transport; how many people live in each home.

It is quite possible that Swedes come into close contact with fewer people each day (if it were even possible to calculate it, which you can't) and have smaller households than we do , but it's not going to be wildly different. Which is why Sweden's rate of covid-19 deaths per million population is similar to the UK's (581 against 616).

Brilliant idea. Now try collecting the fines, you maniacs.

From The Guardian:

Homeless people in three coastal towns in Dorset could be fined for sleeping in doorways or leaving bedding and belongings in the street under proposals Conservative councillors are trying to push through...

But at a meeting of the council’s overview and scrutiny board this week, Tory councillors claimed the measures did not go far enough. They argued that begging, loitering in a public place, causing an obstruction in shop doorways or car parks and leaving unattended personal belongings such as bedding or bags should also be included.

The Tory councillor Karen Rampton said strict rules were necessary. “We know that people leaving unattended belongings causes anxiety. Shopkeepers do not want people obstructing their doorways especially in these times of Covid.”

People who violate PSPOs are liable for £100 fines that, if left unpaid, can result in summary convictions and £1,000 penalties. Rampton said the idea of the PSPO was to counter antisocial behaviour rather than targeting a particular group.

Joined up government - a waitress speaks.

Her Indoors and I ventured out for breakfast yesterday.

The waitress asked us to download their chain's app so that we could make our orders online. She returned a few minutes later with her notepad to take our orders anyway. Which was a good start.

She also asked one of us to do the track-and-trace nonsense. Her Indoors duly did it (and entered her real name and address, duh), but that was pointless too because the waitress didn't actually ask for confirmation that either of us had.

I showed the waitress the other apps which Playstore recommended after I'd downloaded the restaurant's app, which were all stuff like "how to count your calories", "fitness tracker" and so on, which I found quite chucklesome.

She said that nothing made sense any more. Her restaurant was doing the "eat out to help out" offer, starting today (i.e. tomorrow at the time this happened) but at the same time, the government was telling people not to socialise too much and doing the usual anti-obesity propaganda, the latest iteration being telling fat people that they are more likely to die if they catch covid-19.

I agreed of course, and gave her the counter example of long distance flyers being hit with higher Air Passenger Duty but getting money off alcohol and tobacco in the duty free shops before they board.

(I then deleted their app again, seeing as I didn't need it.)

The BBC does science, but they are useless at maths

From the BBC:

Astronomers have found a previously unseen type of object circling a distant star. It could be the core of a gas world like Jupiter, offering an unprecedented glimpse inside one of these giant planets...

Its radius is about three-and-a-half times larger than Earth's but the planet is around 39 times more massive.

Woah! Why "but" and not "and"??

The formula for the volume of a sphere = 4/3 x pi x radius cubed.

Therefore a planet with three-and-a-half times the radius of earth has 43 times the volume.

If a planet has 43 times the volume of Earth and 39 times the mass, we can safely assume it has a pretty similar density to Earth.
---------------------------------------------
Screenshot attached just in case they correct the glaring mistake:

Killer Arguments Against Citizen's Income, Not (27)

From The Independent:

51 per cent of the public also support a universal basic income, "where the government makes sure everyone has an income, without a means test or requirement to work". Just 24 per cent are unsupportive of the idea, with 9 per cent saying they do not know how they feel.

The idea a basic income has been backed by dozens of MPs from across the political spectrum as a solution to workers falling through the cracks of the current government support scheme - including the self-employed. Former work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith has however criticised the idea, suggesting it would be a disincentive to work during the crisis (1) and would be badly targeted (2).

Christ on a crutch.

1) The whole point of the lock down is to disincentivise people from working! If you are furloughed, you are forbidden to do work for your employer. (Note: I got talking to a builder recently who is on furlough from a large construction project; he's now working part time for his dad instead. Good for him). The majority of adults are still in paid work; receiving a state pension; or are already on some state benefit or other. They clearly wouldn't get anything extra.

2) Compare the UBI with the Furlough Scheme, which his own government introduced. The cost to the taxpayer of a furloughed worker on an average wage is £1,260 per month - the more that person was earning beforehand, the more they get now - a kind of negative means-testing. Means-testing is bad enough, but negative means-testing is worse. That's really badly targeted. A sensible UBI would be in the region of £300 - £400 per month, just enough to live off, assuming there is a rent/mortgage freeze, i.e. very well targeted. It does the job at minimum cost.

Barclays' new "Confirmation of Payee" service.

Email received from Barclays today:

Hi Customer,

What's new?

I'm sure they'll tell me...

A new service called Confirmation of Payee has been designed to help protect your payments from scams, fraudsters and payments going to the wrong account.

From March, when you pay a new person or business using Faster Payments (including standing orders) or CHAPS, we'll match their account name as well as the sort code and account number to make sure you're paying the right person. If someone makes a new payment to you, their bank may do the same.
[and so on]

Your Barclays Business Team

They appear to have learned the lesson from this debacle.

You do wonder, why on earth didn't banks always check the name of the recipient? What was the point of asking for their name if they're not going to check it?

"How to win back Northern voters" by Keir Starmer

From City AM:

Meanwhile, the start of Labour’s leadership contest has revolved around winning back Northern voters, with candidates scuttling to distance themselves from ties to the capital.

Frontrunner, and Holborn and St Pancras MP, Sir Keir Starmer was quick to point out in a recent interview that while he was born in London, that he in fact grew up in Surrey.

"Dick" by name, dick by nature...

From The Evening Standard:

Britain's most senior police officer has described the legalisation of cannabis in Canada and parts of the US as "interesting experiments" that should be watched... She said the debate around the subject was "complex"...

No it's not, it's perfectly simple.

... and believed if the UK was to legalise drugs immediately, it could lead to a variety of health problems.

Nonsense. We know from places where they legalised it that usage does not change massively (up or down), so there is little or no net effect. I, and I assume most people, don't like the stuff and wouldn't be interested even if it were legal.

However, speaking to radio show host Eddie Nestor on Monday, Dame Cressida said: "I think it is worth looking at what is happening in Canada and parts of the United States, albeit we have to recognise culturally that is very different."

Very little is 'happening', that is the beauty of it. As to 'culturally very different', she really is scraping the barrel. A sane person would consider Canada, the USA, Portugal, Netherlands as 'culturally very similar' to the UK.

"My concern is, I’m not a health professional, but you see what is happening with skunk and some of the damage done to people with mental health issues, is absolutely huge."

No you aren't, and no it isn't.

"The organised crime groups, in my view, would come in and cause problems in different markets and start selling different things to people. Let's see though what happens."

Wait, what? "The organised crime gangs would come in"??? They're already in! If you make something illegal, you end up with criminal gangs (Prohibition in the USA). If you legalise something (repeal Prohibition), the opposite happens.

And nobody said we should make the really strong varieties legal, that's no argument against legalising (and of course regulating and taxing) the normal strength stuff. You might as well say that because it's (quite rightly) illegal to drive a car that's not roadworthy, that you should simply ban all cars.

Car hits house

From LBC.co.uk, accompanied by the picture of the wreckage:



Words fail.

Gloriously muddled thinking on corporation tax.

Article in City AM this morning by John Penrose MP who "is Jeremy Hunt's policy guru".

After some fawning drivel about the German Mittelstand and dissing of UK businesses...

The OECD says that corporation tax is the most damaging and distortive, stopping investment flowing to wherever in the economy it is needed most.

This is clearly nonsense. Tariffs and turnover taxes (VAT) are the most distortionary and damaging taxes. Things like currency controls and foreign ownership restrictions (which the UK doesn't have, by and large) are awful non-tax distortions.

The distortionary effects of corporation tax are minimal:

Our businessman has some money to invest in starting or expanding his business. He ignores tax, and identifies Project A with an expected 20% return on investment and Project B with an expected 10% return on investment. He chooses Project A.

His accountant reminds him that he'll have to pay corporation tax on his profits, so actual expected returns are only 16% for Project A and 8% for Project B. The businessman will still choose Project A; corporation tax makes no difference for decision making purposes.

Also, UK plc pays twice as much in cash dividends to shareholders as it pays in corporation tax. If they really needed to retain cash for re-investment, they'd pay lower dividends.

At the moment, we've only got ourselves to blame, because our company tax system rewards firms which borrow much more than ones that invest... So why not reverse the incentives? Stop rewarding borrowers so lavishly and encourage investment instead? It would be fairly simple to do; we could make capital expenditure fully tax deductible as soon as it is spent, and stop company debt interest being tax deductible.

How thick is he? "Borrowing" is money coming in to the business and "investing" is money leaving it. These are completely separate things and have nothing to do with each other.

For example, a company could borrow from a bank and spend it on expanding the business. Does he count this as borrowing or investing? Similarly, it could borrow money without investing it (paying the cash out as dividends or a share buy back); or it could expand the business out of retained profits without borrowing.

The UK corporation tax system is pretty neutral on all this. If a company borrows from a UK bank, it gets a tax deduction for the interest paid and the bank pays an equal and opposite amount of tax on the interest it receives. If one company invests in shares of another, dividends paid on those shares are not an allowable expense of the paying company but are exempt from tax for the investing company. Both of these are completely tax neutral overall.
--------------------------------------------
UPDATE - to illustrate
Co A lends to Co B, receives £10 interest
Co B saves £2 tax (tax relief on interest paid)
Co A pays £2 corp tax on interest income
Co A ends up with £8 after tax.

Co A invests in Co B, receives £8 dividend
Co B makes £10 profit that 'belongs' to Co A, pays £2 corporation tax
Co B pays £8 dividend out of post-tax profits
Co A receives £8 dividend, on which it does not have to pay tax.
-------------------------------------------
He also has a very old fashioned view of modern business. Sure, some businesses make massive investments into physical plant and machinery. But by and large, businesses spend a lot more money on other things which help them grow - market research, R&D, staff training, advertising, renting larger premises and taking on more staff etc.

Such expenditure is fully allowable as a tax deduction when incurred; small businesses can claim 100% first year capital allowances but larger businesses are stuck with laughable 8% or 18% reducing balance capital allowances on qualifying items. So for this and many other reasons, 100% first year capital allowances for all businesses large or small are a good idea as it levels the playing field. So he's right for the wrong reasons - there is no particular reason to assume that the overall amount spent on plant and machinery would go up much.

Treating interest payment as a distribution of profits rather than as an expense is also a good idea, but not for the reasons he gives. The flip side would have to be that lenders don't pay tax on the interest they receive, so overall, the effect would be minimal; interest rates would just fall to the net of tax amount.

Usual Labour bullshit vs usual Tory bullshit

From The Guardian:

Sadiq Khan will make a campaign for wide-ranging rent control the key plank of his 2020 re-election bid, asking the government to give the London mayoralty the power to combat soaring rents in the capital.

That is the most staggeringly meaningless promise ever, and one on which he cannot actually deliver. Even if he wins and asks the government to give him the statutory power to regulate rents, they will simply refuse.

This reminds me of his meaningless fares-freeze pledge, He simply had no authority to do so. Rrom The Guardian:

Tony Travers, local government expert and director of the LSE’s Greater London Group, said the announcement by Khan came down to an issue of trust and how the average person would interpret his pledge.

“The words he used at the time made it very hard to understand the commitment only applied effectively to pay-as-you-go and cash fares on TfL-only services,” he said. “It’s inevitably going to be interpreted as not quite what was [advertised] on the tin.”

Even if Khan had such powers, he's in the pocket of the land mafia, so wouldn't actually use them.

Moving on...

“London is in the middle of a desperate housing crisis that has been generations in the making,” Khan said. “I am doing everything in my power to tackle it – including building record numbers of new social homes – but I have long been frustrated by my lack of powers to help private renters.”

That is a straight lie. New construction is even lower under Sadiq than under Johnson, and in such pitiful amounts that it can't possibly have any impact on anything.

The Tories could have scored a few open goals, but decide to make themselves look stupid by playing the Missing Homes Conundrum instead:

The housing secretary, James Brokenshire, has argued that the controls would lead to poorer housing standards with landlords unable to afford to maintain properties and could also have a dramatic effect on housing supply, with landlords choosing to sell up rather than have their rental income reduced.

Jeez. Landlord sells, tenant buys, supply of rental housing and demand for rental housing goes down in step. Twenty years ago, the number of private rented homes was half what it is today; were rents higher or lower?

"Government urged to slash business rates to save UK high streets"

This week's prize for people who completely undermine their own logic goes to...

From The Independent:

Sainsbury’s boss Mike Coupe joined the calls for reduced rates on Wednesday.

After the supermarket chain announced slowing sales growth on Wednesday, Mr Coupe said: “There isn’t a level playing field between online players and traditional bricks and mortar players, and it’s playing out in a very stark way on the high street at the moment.”

He added the government needs to review “total business taxation”. Sainsbury’s paid £560m in business rates last year, 6 per cent of its overall tax bill.

Yup, a modest 6 per cent. VAT is by far and away their biggest bill (unless you believe the crap about consumers paying it); PAYE is probably not too bad because most staff are on fairly low wages; and corporation tax is chump change.

Their total turnover is £28 billion (page 94 of latest financial statements), divide one by t'other and Business Rates cost them 2p for every £1 of sales. If they think online is so easy, why don't they do it themselves and save the 2p. Ah, they do. So what's the problem?

Killer Arguments Against LVT, Not (425)

Ben Southwood @bswud referred to this article in The Guardian:

Construction has begun on a $2bn (£1.5bn) scheme to reclaim land from the sea around Monaco so that more luxury apartments can be built for the thousands of extra millionaires expected to move to the principality in the next 10 years...

... and he commented thusly

"The easier this is, the more value a land value tax would destroy"

Which is about as wrong as it would be humanly possible to be. Quite the opposite!

Let's remind ourselves of the facts:

1. Monaco has no or low income tax, it is a 'tax haven'.

2. The main reasons why apartments/land in Monaco is so expensive is because the world's super rich are prepared to pay for the privilege of not paying income tax. The extra few million you pay for a flat in Monaco instead of the much more pleasant Nice is broadly speaking equal to the net present value of the future income tax saving. If the Prince so wished, he could collect that value via LVT (and to some extent he does).

3. To all intents and purposes, 'Monaco' could mean the Prince of Monaco (as a landowning individual) or the government of Monaco (as a public body which controls land use). They are the same thing from point of view of the company doing the reclamation. They need 'Monaco's' permission before they can do anything.

4. As The Telegraph explained:

In recent days, Bouygues, the construction company, began work on the foundations, starting with dredging operations via a giant offshore vacuum that spits out sediment at a depth of 200m.

The principality is not paying a centime for the project but will receive an undisclosed payment for the concession and will own public buildings on the new site estimated to be worth €500 million.

The 'undisclosed payment' is a lump sum LVT in advance, and the future rental value of the public buildings is like ongoing LVT (instead of getting the location value of all of it, they are getting all the value from some of the buildings on it). The effective tax rate is clearly less than 100% or else the (risky) project would not be going ahead, but it is safe to assume that 'Monaco' wangled as much as it could.

To sum up: 'Monaco' actually runs a Georgist tax system - low income tax and high land values/government income from land values (a lot of Monaco is owned/controlled by 'Monaco'). So it would be more accurate to argue that this reclamation is only happening because of - and certainly despite - LVT!

If France shaped up, scrapped income tax and collected LVT instead, the value of apartments/land in Monaco would collapse. It would be worth no more or less than in Nice. As in most cases, it is government action which causes land/location values, in this case, the French government. It's just a question of who gets it. And of course, such ridiculously expensive and ultimately value destroying projects would not happen.