Interesting article on the Isle of Man in "The Spectator"

If not stolen then denied through a taxation loophole

I mean all of the above

Finding a way to reduce your tax bill by relocating your business a few miles away whilst still enjoying the same privileges which businesses and individual in the UK have

Physically relocating to another jurisdiction is neither tax avoidance nor evasion: people are entirely free to do that once they have cleared their tax liability in their former jurisdiction. Or are you arguing that people are mere chattels of the state and should be required to live, work and pay tax wherever they were born until the day they die?

There seem to be two arguments here:


Pol: the rules are the rules and people are free to do what they want to gain an advantage

Zeo/Me: Britain's complicity in offshore tax dodging via its overseas territories and crown dependencies is immoral and should be stopped


No surprise Pol defends this situation. He's an unapologetic Tory who comfortable with a lot of their divisive and unfair policies

And personally benefits from the system

To be fair to Poli you're jumping to conclusions there.

We could give him the benefit of doubt and assume that he emigrated from Monaco to the IoM in order to donate 20% of his income to help the locals out with schools, hospitals, etc 

On the contrary, I was pushing 40 and concluded that that additional 20% could much more usefully be employed funding my retirement rather than enabling a Labour government to buy votes through creating a civil service client electorate and offering benefit bribes. Not sure where Monaco comes into the equation though, as I've never even set foot in the place.

Monaco may have low tax rates, but the sky-high cost of living would wipe out the advantages for all but the über-wealthy. As for my motivations: reducing my tax bill obviously played a huge part, though the obvious beginnings of urban decay in Worthing didn't exactly make me keen to stay. Moving to the island was the best thing I ever did, as the crime rate is low, the surroundings are beautiful, and I've made an amazing set of friends.