Huge blow to UK Bankers

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&s…

Dec. 9 (Bloomberg) -- Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling imposed a 50 percent levy on banker bonuses and said he will increase income taxes after elections next year as the worst recession on record drives up U.K. government borrowing.

10 Comments
 

Pay will iterate to a fair after-tax amount over time or good bankers will leave and work elsewhere.

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Increase in income tax announced a while ago; National Insurance increase new though.

Banks are paying the special bonus tax - plenty of ways around it from what I've heard.

 

The way around this is simple for the firms. You use one of your non-UK-domiciled legal entities to pay the bonuses to staff in the UK. You simply transfer the bonus pool to a different office who pays the actual bonus to employees. I don't see how it's illegal, and it avoids the special tax. You still have to pay taxes on funds bround into the UK, but if you have an offshore account (and you're not American), you can avoid the taxes altogether.

Thoughts?

 
Best Response

I am pretty sure banks will find a way around that...maybe people will get a raise just before the bonus and next year they will have a drop in salary :-) To follow up with the previous comment it was clearly mention by top UK gov people that they will monitor any tax avoidance scheme so I am curious to see what type of actions will be taken there...but at the end of the day I agree that certainly something can be done overseas, not sure how you can get back the money to the UK...anyway that will be interesting to follow. I am in London, it's a huge story here as you can imagine, Barclays CEO even told that bankers will fly away from London, etc...

 

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