Tax tourists

The news that far fewer Brits are telling HMRC that they are working abroad takes me back to a documentary I did for the BBC a few years ago about digital nomads. People who can work anywhere in the world so long as they have a laptop and wifi.

At the end of the documentary I asked a tax expert at a huge consultancy something along these lines. “Where does a Brit with an Irish passport, living in Portugal, working on a computer server in Norway owned by a German company, making a website in America for a Canadian games maker and paid by the company’s Luxembourg office, actually need to pay their taxes. The answer was very simple, “We have no idea.”

Since covid millions of people have started working from home and many of them from their second home abroad. You just smudge the back drop and hope no one can hear the kids in the pool. The claim that there are fewer such people this year than last is a joke and a worrying one.

The idea that you can do work in Portugal, Spain, France or anywhere else and just pay tax in the UK, or avoid paying tax anywhere is very dangerous for government revenue and peoples’s long term prospects.

One day the tax authorities will decide to do something about this, they cannot afford to lose vast amounts of money and they cooperate.

I am sure the Greek tax authorities would love some of your money, the Italian tax police will be knocking at your door, the Inland Revenue will send you the bill by air mail.

The fact that no one is yet sure where tax should be paid, doesn’t mean if governments lose enough they won’t work it out.

Double taxation hurts, working in another country probably means you owe tax there too and the fact that you are working tax free probably only means you are running up a huge unpaid tax bill, plus fines, plus interest.

Millionaires don’t dodge taxes by accident, they work hard at it. If you are doing it by accident, I’m betting you are going to get caught.

Jonty’s Jottings

Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.

By Jonty Bloom Media