Here are some ways to reduce the amount of tax you pay. Tell me which of them you think constitute sensible tax planning, and which amount to tax avoidance. (The examples I give are British, but most developed countries have equivalent mechanisms.) Buying premium bonds or other tax-free government products Putting your money in a […]
Getting involved as a commentator in the elections of another country, without being there, is rarely a good idea. I’m British and while I’m fascinated, obsessed even, by American politics, I’ll wait until I travel to the US later this month and talk to a range of well-informed people about the likely shape of the […]
In his speech today, Ed Miliband argued that increasing productivity is the key to stronger growth, higher living standards and faster deficit reduction. He was of course right. It was therefore a shame that his solutions did not meet the challenge he outlined. If as a country, we are not producing more for every hour […]
The recent victory of the leftist party Syriza in Greece reveals the increasing influence of populist, antimarket, anticapitalist movements throughout Europe. The new Greek Prime minister, Mr Alexis Tsipras, declares himself on the Left but his discourse is not different from the far right-wingers who go under the name of National Front in France, Progress […]
Brussels is never far from Ruritania, but the atmosphere in the Eurozone capital has grown noticeably more rococo since the advent of the Syriza socialist government in Greece. Eurocrats, themselves no strangers to obfuscation and double-talk, are bemused by the performance of the Athenian circus, with prime minister Alexis Tsipras and finance minister Yanis Varoufakis […]
In December, Tory MEP and CapX contributor Daniel Hannan described how Norway beats the EU. He argued that Norway offers “a handy example of how a country can prosper by having a free-trade relationship with the EU instead of joining the Brussels political institutions,” and debunked the claims of the pro-EU lobby that Norway’s strategy couldn’t possibly […]
At the moment, all conversations about licencing and regulating occupations seem to revolve around Uber. While governments across the world fret about safety concerns and the ‘unfairness’ towards conventional taxis, consumers are taking full advantage of the lower prices and increased competition Uber has injected into the market. Much as taxi drivers protest (and they […]
Can a small country remain economically and politically independent from its neighbours? How useful is it to even try and defend one’s own different ways? Is it at all possible to ward off unwanted spill-ins? Is sovereignty only a dream? More than ever, these questions haunt the Swiss regarding their relationship with the rest of […]
If France is the sick man of Europe then Italy is the dying man of Europe. Everything that is wrong with France is 10 times worse in Italy. The Italians sleep-walked into the euro at a suicidal exchange rate (1 euro: 2,000 lire) that doubled the price overnight of the things that matter in life […]
You think the euro crisis is bad? Think how much worse – how monstrously worse – it might have been. Suppose that, at the end of the 1990s, Tony Blair and Nick Clegg and Ken Clarke, and Nissan and Goldman Sachs and Unilever, and the CBI and the TUC and the BBC, and Sir Martin […]
Does Giles Fraser have something on the producers of the Thought for the Day slot? What other explanation can there be for his ubiquity on BBC Radio 4? Again, apologies if you are reading this outside the UK and have no idea who Giles Fraser is. He is the trendy left-wing vicar who seems to […]
Last week – and four parliamentary terms after other parts of the UK had already received handsome forms of self-government – William Hague proposed a very modest and not particularly intelligible plan to ensure England had some devolution of its own. His plan would not allow English MPs to propose England-only legislation. It does nothing […]
Most Anglo-Saxon economists join politicians in the ClubMed countries in their view that the German obsession with principles (e.g. balanced budgets, the no-bail-out clause or the prohibition of monetizing public debt) is bad for the Eurozone. Kantian “Ordnungspolitik” may be fine for the long run (or may have been fine in the long gone past […]
Banks will continue to go bust from time to time just as banks will continue periodically to get themselves into trouble that stops short of collapse. They are, after all, run by human beings. All the regulation and micromanagement in the world will not eliminate the human tendency to over-excitement in a boom and the […]
At PMQs last week Ed Miliband repeatedly attacked David Cameron for giving an “£145 million tax cut to hedge funds”, claiming that it was payback for donations from City tycoons and hedge fund managers. A pretty extraordinary claim that the Labour party is persisting with despite there having been no such thing and despite having […]
Scarcely a day passes by without one hearing of a new techno-bogeyman lurking in the wings, waiting to tear apart the fragile fabric of society. From anti-tech doomsayers like Evgeny Morozov to the less nuanced, more rapacious talking heads on nightly news, it appears as though techno-pessimism grips every facet of our lives. We are […]
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