AN OUTSIDE VIEW

Europe's most expensive real estate , originally uploaded by Bēn . British tax dodgers will soon find a way round the Chancellor's latest attempt at a clamp-down. Like this, perhaps There is no limit to people's ingenuity. Living in Monte Carlo would not be my cup of tea, but people are mobile. If governments try to tax them, they will dodge. Land, on the other hand, is fixed and cannot be removed to a tax haven or hidden. If governments base their revenue-raising on land holding, then they will not lose their revenue through tax avoidance. If you see this and have the Chancellor's ear, could you remind him, please?

"Only the little people pay tax" was the phrase famously uttered by American millionaire Leona Helmsley when caught out for tax dodging. It was the title of a piece on the privileges enjoyed by the non-domiciled residents, written by Martin Wolf in the Finanical Times last Friday (7 March). In his view, their privileges are unjustified. What he failed to pick up was the possibility that is that there could be an underlying problem with the tax system itself. And nowhere in the course of the present debate on tax evasion and related issues has the point been made in any of the papers, neither in editorial comment nor in letters from readers. Taxes are indeed a deterrent against whatever is taxed - windows, smoking, drinking, betting, etc. In some cases, that is their aim and purpose. But modern taxes fall primarily on work and enterprise, which cannot be right, since their effect is to impoverish. And they are levied primarily on people and companies, which is no longer practi...