High-tax extremists at CenTax have now come up with the bright idea of imposing an exit tax on anyone who leaves the country. The claim is that £500 million every year could be raised by calculating how much the value of any asset has appreciated while its owner was based in the UK, and taxing it when they leave. CenTax director Andy Summers justifies the proposal: “Charging CGT on people who leave the UK is not about punishing them for leaving, it’s simply saying, ‘You need to pay your bill on the way out.’” A fiscal Berlin Wall…

Summers and fellow exit tax proponent Arun Advani as “Wealth Tax Commisioners” have spent years pushing for a massive hike in capital gains tax while arguing that such a rise would have a minimal effect on the movement of wealth out of the country. Their latest proposal is a tacit admission that this is completely false…

Advani said two weeks ago to a cosy meeting of activists that the Labour government is actively and “genuinely listening” to his tax proposals as the Treasury wrestles with the reality that the rich and mobile are leaving the country in massive numbers ahead of Reeves’ tax raids. Daniel Herring of the CPS says “Any talk of so-called ‘exit taxes’ has only arisen because the government seems determined to drive wealth creators out of the country” while the ASI’s Maxwell Marlow points out that “the bigger problem is future deterrance for entrepreneurs and founders, who will avoid the UK for new businesses in case the taxman disagrees with their living arrangements.” An assault on property rights that signals: ‘don’t invest here’…