Tax
Barometer
French lessons France’s former president Nicolas Sarkozy was sentenced to three years in jail, with two of them suspended, for…
The case for keeping business taxes low, simple and competitive
Why should business pay tax at all? That’s a provocative but forlorn question to ask in Budget week. Business pays…
If taxes must rise, Sunak should pick on private equity
It’s not axiomatic that taxes must rise to pay for the pandemic, if you seriously believe the surge in growth,…
The Barrett hearings show the Democrats have wised up since Kavanaugh
There was nothing original about Amy Coney Barrett’s appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee other than her incessant professions of…
Do you want a Trump or Biden economy?
It would be great if the President was an icon of virtue and goodness, but he isn’t. As much as…
Barometer
Culture clashes The pop star Adele was accused of ‘cultural appropriation’ for adopting a Jamaican hairstyle for the online Notting…
Who will pay for a mega-spending Biden administration?
Over the last month, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden has proposed roughly $4 trillion in new tax hikes. That is…
Can Scotland afford independence?
How would an independent Scotland have fared during the pandemic? We found out this week on the annual release of…
Italy owes Wales reparations for the wrongs of the Roman Empire
There’s talk of reparations in the air. Lobbyists from around the world are demanding sin-payments from former colonial powers. Let…
Labour’s wealth tax proposal is deeply flawed
Will Labour ever stop pushing for punitive taxation? Not content with gifting the Conservatives an 80 seat majority in December,…
High life
Gstaad The staff are back and all is well, as they used to say long ago in faraway places. The…
Can anyone lay a glove on Donald Trump?
Donald Trump just got another spot of good news. The Supreme Court has cut him a break by taking up…
The RMT strike is a demonstration of what to expect in a Corbyn-McDonnell regime
It’s unusual for a Governor of the Bank of England to announce his next job before Downing Street has named…
What happened to the other Dukes of York?
Old Dukes of York Prince Andrew is the 14th royal to have held the title Duke of York (three were…
It’s easy to sex up the business of paying tax
To fund the war against Napoleon in 1813, Princess Marianne of Prussia invented an ingenious tax-raising scheme. Wealthy Prussians were…
The super rich aren’t all bad – some even pay their taxes
Paying tax — which many of us have been doing this week before HMRC’s 31 January deadline — is a…
The slow death of the public-sector pension
Hedge funds have already spotted it: Jim Mellon’s latest book, Juvenescence, reviews the new science that will lengthen our lives…
High life
My, my, the rich are under attack everywhere, and I thank God the Panama Papers didn’t include the name of…
Portrait of the week
Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, after spending a week parrying questions about his late father’s investment fund Blairmore, suddenly…
The road to Panama
The 11 million documents leaked from Panama lawyers Mossack Fonseca tell us much that we know already. It’s hardly news…
Barometer
Squire power The village of West Heslerton in Yorkshire was put up for sale at £20 million after its owner,…
Investment: Buy to lose
If you pick up a buy-to-let property now, you’ll be fighting the full might of the Chancellor and the Bank of England
Tax me more, but don’t touch my dishwasher
There was a big fuss a year or so ago about a book by a French chap called Piketty about…
Mr Bear is back: sit tight because he may be with us for a while
Like Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant, we’ve just been savaged by a bear but we’ll probably survive. Leading UK-listed stocks…
Bad driving
From ‘The Conscription of Wealth’, The Spectator, 22 January 1916: At recent race meetings streams of motor-cars have proceeded from…
