Battle Over Taxing the Rich Goes Global

Warren Buffett may be having mixed success in taking his Giving Pledge overseas. But his “Buffett Rule” on taxing the rich is quickly becoming a global rallying cry.

The latest chorus comes from Britain. After the Times of London exposed a legal tax-avoidance scheme used by close to 1,000 of the country’s top earners, politicians and pundits called out the wealthy as unpatriotic, unethical scofflaws.

The famous British comedian Jimmy Carr was one of the people “outed” by The Times as a tax avoider, after he reduced his tax rate to about 1 percent of his $5 million income by sheltering it through a firm based on the island of Jersey. Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron called Mr. Carr’s strategy “morally wrong.”

Let’s recall that Cameron is a Conservative, so this isn’t the usual class-warfare of the left. And Mr. Carr apologized for what he called “a terrible error in judgment.”

http://www.cnbc.com/id/47947073

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jersey

The island of Jersey is like a separate nation governed by Queen Elizabeth II, and it is the home of many tax dodges. SIVs domiciled there figured in the Enron collapse.