I was reminded by the Economist headline 'What did you do in the non-dom wars?' that I have not said anything here about the taxation of non-domiciled UK residents. It's enough of a challenge to keep on top of changes in tax law without entering what has turned out to be a heated and polarised debate, but this is an important issue for several reasons, not least the credibility of our tax system.
Polly Toynbee makes it perfectly clear where she stands in the Guardian, although she tends to get a little carried away. This is a shame because there is some merit in her arguments on this issue. And she is being rather unfair on the Financial Times, although she may not have seen Vince Cable's FT article when she penned hers.
Cable argues for the huge advantages of non-dom status to be restricted to people who are not yet fully settled in the UK. "A seven-year cut-off seems reasonable", he says.
He is right to criticise the £30,000 fee, for non-doms of seven years residency or more, which he calls a "poll tax". It is, he says, "prohibitive for large numbers of non-doms with modest income or gains" but it amounts to the cost of a small party for the likes of Abramovich and Mittal.
My LexisNexis colleague Mike Truman, editor of Taxation, went further. Non-doms may create wealth in the UK but so do UK domiciled entrepreneurs, he said in response to the announcement in last October's pre-budget report. "Why do we want to create a playing field that is tilted against the latter?" he asked. The £30,000 charge was "legalised bribery" and a "cheap political stunt", he said. It's difficult to argue with that.
It is also difficult to know what to make of surveys that suggest that non-doms may decide to leave the UK. As the Economist article points out, London is more than a tax haven. You have to be sceptical about some of the threats of an exodus, which are clearly designed to put pressure on the government.
I have seen nothing to change my mind on this issue. In a letter published in London's Evening Standard over a year ago I pointed out that the remittance basis anomaly benefits not only billionaires:
"Take A and B, two UK-resident taxpayers ... B has a non-UK domicile just because his parents had one when he was born. B has a massive tax advantage over A, at least in terms of income tax and capital gains tax ..."
Nick Cohen had asked, in the Standard, why the working and middle classes should obey the law and cough up "when plutocrats who are rich beyond the dreams of avarice get away scot-free".
Now, as Truman said, there is no legitimate argument for non-doms to be allowed to "bung the taxman thirty grand in order to make him go away".
And as I said in the Standard, you have to wonder whether "working and middle class" taxpayers will start to ask why they should comply with a tax system that favours a growing number of people purely on the basis of their "domicile of origin".
