In a pointed protest against Gordon Brown's increasingly rapacious tax
regime, Ian Cheshire, the chief executive of Kingfisher – the company
which owns the B&Q do-it-yourself retail chain – is considering
moving his headquarters offshore.
This, we are told,
is the latest potential blow to the Government's under-fire tax
policies, with Kingfisher the latest in a string of blue-chip names,
which includes WPP and RSA Insurance.
One's sympathies for Mr Cheshire, however, are very slightly tempered by the recollection of a letter he signed recently, with others,
urging the prime minister to ramp up green taxes and other costs to
enable him and his other corporate colleagues “to grasp the business
opportunities created by moving to a low climate risk economy.”
One really does get a tad weary of wealthy men
like Mr Cheshire, whose salary and stock options touch £1.3 million
this year, reaching down and seeking to load massive costs on ordinary
people, for his personal enrichment and that of his company and then,
when it comes to his own dues, running a mile and squealing about
excessive taxation.
The likes of Cheshire, of course, are quite
entitled to complain about tax imposts but I do wish he and the rest of
his claque would take a leaf out of their own books, and appreciate
that we, no more than they, are not particularly enthusiastic about
excessive taxation.
But then, we are not like them. Theirs is the gilded life – tax is only for the little people.
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