Rich are getting richer…

PRESS REPORTS say average household incomes may have dropped by 0.2%
last year. Other reports say around 2.6 million children are still
living in poverty. But Britain’s super-rich are grinning all over their
faces!

According to the new Sunday Times (ST) rich list, they’ve seen
"their wealth soar into the stratosphere" in the past year.
The richest 1,000 are now ‘worth’ a record £250 billion, that’s 23.3%
up on last year!

What’s more, when Blair came to power in 1997 the wealth of the
richest 1,000 was a ‘mere’ £99 billion. So in eight years of New Labour
government, the super-rich have seen a 152% increase in wealth!

The ST says that Britain is now the best place in the world to make
money. Rich list’s number one, Indian born steel magnate Lakshmi Mittal,
made his money exploiting workers in India and Indonesia. He now has
greedy fingers in pies worldwide from USA to China. His wealth went up
from £3.5 billion to £14.8 billion through mergers and takeovers.

Britain’s second richest is Chelsea FC owner Roman Abramovich, whose
£7 billion fortune came mainly from privatising Russian oil. Then comes
the Duke of Westminster (£5.6 billion). This blue-blooded property
developer owns much of central London.

…but hide trillions to avoid tax

THE WORLD’S millionaires are hiding a staggering $11.5 trillion
($11,500 billion) of assets in ‘offshore’ companies to avoid paying
taxes. That’s equal to ten times Britain’s GDP put into offshore tax
havens.

They make this incredible fortune but pay no tax on it. The Tax
Justice Network found out that worldwide, these assets earn the world’s
richest individuals an astonishing $860 billion each year. So even in
today’s rich-friendly tax regimes, governments annually miss out on $255
billion of lost taxes!

That’s without looking at the vast fortunes that multinational
corporations lock away in the 63 tax havens, many in British
protectorates or former colonies.

Tax avoidance costs Britain’s Treasury up to £85 billion a year –
that’s considerably more than Britain spends on the NHS. In 2001,
reporters worked out that if billionaire media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s
Newscorp Investments had paid corporation tax in Britain at the then
going rate of 30%, the government would have got £350 million over 11
years.

That could have built seven new hospitals, 50 secondary schools or
300 primary schools. As it was, Murdoch paid virtually nothing. He
celebrated recently by buying a £22 million luxury residence opposite
Central Park in Manhattan and a house in Beijing.

The Socialist Party supports any moves that try to impose progressive
taxation – that’s where the rich pay more tax than the workers and
middle class!

But if the capitalists threaten a ‘strike of capital’ to stop this,
as they often threaten to do, we would fight to take these rich
individuals’ companies into public ownership and build a socialist
society that could really start to change things.



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