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Comment by peteretep | Hacker News Reader

Isle of Man has zero percent corporate tax on (most) money earned outside the Isle of Man, which includes money earned in the UK. If you're a non-resident citizen of the UK, you can deposit your dividends from your Isle of Man company in your UK bank account, tax free.

For the time being, IOM companies have GB VAT numbers, and a banking system that integrates seamlessly with the UK one, as well as a postal system (quick, which country is 15 Hope Street, Douglas, IM1 1AQ, British Islands?). This makes the sales process to UK and EU companies painless.

So if you're a British citizen who's managed to convince HMRC you're not resident in the UK, this is a great way to pay very little tax. BUT WAIT, there's more!

If you _are_ resident in the UK, and a British citizen, but you can convince HMRC that you are in fact not _domiciled_ in the UK, you can pay HMRC £30,000 a year flat-tax, and only pay tax on the money you bring into the UK -- so if you keep it in IOM, or send it to Guernsey, it's tax-free, as long as you manage to avoid CFC regulations, which are left as an exercise for the reader.

None of this should be considered as tax advice, although if you genuinely don't live in the UK, and aren't anywhere else long enough to be resident (that DigiNomadLyfe), then the top three points should be of significant interest.

If you think the owner of the Daily Mail and similar glitterati[0] should be paying more tax than a Senior Developer in London, paragraph 4 needs some scrutiny.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_with_non-domici...

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I lived for four years in the IoM, had an amazing time (until Bushy's closed anyway). But in the process, I opened an IoM bank account to pay my salary into. I carried on using this account for years afterwards (it was with the IoM branch of a UK bank). I benefited from not paying any tax on the interest on my savings account, because tax haven. Not a huge perk, but a nice one anyway.

And then, in the wake of the tax haven scandals around 2005/6, the HMRC wrote me a nice letter explaining that, while I had obeyed all the rules at the time, they were retroactively changing the rules and I needed to declare all the interest I had earned on my offshore account over the last 8 years. The final bill came to about fifty quid, so no major damage done. But the lesson has stuck with me.

HMRC can and will change the rules at any time, and apply them retroactively. Getting super smart about taxes, especially by using loopholes and tax havens, can be counter-productive. Unexpected tax demands are not fun.

>The final bill came to about fifty quid,

I'm thinking you weren't really who they wanted to target anyway.

indeed :) But still a good lesson.

Sometimes it feels like the taxman is very keen on targeting Joe Ordinary who saved fifty quid, and completely ignoring the billionaires who evaded tens of millions in taxes.

At a guess this might not be far from the truth. For sub a few hundred pound almost no one would bother fighting it. Above a few hundred thousand almost everyone will. At best they'd have to expend a lot of time and money to get a fraction of the original amount back.

My wealthy great aunt paid an accountant to minimise her tax bill. She said it worked out around even, the costs of the accountant were about what she saved on the taxes, but she preferred paying the accountant than the government.

Of course, 20% of what she paid the accountant goes straight to the government in the form of VAT.

Then, 20% of what's left goes again when the accountant spends any of it (ok, some thing are zero-rated [books] but on the other hand others have extra duties on top [fuel])...

Then there's the accountant's own tax bill...

"but she preferred paying the accountant"

Why?

At the extreme, would she have preferred to pay 100% to accountants rather than the government?

If everyone took that view, who would pay for the schools and roads etc? I suppose that wouldn't happen, the tax rate would be increased, so everyone's paying tax and a massive accountants bill, so really the rational move is to pay the tax.

There are a lot of things that government spends taxes on that many of us don't agree with. Better to spend that money employing someone providing a useful service than contributing to fund things that you find immoral, such as fighting unjust wars.

this. exactly. She'd lived through WWII, been bombed by the Luftwaffe, operated one of the first radar stations, and had firm opinions on governments.

Of course, who do you think pays the taxman? Who writes the laws or has power, influence, and money to shape them?

It's not an accident, it's by design.

It might feel like that but fortunately it isn’t true. People and companies who earn above a certain amount get a ‘relationship manager’ at HMRC and also get classified as low/medium/high compliance risk by them.

I think there are rules they consider ‘intended loopholes’ (like the fact that you can designate a different house your main residence every 9 months and effectively benefit from two primary residence allowances for CGT, or the ability to transfer assets between spouses tax free), many of which benefit richer people/larger companies more than poorer/smaller ones, and others they consider ‘unintended consequences’ which they do go after in a number of ways - all the way through to effectively retrospective changes to the law (like the Loan Charge).

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21181664

> Getting super smart about taxes, especially by using loopholes and tax havens, can be counter-productive. Unexpected tax demands are not fun.

Sure. However, getting slightly smart about it, and not -- for example -- paying tax in a country you are demonstrably not living in, is probably a good idea.

Unless you’re an American living abroad, in which case it’s tax evasion.

For that, there's FEIE, and moving your residence to Puerto Rico

Can you elaborate on that?

Puerto Rican residents don't pay federal income taxes (unless they work for the federal government).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taxation_in_Puerto_Rico

Foreign Earned Income Exclusion [0].

[0]: https://www.irs.gov/individuals/international-taxpayers/fore...

please expand

FEIE phases out at just over $100k for singles, $200k for marrieds, and then you are taxed at the typical bracket for earnings in excess of.

Keeping things in USD for simplicity then converting at the end.

So say you live in the UK, and you + spouse earn $350k USD, UK will tax just under 40%, but lets go ahead and round it to 40%, then the US will tax the $150k at 24% to $315k and 32% to $350k.

So back of napkin calculations, your take home in the UK will be $210k and then you owe the US another $40k, making your total take home in GBP as of today, 140k.

Wouldn't the $40k that you owe the US get wiped out by the foreign tax credit?

It depends on how you are taxed, and in which country you were taxed.

The FTC only applies to taxes that are applied to YOU. So if you are set up through some Limited Company that pays out dividends or other non-PAYE scheme, YMMV.

I tried to keep it simple (overly simplistic, obviously) and specifically to the FEIE that GGP mentioned.

I'm not an international tax law expert, and I'm sure for less than the $40k in my example above you can have someone set up the proper shelters you need to limit your taxation, but the FTC

What rules were they retroactively changing?

If you're resident in the UK, you have to pay tax on all interest income, and this isn't new.

Were you not living in the UK during the period?

BTW HMRC doesn't make/change the rules, although they do interpret and enforce them.

while I had obeyed all the rules at the time, they were retroactively changing the rules and I needed to declare all the interest I had earned on my offshore account over the last 8 years.

Are you sure they changed the rules? It sounds like they might have realised they hadn't been implementing/enforcing the European Union Savings Directive (EUSD) [1] correctly, and therefore retroactively enforced the rules. Or perhaps they found that the EU rules overrode the UK/IM rules, which were retroactively found to be null and void.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Savings_Directive

does it matter? there were some rules, that I was obeying, then there were some other rules, that were retroactively enforced. From my point of view, same same ;)

Yes, I think it does matter. It's arbitrary and capricious if HMRC can change the rules and retroactively apply them.

It's totally reasonable (absent a statute of limitations lapse) IMO for them to go back and retroactively enforce rules that you weren't following once they detect that. (I would even entertain that it would be unreasonable for them to not do so.)

not from my point of view. I don't know all the tax rules (no-one does, not even a specialist tax consultant or a HMRC employee). The different between a rule that isn't enforced and not-a-rule is meaningless. The difference between a rule that isn't enforced and a rule that no-one is aware of is meaningless.

Like I said, I obeyed all the rules, and then one was retroactively applied. It really doesn't matter whether the rule existed before or not.

And yes, all tax authorities are capricious. The stories I heard about the ATO in Australia make the HMRC look like a model of predictable reliability.

> I don't know all the tax rules

Generally, in almost every country, you need to declare your income, including that from abroad.

Claiming that knowing that is in any way equivalent to knowing all the tax rules is massively disingenuous.

This was income earned abroad. The rules are often different for that.

After living in the UK for a year and encountering this tax system firsthand, I'm convinced that one of the main reasons for Brexit is that rich people in England are worried that EU tax harmonization could one day take away their sweet loopholes and convenient neighborhood tax havens.

I've personally benefitted from the system as a "resident non-domiciled" foreign citizen. But on the whole it's not fair to British taxpayers, and it's not fair to the rest of Europe to be a punching bag for this secret agenda whose enacters care more about continued personal enrichment than national or European economies.

This is my main reason for supporting the European Union. Individual countries aren't big enough to have serious power against tax-avoiding corporation/citizens. But the EU is.

like China!

It's about balance. Government and business need to fight and balance each other out

What do you mean - we were always at war with Oceania...

China is a dictatorship.

> I'm convinced that one of the main reasons for Brexit is that rich people in England are worried that EU tax harmonization

it's coming January 2020, the UK is terrified of it as they own overseas tax havens all over the world.

https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/policies/anti-tax-avoidan...

That's an interesting bit of information to illuminate Boris Johnson's insistence that Britain must exit by 31 Oct 2019. "I would rather be dead in a ditch than seek an extension," he said.

There’s a constitutional problem with that though.

Most of these territories are internally self governing including in respect of tax law, and Westminster has long since ceased legislating for them. Going back to Westminster acting as a colonial power is something which they are strongly opposed to themselves.

It's not about the UK legislating for them. It's about the UK not protecting them anymore. The UK constantly works to keep them off tax haven lists.

>After living in the UK for a year and encountering this tax system firsthand, I'm convinced that one of the main reasons for Brexit is that rich people in England are worried that EU tax harmonization could one day take away their sweet loopholes and convenient neighborhood tax havens.

It's the same reason they hate Corbyn with such a seething passion too, and McDonnell even more (McDonnell quipped that he found the "magic money tree"; it was growing in overseas tax havens).

No, they just realise how utterly incompetent Corbyn is.

If he keeps sitting on that fence, his bum's going to be full of splinters...

>his bum's going to be full of splinters...

This particular talking point was kicked off and repeated frequently by the two newspapers who are owned by notorious tax avoiders - mail and telegraph. It then filtered down to the rest of the population.

They're also the two who are most pro brexit.

I have watched Brexit avidly but comfortably from across the pond for the last two years. Every PMQs Corbyn has got up and, in the earlier days, ignored Brexit entirely, and now, he complains about lack of clarity and progress by the Government. While he and his party have never had any clear position on it, by design. The Tories' current position of hard Brexit or bust may be insane, but at least it is a position. The Lib Dems and SNP have one too. But not Labour.

So while this "talking point" may have been noticed by the Mail and Telegraph, it has been apparent to many of us for some time.

If Labour had kicked Corbyn out for, say, Starmer, and taken a clear soft Brexit or even Remain position, they could have long ago taken Government from the Tories, who have obviously badly screwed up everything in Brexit that it is possible to screw up.

On the other hand I am keeping my fingers crossed for the incredibly unlikely event of a unity government under Ken Clarke.

TL;DR: philpem is completely correct.

>While he and his party have never had any clear position on it, by design.

Their position is to negotiate another deal (if possible) and put it to a public vote, and put the existing deal to a vote if not. It's pretty clear albeit not so easy to understand for the perennially simple minded (for whom simple messages like "remain at all costs" and "we must execute the glorious brexit revolution on october 31st" appeal).

Unfortunately it isn't possible to make promises about what will be possible to negotiate with the EU.

>If Labour had kicked Corbyn out for, say, Starmer, and taken a clear soft Brexit or even Remain position, they could have long ago taken Government from the Tories

This is a theory that's quite popular in the London remainer bubble. Unfortunately London forgetting that the rest of the country exists is partly what got us into this mess, and it's not a winning strategy to keep doing it.

> Their position is to negotiate another deal (if possible) and put it to a public vote

That's not really much more information - revoke if the deal is not accepted? What do they actually want from the deal? What is the party's true desired outcome, being in the EU or not being in the EU?

It's very hard to form an accurate picture of Corbyn. I can't think of anything impressive he's done, and he's doing tremendously badly in the polls against a disaster government - but all the media coverage is so heavily slanted against him that I'm reluctant to form a negative opinion that's clearly being indoctrinated into me.

> What do they actually want from the deal?

The conventional wisdom is that the party is split between Remainers and Leavers, and that Corbyn himself is a closet Leaver who wants to leave so he can get out from under EU rules on state aid and bring about a glorious socialist revolution.

If this is remotely true, then Corbyn's personal aim is to help the Tories to a no-deal Brexit, or even a hard Brexit under the WA, but in such a way that Labour does not get the blame. However, much of the party wants a soft Brexit or Remain so he cannot be seen to be doing this.

Hence why he does not want, and never has wanted, to obtain Government until Brexit has been sorted (badly) by the Tories, and to come along and pick up the pieces. The entire Labour strategy has been to completely disassociate themselves from Brexit and this latest non-proposal is just a continuation of that.

> What is the party's true desired outcome, being in the EU or not being in the EU?

In short, they do not know and are split. The only thing they agree on is not being blamed for either Remain, soft Leave, or hard Leave. And whoever is in power when the final decision is made most certainly will get blame for any decision taken.

>The conventional wisdom is that the party is split between Remainers and Leavers, and that Corbyn himself is a closet Leaver who wants to leave so he can get out from under EU rules on state aid and bring about a glorious socialist revolution.

More of an absurd conspiracy theory than conventional wisdom, that.

>If this is remotely true, then Corbyn's personal aim is to help the Tories to a no-deal Brexit

Which I suppose he would achieve by passing a law that prohibits the tories from achieving a no deal brexit?

If he truly didn't want that he probably wouldn't have whipped for it.

Wouldn't be the first time his position was completely misrepresented though... and the motive for the various parts of the media owned by tax avoiders to do this is pretty obvious.

>he cannot be seen to be doing this.

How convenient for the conspiracy theory that he does and says the exact opposite of what he truly "wants" to do because he can't be "seen" to be doing it.

OK, I confess that no one really knows what is going on in the mind of Jeremy Corbyn, possibly not even the man himself. What is unquestioned fact is that the party is split on Brexit. Known facts about Corbyn are:

- He has opposed expansion of the EU throughout his political career

- After the referendum, he urged rules on state aid to be jettisoned on the grounds they would no longer be valid after Brexit anyway

- He is a self-identified socialist and is far left, even by Labour standards

My take is that overall, he is anti-EU but has been forced into a publicly neutral or pro-EU (during the referendum) position because that is the position of the majority of his party. What are his precise motivations for this, I do not know.

Thus I read his whipping against no-deal and his new stance on a referendum as more of a forced concession to his party, and as a tool to beat the Tories over the head with, than as something arising out of his personal convictions. Especially because of how long it took him to arrive at those positions. But no one can know for sure.

Keep in mind "no no-deal", which was JC's only position for so long, is not really a position, as pjc50 pointed out. This was made painfully obvious during the series of indicative votes during the spring.

>OK, I confess that no one really knows what is going on in the mind of Jeremy Corbyn, possibly not even the man himself.

It's fairly plain from the people who listen to his words and watch his actions but I can imagine it would be fairly confusing understanding him through the UK media filter. That is entirely deliberate.

>What is unquestioned fact is that the party is split on Brexit.

Depends what you mean by "split". If you mean they actually split - no (bar the tinge lot) - the tory party DID split themselves on brexit though, and they will do again very soon.

If you mean that there are differences of opinion, yes. Like every party they have that. Yet they still have an agreed policy.

>He has opposed expansion of the EU throughout his political career

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/mp/10133/jeremy_corbyn/isling...

Note the part that says "Jeremy Corbyn generally voted for more EU integration". If you're wondering who gave you the impression that the exact opposite of the truth was true, the answer is likely "tax avoiders".

Note that the Lisbon treaty was about tax avoidance... not integration.

>He is a self-identified socialist and is far left, even by Labour standards

By European or UK historic standards he is pretty mild. The fact that the overton window has shifted in this country does not make him extreme.

If you divorce personality and ask people about policies... most people agree with Labour's. You'll find that the country is actually "far left". It's why a lot of media tries to avoid talking about his policies and focus on scandal, personality and lies.

>My take is that overall, he is anti-EU

Of course, that's the take that most people who listen to the media and don't look at the voting records take.

>Thus I read his whipping against no-deal and his new stance on a referendum as more of a forced concession to his party, and as a tool to beat the Tories over the head with, than as something arising out of his personal convictions. Especially because of how long it took him to arrive at those positions

He changed this positions largely because circumstances changed. Our relationship with the EU has changed and our negotiating position has changed and sensible parties react to that.

I do wonder why only Labour gets criticized this when every other party has also changed their positions - multiple times.

> "Jeremy Corbyn generally voted for more EU integration". If you're wondering who gave you the impression that the exact opposite of the truth was true

To get a neutral source on this before I posted my last post, I went to Wikipedia, where it says JC voted against:

- The 1975 EC referendum

- Maastrict treaty

- Lisbon treaty

In addition to these very important votes, there are an awful lot of absences and no votes on the link you sent. I am really not sure how that site drew the conclusion it did. If it was simply by tallying votes without weighing their importance, that is a bad way to do it.

I am well aware British media is awful, possibly even worse than US media, so I don't really get most of my information from there. When I do read it, I take it with a huge grain of salt. Most of my opinions about Corbyn himself come from watching him in PMQs and in Parliament debates.

> If you divorce personality and ask people about policies... most people agree with Labour's

Entirely possible and I take no issue with any of Labour's positions except on Brexit. If Brexit weren't happening and I were a UK citizen, I could easily see myself voting Labour. As it is, I would probably vote LD.

As for Corbyn, I was merely saying he was on the left side even within his own party in the current day. You are not wrong about the Overton window but it does not change this reality.

The party hasn't split in the manner of the SDP's creation, but the views are split in the sense that the majority of MP's are remain, but the majority of membership appear to be heavily toward leave.

The whole official stance on Brexit is a clusterfuck, and while "negotiate another deal, referendum and campaign on one side depending on negotiation" may be an attempt to sound pragmatic, it hardly translates into an election winning policy or slogan. Quite apart from which the available wiggle room for negotiating a different deal has been very clearly laid out by the EU from the start. That hasn't changed. That can't change without UK compromise. He isn't getting his supposed left-Brexit.

There we get to the sticking point: The MP's would mostly like to remain, Corbyn speaks of the systemic problems of the EU and the UK would have more options out. Allegedly he was on the remain campaign for the referendum, yet did nothing. He disappeared, and was notable by his absence and silence. Is it any wonder no one is clear? Including those who might vote for him? Including his own MP's?

In historic terms he's not the most left they have been, but he's the furthest left since Foot. He shares some views with Kinnock and probably occupies a place in the political spectrum somewhere between the two. He may not be an old school sixties or seventies Labour Militant Tendency socialist, but he leans old-school left. To anyone of the Blair era, he's unrecognisable. Though that is more that Blairite Labour was Tory-Lite.

Still, despite the awful stance on Brexit, their election policies resonated with the electorate, and were a chance to get away from the dogmatic, idea-free Tory austerity. With a sensible, temporary stance on remain they could easily have been running the country by now. Dogma comes first.

Then politicians ask why people are sick of politics and politicians, and vote for the lunatic options.

>That's not really much more information - revoke if the deal is not accepted?

If the deal is not accepted, then referendum on may's deal vs remain, and they will campaign to remain. As I said.

>What do they actually want from the deal?

Single market and customs union as per the manifesto.

>What is the party's true desired outcome, being in the EU or not being in the EU?

Soft brexit.

>It's very hard to form an accurate picture of Corbyn

It's really not, but it's really easy to hear on the news that "it's confusing" and form an opinion that "it's confusing" even if it's actually, y'know, not

Watching from the US, I agree that it is unreasonably being called confusing.

However, you are leaving out the part where Labor has said they will end freedom of movement and the EU has said they will not agree to single market but no freedom of movement. So while the Labor position seems clear, it doesn't seem realistic and it is also unpopular with a large portion of the party (as would be any brexit position).

Antisemitism is also a major issue in Labor (not just Labor), although I get the strong sense that fewer UK voters care about that than one might hope. It still seems likely that some people who might otherwise be strong supporters of Corbyn do not enthusiasitically support him because of this.

Corby also seems to have a bit of an authoritarian streak, although it is hard for me to tell for sure since UK politics seem to be structurally more publicly heavy handed from the party leadership than US politics. It seems to affect how he responds to various issues and might make them have more negative effect than they might otherwise.

Another huge issue seems to be the raging battle between the human friendly side vs the business friendly side of Labor that should really be two different parties but can't because of the voting system (same issue in the US). I would agree that much of the vitrol against Corbyn seems to be due to him being on the human friendly side.

As a Brit watching from France, I have been a bit perplexed how the antisemitism issues have kept being brought up in the news. It reminds me a lot of Hilary's email server issues. Yes, there is a problem that needs addressing but it feels like some group is working hard to keep it in the news.

Corbyn and the people around him do seem to have a hardline feel to them. He seems unpragamatic and has had to fight against the more centralist elements of his own party, as well as being character assassinated relentlessly in the press. It's very unfortunate timing given how desirable it would have been to have a strong opposition during the last 3 years.

> the part where Labor has said they will end freedom of movement

Yes, and it is still in their manifesto, live today. That is completely incompatible with the SM. In fact, that is precisely the issue that led TM to the WA that is currently on offer. Barnier's slides, linked above, show exactly what tier of EU association is on offer without FoM. Hint: it is a very, very low tier.

So the idea that JC will eliminate FoM and achieve any agreement substantially different than what TM already got is utter pixie dust.

> Antisemitism

The antisemitism stuff is utter hogwash, as in these days it is 95% of the time. Labour says, maybe Israel possibly isn't treating Palestinians in the most ideal way, and maybe annexing large swathes of territory and building settlements could be less than the greatest possible good. Result: they're antisemitic, want the destruction of Israel, and are basically Nazis. Just like in the US. Heaven help anyone who supports BDS. At bare minimum they won't be allowed to visit the free and democratic country of Israel.

I agree about the deal; I think brexit would look different under Labor but that would mostly be in terms of UK law and less the agreement with the EU. In terms of the future relationship it seems like Labor would aim for customs union plus whatever they can get (as you say not much, although maybe something due to closer regulatory alignment in some areas). The withdrawal agreement seems unlikely to change.

I support BDS but I don't agree that is the main issue with Labor. The main issue I see is bullying personal comments that MPs make to each other and sometimes in public (similar to sexism, also a major issue) and the particularly bad way Corbyn has responded to it. In general, even when BDS is involved it is often the particular language used that is the issue (and many people who support BDS are also antisemitic). Some people argue that BDS is inherently antisemitic, but I don't see that being much of the issue with Labor (or in the US).

> Their position is to negotiate another deal (if possible) and put it to a public vote, and put the existing deal to a vote if not.

Yes, but even this very unclear proposition is a recent invention (last 3 months IIRC). Before that they had nothing. For 2+ years.

> Unfortunately it isn't possible to make promises about what will be possible to negotiate with the EU.

True enough -- to a point. But he could say what the general outline of the UK's goals in the negotiations will be and how the strategy/objectives/redlines will differ from TM's and Boris's.

At this point without specifics, we can all be forgiven for assuming it is more unicorn horns and pixie dust. Does "I'm going to go to Brussels and get a deal, a great deal" sound at all familiar by now? I am surprised anyone buys it at this point.

He cannot say for certain how the EU will respond to any proposal, although honestly Barnier has been crystal clear about what is required of the UK and what the options are.

And does Corbyn even know the difference between the Single Market and Customs Union? I have seen no indication that he does.

> Unfortunately London forgetting that the rest of the country exists

Going for a soft Brexit would be a compromise between the rural areas of England and Wales, who want to leave the EU entirely at any cost, and Scotland and NI (and Gibraltar), who want to remain. I would say it is the strategy that takes most into account the rest of the country in its entirety.

Whether or not such a stance would be to Labour's electoral advantage is anyone's guess. They have apparently concluded it would not be.

In fact the EU has been essentially forcing England to listen to the rest of the country -- NI, specificially. Which is quite ironic.

>Before that they had nothing. For 2+ years.

This is simply not true. They made it perfectly clear that they wanted a deal with the customs union and single market.

>True enough -- to a point. But he could say what the general outline of the UK's goals in the negotiations will be and how the strategy/objectives/redlines will differ from TM's and Boris's.

Could and did. The media has done a grand job of obfuscation about this despite the fact that it was right there in the manifesto.

>He cannot say for certain how the EU will respond to any proposal, although honestly Barnier has been crystal clear about what is required of the UK and what the options are.

What Barnier has been less clear about is whether they are prepared to negotiate a new deal at all after May's deal. The EU actually has flip flopped on that issue and its mind probably still isn't made up even now.

>And does Corbyn even know the difference between the Single Market and Customs Union? I have seen no indication that he does.

I suppose you have seen an indication that he doesn't?

> They made it perfectly clear that they wanted a deal with the customs union and single market.

I see. How does this square with whipping against the SM and CU in 2017? How is declaring an intention to "keep the benefits" of SM and CU without being in them anything but unicorns in light of Barnier's very clear explanations on the matter?

I am trying to find a clear timeline of Labour's ever-changing positions on these matters. [1] is the best I've found so far. What I can say is that after watching PMQs almost every week I found his position anything but clear.

But possibly I can agree with you so far as to say that it is not so much that Labour has had NO position whatsoever, as that their position has changed every 3-6 months and none of those positions were ever very fleshed out with detail.

> What Barnier has been less clear about is whether they are prepared to negotiate a new deal at all after May's deal. The EU actually has flip flopped on that issue and its mind probably still isn't made up even now.

I agree with this. In my reading, Barnier wants the WA to be accepted as is if possible, but would probably reopen negotiations if Labour took power. But it is indeed unclear.

> I suppose you have seen an indication that he doesn't?

Yes, for the longest time he was talking about a CU (THE CU? or something else, unclear...) and not mentioning the SM. Numerous public statements which I can find if requested. As in, for example, Clarke's proposal during indicative votes. This is nonsensical because a CU without the SM does virtually nothing.

[1] https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-corbyns-ch...

We have a divided country, and the only party capable of bridging the gap is Labour. The Tories position is as divisive and unhelpful as the Lib Dem's.

I'm not a particular Corbyn fan, but I'd like an intact nation at the end of this.

Corbyn's plan is to destroy the economy in the name of achieving fairness. We'll all be equally poor.

I hear this theory a lot, but the fact is most of the support for Brexit came from low income households, and people in low skilled or manual work. Generally the higher the household income, the lower the support for Brexit, even at the higher income levels.

https://www.jrf.org.uk/report/brexit-vote-explained-poverty-...

The low income households need someone to blame for their low income.

That's why the super-wealthy fund propaganda campaigns aimed at those folks.

Ah yes the "they didn't know what they were really voting for" argument. Insulting and pathetic.

Given that the UK Government doesn't seem to know what was voted for, it's hard to allege anyone else did.

Wealthy folks convincing the poor to vote against their own interests via propaganda has a long, storied history, too.

This Brexiteer response has become VERY old.

Do you really think all the people that voted for Brexit (and those that support Remain) have the capacity to understand all the intricacies of leaving the EU? The entire civil service working on it for the last 3 years barley have a clue. How is someone with their own life and work to manage supposed to find the time?

Brexit will fuck the poor but they are supporting it. I think that tells you all you need to know.

Do you really think all the people who voted remain have the capacity to understand the full intricacies of the consequences of remaining in the EU?

This is like when people say that all racists voted to leave, and someone pipes up with "I voted to leave and I'm not racist, that's really insulting". You are confusing the direction of if and then.

The referendum was won because people were swung to the leave side by the case made by the leave campaigners. A case full of immediately demonstrable lies. If at least 650000 of those people were specifically swung that way by those lies or anything from 30 years of Boris Johnson's EU fibs, then the "they didn't know what they were really voting for" argument is sound.

This isn't about a metropolitan liberal elite thinking abstractly and paternalistically about swathes of poor people in The North about whom I have only heard through Ken Loach films.

All of the halfwits I knew at school (who I still know) voted to leave (I can tell because they post "Get Brexit Done" memes next to ones about councils banning Christmas and illegal immigrants being entitled to more benefits than pensioners).

That doesn't mean that everyone who voted to leave is an idiot, but if the lies of the leave campaign attracted 650000 more of them than the remain campaign did, then the leave result was artificially bolstered by people who genuinely did not know what they were voting for.

Every single thing you just wrote applies to both sides of any political issue. That's politics: you get out there and advocate for a position and then people turn up and vote (or not). People being convinced to vote for something is not a sign that their vote is somehow invalid. It's literally how the political process works.

> People being convinced to vote for something is not a sign that their vote is somehow invalid.

Not inherently, but being convinced of falsehoods by a propaganda campaign should be of concern.

If you voted for McCain because you believe Republicans have better tax policies than Democrats, I'm fine with that. If you did it because you believe Obama's a secret Muslim infiltrator from Kenya, I'm not.

Both sides have a contingent of voters who aren't voting from a place of cool-headed informed rationality. Thinking that your own side is somehow immune from this is blinkered partisan thinking.

People being convinced by reasoned argument, and perhaps by skilled oratory is how the political process works.

People being convinced by outright lies is not how democracy works. If one side can gain the advantage by telling people that the other side currently forbids them buying four bananas at a time, and be believed, even given the extremely obvious evidence against it, then the system is broken.

> People being convinced by reasoned argument, and perhaps by skilled oratory is how the political process works.

In utopia. But in reality, it is possible to simultaneously hold that many people vote for very stupid reasons, and that their votes should be respected anyway.

Personally I am convinced that there never has been an election anywhere where the majority of voters on all sides were properly informed by facts and not motivated by ideology or outright lies.

Some in the UK imply that the referendum should be re-run because of those lies, just like some in the US imply the 2016 election was illegitimate because of Russian interference. That way lies madness, since every side in every election lies and manipulates, and every election would have to be re-run ad infinitum.

They didn't. They can't have done, because there were at least two conflicting Leave campaigns! The two binary choices of in/out of freedom of movement and the customs union gave rise to four possible options, and I saw all of those being advocated by different pundits.

That is partly why it's been a disaster. No one specific workable proposal has a majority of support.

(Would we have seen "they knew what they were voting for" if we'd chosen the Norway option? Somehow I doubt it)

People sell propaganda like that because it sells. Fear and xenophobia have always sold newspapers. It’s the selling newspapers that they’re getting rich from, Brexit is just a side effect.

When he was a journalist in Brussels, Boris Johnson used to turn up to news briefs and ask his fellow hacks “So what’s going on, and why is it bad for Britain”. The papers cheerfully blame Brussels for outrageous new EU rules, eating away at British sovereignty, er, sponsored by the British government. Johnson even railed against EU transport rules he campaigned for as Transport secretary.

Bashing foreigners is ever green, as a source of tabloid outrage journalism.

> I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.

Most of the support for Brexit came from tabloid newspapers owned by the ultra-rich.

Polls in the 2010-15 timeframe consistently showed that Britain's European relationship didn't even make the top 5 of issues amongst voters. Consistently fewer than 6% listed Europe as their most important issue: https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2018/12/11/1544504400000/The-onl...

Today more than 50% see Europe as the most important political issue. Yet nothing of substance changed in Britain's relationship with the EU in the past decade. Support for Brexit was manufactured and is draining the oxygen from solving UK's actual problems.

> Most of the support for Brexit came from tabloid newspapers owned by the ultra-rich.

Aren't most newspapers owned by the ultra-rich? Couldn't you just make the exact same arguments you leveled against your political opponents (that they were hoodwinked by "the media") against your own position? At the end of the day, people showed up and voted for something. Twice (basically). That means something.

"At the end of the day, people showed up and voted for something. Twice (basically). That means something."

"Voted for something and it means something" is the portrait of Brexit.

A question was posed to the public but it was never explained properly, and so nobody knows what it means. Did people want a border in Ireland? A third-party status for UK products imported to EU? A separation from European scientific collaboration?

These are just a few of the hundreds of open questions. The UK government hasn't figured it out in three years. Yet the vote definitely means "something", so "something" should happen.

You're changing the topic. The post I responded to was attempting to make the case that consent was manufactured and, thus (presumably), invalid. Do you accept my argument that this is not a reasonable approach to arguing about the validity of the Brexit vote?

What exactly are you arguing? That we shouldn’t examine the evidence of how Brexit became public issue #1 when it barely registered in polls a few years earlier?

The validity of the vote is simple: it means exactly what Parliament decides it means at any time. Referendums don’t become law automatically, and Britain doesn’t have a constitution that could force it (unlike some countries like Switzerland).

I am arguing that pointing to the fact that the owners of right wing publications are very wealthy is not evidence that somehow consent was manufactured for Brexit, since the owners of left wing publications are also very wealthy. Owners of large businesses are usually very wealthy. Doubly so with publishing businesses, which are often unprofitable, and, thus, require a wealthy benefactor to keep operating.

And pointing to fact that Brexit was a non-issue a few years before hand is also irrelevant. There are a myriad of political issues being hashed out now that weren't on anybody's radar a few years ago. This is a normal part of how media and popular culture work.

The only paper I think that actually really made a choice and tried to sell their readership on a side was The Sun. All the others pretty much had pro/anti brexit stances based on their readerships views on the matter.

That's not true. While most voters from low income households supported leaving the EU (as shown in the report you linked), 59% of leave votes came from middle class voters and only 17% of Leave votes were from skilled manual workers. The majority of middle class voters supported remaining, but because there are so many of them, middle class voters also made up the majority of leave voters. This 5 minute report [0] from the BBC looks into where the votes for Brexit came from and how the different classes voted.

[0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOMiUONDLno

I should have said they were the sting demographic.

Skilled manual workers is a very specific, carefully selected sub-group of manual and low income workers, chosen just for the purposes of the narative. Why that specific sub-group? A lot of skilled manual workers are even middle class.

Middle class voters are the majority of voters, so they account for well over 59% of remain voters as well. Manual labour and low income voters made the break though, no other significant demographic was more likely to vote for Brexit.

"I'm convinced that one of the main reasons for Brexit is that rich people in England"

Brexit (when it gets around to happening) is the result of a referendum. ~48% of the voting electorate are not all English and rich.

'Resident but not domiciled' is a very old system in the UK based on things like which country you have purchased a burial plot in. It's kept around because its a handy way to persuade oligarchs to live in the UK: they only get taxed on non UK income if they bring it into the UK, otherwise its tax free.

It was reformed several years ago to make it very hard for actual UK people to use. It is very difficult to give up UK domicile, and even if you manage to (by proving you no longer have any links) then HMRC will deem you UK domiciled anyway if you ever become UK tax resident. People who've been resident in UK for too many years are also deemed UK domiciled now.

> then HMRC will deem you UK domiciled anyway if you ever become UK tax resident

This appears to be not true in practice, reading the list of notable people with non-dom status.

The rules only changed in the 17/18 tax year. Also most prominent non doms have never previously been UK domiciled (eg the Goldsmith family have inherits non dom status for generations) or currently live and are tax resident abroad.

> For the time being, IOM companies have GB VAT numbers, and a banking system that integrates seamlessly with the UK one, as well as a postal system (quick, which country is 15 Hope Street, Douglas, IM1 1AQ, British Islands?). This makes the sales process to UK and EU companies painless.

I bet that's been used for VAT fraud with EU companies.

How would that be easier than VAT fraud in the UK proper?

"Carousel fraud", involving moving goods in and out of the EU and reclaiming VAT, maybe? Or the private jet / yacht scheme I mentioned above.

I remember when Amazon shipped all their CDs from Jersey to avoid VAT too.

Not just Amazon either.

Play.com based their entire business on this.

The more complex steps it has, the harder to investigate.

Examples: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/09/eu-takes-act... / http://www.iomtoday.co.im/article.cfm?id=43959&headline=Euro...

Can you actually use the money while you're not living in UK?

To use a simple example, say I'm a British citizen living in the US who is a freelancer (let's assume I'm non-resident, not just non-domiciled). Let's say I have US citizenship as well to get around any immigration issues. I create a company in the Isle of Man (assume I meet whatever qualifications are needed to do this). Can I just deposit my checks in the UK bank account, pay no taxes, and use the money in the US without violating any British laws? What about when traveling to the UK or EU? I'm almost sure I'd be violating American tax law, but I'm now curious how to put this into practice.

> Can I just deposit my checks in the UK bank account, pay no taxes, and use the money in the US without violating any British laws? What about when traveling to the UK or EU?

Yes, but this isn’t particularly surprising — I’d expect it to work the same way everywhere. The Brits would love you to deposit your money into their banking system, and if you’re not resident in the UK and the income hasn’t arisen in the UK there’s no tax basis for it there.

In your scenario, the problem is American CFC rules, where they’ll effectively declare your IOM company to be an American company, and tax it on that basis. Also if you’re tax resident somewhere (the US in your example), they’ll usually tax your worldwide income (although jurisdictions vary). Finally, though, if you’re an American citizen, it doesn’t matter where you’re tax resident, you still owe the IRS.

Yea, I knew that American tax law has provisions that (in theory) protect against this being legal.

Do professional athletes in Europe become resident in the Isle of Man at all? I know they use Monaco in somewhat similar manner.

HMRC: Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs (HM Revenue and Customs or HMRC)[3] is a non-ministerial department of the UK Government responsible for the collection of taxes, the payment of some forms of state support and the administration of other regulatory regimes including the national minimum wage.

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