Tax

It’s easy to sex up the business of paying tax

8 June 2019 9:00 am

To fund the war against Napoleon in 1813, Princess Marianne of Prussia invented an ingenious tax-raising scheme. Wealthy Prussians were…

The super rich aren’t all bad – some even pay their taxes

2 February 2019 9:00 am

Paying tax — which many of us have been doing this week before HMRC’s 31 January deadline — is a…

The slow death of the public-sector pension

6 January 2018 9:00 am

Hedge funds have already spotted it: Jim Mellon’s latest book, Juvenescence, reviews the new science that will lengthen our lives…

Why my name didn’t appear in the Panama Papers

23 April 2016 9:00 am

My, my, the rich are under attack everywhere, and I thank God the Panama Papers didn’t include the name of…

Portrait of the Week: David Cameron’s tax troubles and the Archbishop of Canterbury’s paternity

16 April 2016 9:00 am

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, after spending a week parrying questions about his late father’s investment fund Blairmore, suddenly…

How to make the rich pay more tax

9 April 2016 9:00 am

The 11 million documents leaked from Panama lawyers Mossack Fonseca tell us much that we know already. It’s hardly news…

West Heslerton and other villages with one careful owner

9 April 2016 9:00 am

Squire power The village of West Heslerton in Yorkshire was put up for sale at £20 million after its owner,…

Buy-to-let investing just became a very, very bad idea

13 February 2016 9:00 am

If you pick up a buy-to-let property now, you’ll be fighting the full might of the Chancellor and the Bank of England

Maybe you should tax me more – just don’t touch my dishwasher

13 February 2016 9:00 am

There was a big fuss a year or so ago about a book by a French chap called Piketty about…

Don’t expect Mr Bear to go back into hibernation anytime soon

The bears are here to stay – but we’ll survive

30 January 2016 9:00 am

Like Leonardo DiCaprio in The Revenant, we’ve just been savaged by a bear but we’ll probably survive. Leading UK-listed stocks…

Archive: Motoring as a hobby should be discouraged

23 January 2016 9:00 am

From ‘The Conscription of Wealth’, The Spectator, 22 January 1916: At recent race meetings streams of motor-cars have proceeded from…

How far can Bernie Sanders go?

24 October 2015 9:00 am

Could the socialist senator of Vermont be on track to win the Democratic nomination?

A non-dom speaks: ‘The Swiss, Hong Kong, the Singaporeans, they are all saying “Come”!’

26 September 2015 8:00 am

Indian magnate Nirmal Sethia on what the English get wrong about tea – and the other countries seeking to recruit our discontented non-doms

Susan Hill’s French notebook: My struggle to avoid local cuisine

11 July 2015 9:00 am

An overnight stop on the Ile de Ré taken between the St Malo ferry and the Quercy, where we always…

I don’t want to be a mansion tax migrant

2 May 2015 9:00 am

The super-rich can shrug off Labour’s big tax idea. People like me will be forced out

Why so many bankers secretly like Labour’s non-dom proposal

25 April 2015 9:00 am

The interesting thing about Labour’s pledge to abolish non-dom tax status — a squib designed to trap Tories into expressing…

Ed Miliband’s 100 days – and the first Ed Balls Budget

11 April 2015 9:00 am

There will be tax rises to suit every taste. But the people he’s expecting to pay will probably just leave

James McAvoy is wrong – the arts are better off without subsidy

14 March 2015 9:00 am

The season of cringe-making acceptance speeches at arts awards ceremonies is nearly over, thank heavens. But it hasn’t passed without…

Where Alcibiades once walked, amateur tax spies are trying to entrap poor pistachio-sellers

14 March 2015 9:00 am

 Athens I am walking on a wide pedestrian road beneath the Acropolis within 200 meters of the remaining Themistoclean wall…

How Labour’s 50p tax trick has ended up helping George Osborne

28 February 2015 9:00 am

Last week’s public borrowing and tax-receipt figures, headlined ‘Chancellor hails biggest monthly surplus in seven years’, received considerably less attention…

Lord Green must answer for HSBC’s sins – but maybe it was always too big to manage

14 February 2015 9:00 am

Stephen Green — the former trade minister Lord Green of Hurstpier-point, who became this week’s political punchbag— was always a…

Why everywhere should be more like Essex

11 October 2014 9:00 am

Apart from the Wye Valley, where I grew up, there are only two places in Britain I’d consider living: Kent…

Why my friends love the idea of a nasty, stupid mansion tax

4 October 2014 9:00 am

I see all the flaws with a mansion tax, I really do. And yet some little piece of me, some…

Why the real winner from George Osborne’s ‘Google tax’ could be Nigel Farage

4 October 2014 9:00 am

George Osborne’s promise to crack down on multinational companies’ avoidance of UK taxes by the use of impenetrable devices such…

Who cleans skyscrapers?

23 August 2014 9:00 am

Tough at the top The clocks on Big Ben were cleaned by abseiling window-cleaners. Some other big cleaning/painting jobs: —…