TUC: End Tax Loopholes For Super Rich

TUC General Secretary Brendan Barber has today (Tuesday) called on the Chancellor Alistair Darling to use the Pre-Budget Report and the Comprehensive Spending Review to close tax loop-holes for the super-rich and use the proceeds to make further progress towards the Government’s target of ending child poverty.

Brendan Barber said: “The Chancellor should use his statement today to signal a crackdown on the abuse of tax loop-holes by the super-rich. No one is calling for a return to penal marginal rates of tax, but it is only right that the super-rich pay a fair share of their income.

‘Alistair Darling should look at both the tax treatment of private equity and the taxation of non-domiciles. Introducing a tougher test for non-doms could easily raise the £4 billion that would provide what most experts say is needed to make the required progress on Labour’s child poverty pledge.

‘What he should not do is take up Conservative suggestions. Even if their poll tax for non-doms is legal, it fails to tax fairly the real super-rich, and then uses the proceeds to help not the poor or even the middle classes but the top one in twenty who actually pay inheritance tax. It’s redistribution from the super-rich to the merely extremely well off.”