Re: Physical Gold
Posted: April 20th, 2024, 2:04 pm
The present UK tax system is being directed towards levels of extreme invasions of privacy, where the state will have detailed sight into all your wealth/actions and demand insight into each and every transaction (along with your movement/thoughts etc.). A factor there is that the state repeatedly 'loses' large amounts of data so that might equally be assumed to be public/open information, which in the wrong hands is valuable data, enabling individuals to be highly/specifically targeted by thieves. That also leads to a tax rule-book that is very thick and micro managed, along with all of the investigators and lawyers/courts that involves. Labour have made its intent in that direction clear, £500 million more being thrown at expanding HMRC/investigators, by a entity that has a history of imposing a 130% historic highest taxation rate (Labour government 1968) - potentially confiscatory. Fair taxes are reasonable, unfair/punitive taxation is theft. IMO its unreasonable that to buy/sell the likes of gold requires that your name, address, photo, bank details etc. are all recorded both by the dealership and forwarded on to the state, and then perhaps passed on to be public, rightfully IMO you should be able to make such transactions privately, but the state sees that as being a potential for money-laundering or hiding wealth away from state confiscation, in effect are saying that its not your wealth - that perhaps was built up over years of your own work/effort, but the states, is just a loan to you, all of your efforts were not for your own/family, but for the state.
The way in which some generational families have countered such individual state controls was to acquire land (homes) in multiple countries along with the likes of art and gold, physical in-hand items that could be rolled up into a tube/bagged and moved. If a third of your wealth is in land (homes) spread across three different states/countries then the loss of one is a 11% wealth hit, maybe less if some residual value remains, relatively trivial given that even a regular portfolio value might vary by that or more in a single year.
If one investor achieves a 5% annualised real for a decade then sees that wealth being hit with a 40% death duties taxation, the residual is worse than another who achieved a 0% real over those same years elsewhere where no such 40% taxation occurs. In expanding micro-management/state control that's a push-away of capital - that is inclined to flight that state/country for more favourable terms/conditions elsewhere. The extreme controls of 'Pounds' is also a push-away from that currency, and the flight away from that currency weakens the ability of the central bank to direct/control the domestic economy. Global collaboration methods have/are being instated for 'data sharing', the likes of FATCA, but as ever that more serves the US who expect others to forward data onto them but are less open to sharing data in the other direction. It wont take much however for other options to arise in reflection of such controls, where instead of common exchange of Dollars or Pounds or whatever that instead some other form of common currency is generally preferred, maybe a entity based in international waters where from anywhere in the world a exchange of SMS messages between two parties facilitates 'currency' being transferred between those two parties.Likely states would prohibit usage of such 'currency' but overwhelming (and possibly rapid) uptake might make that unenforceable (if one retailer doesn't accept it they lose out to a local competitor who does accept it).
Better would be simplification, such as a simple sales tax. No income tax or micro-management etc. The more you have/spend the more you pay. 40% to the state, 10% to the local authority or whatever. The claim of clamping down on money laundering is behind the curve, those that are money laundering are more likely still being just as successful via other methods. AML claims are more a case of a misdirection for greater state control over individuals and potential theft of their wealth by the state.
The way in which some generational families have countered such individual state controls was to acquire land (homes) in multiple countries along with the likes of art and gold, physical in-hand items that could be rolled up into a tube/bagged and moved. If a third of your wealth is in land (homes) spread across three different states/countries then the loss of one is a 11% wealth hit, maybe less if some residual value remains, relatively trivial given that even a regular portfolio value might vary by that or more in a single year.
If one investor achieves a 5% annualised real for a decade then sees that wealth being hit with a 40% death duties taxation, the residual is worse than another who achieved a 0% real over those same years elsewhere where no such 40% taxation occurs. In expanding micro-management/state control that's a push-away of capital - that is inclined to flight that state/country for more favourable terms/conditions elsewhere. The extreme controls of 'Pounds' is also a push-away from that currency, and the flight away from that currency weakens the ability of the central bank to direct/control the domestic economy. Global collaboration methods have/are being instated for 'data sharing', the likes of FATCA, but as ever that more serves the US who expect others to forward data onto them but are less open to sharing data in the other direction. It wont take much however for other options to arise in reflection of such controls, where instead of common exchange of Dollars or Pounds or whatever that instead some other form of common currency is generally preferred, maybe a entity based in international waters where from anywhere in the world a exchange of SMS messages between two parties facilitates 'currency' being transferred between those two parties.Likely states would prohibit usage of such 'currency' but overwhelming (and possibly rapid) uptake might make that unenforceable (if one retailer doesn't accept it they lose out to a local competitor who does accept it).
Better would be simplification, such as a simple sales tax. No income tax or micro-management etc. The more you have/spend the more you pay. 40% to the state, 10% to the local authority or whatever. The claim of clamping down on money laundering is behind the curve, those that are money laundering are more likely still being just as successful via other methods. AML claims are more a case of a misdirection for greater state control over individuals and potential theft of their wealth by the state.