News item today that france has announced tax rises for the rich and big companies. Following, I understand, the beginnings of a campaign by millionaires to pay more tax.
The BBC naturally had some experts in to debate it. The pro tax guy said he had studied this for years. In the UK no rise in tax rates had ever led to a drop in revenue. Nor were any millionaires leaving the country, and they never had for reasons of tax.
The anti guy said this was nonsense and there was loads of evidence that raising rates reduced tax take, and made people leave the country. The figures for the recent tax rise on high earners showed it had either raised nothing or reduced take.
The pro man said the figures hadnt been released yet, so it was difficult to decide what they showed. He said that quite a few high earners had indeed been leaving the country recently, because they used to work for banks and had just been sacked, so they had gone back to whichever countries they came from. He also said he had made a study of people over the years who had declared they would leave the country if tax rose. When tax did rise, none of them left.