UK expat votes: removal of 15-year limit

[OJAS]

Encouraging developments:-

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-43172394

[blackcab]

https://services.parliament.uk/bills/2017-19/overseaselectors.html

[steve187]

Labour MP Sandy Martin suggested the Conservatives found it "embarrassing" to extend the vote to people who have "chosen not to pay their taxes in this country".

 

its only a dream to not pay UK tax as an expat

[OJAS]

3 hours ago, steve187 said:

Labour MP Sandy Martin suggested the Conservatives found it "embarrassing" to extend the vote to people who have "chosen not to pay their taxes in this country".

 

its only a dream to not pay UK tax as an expat

I can only assume that he has in mind expats who have spent (or are currently spending) the greater part of their working lives (and being taxed) in their adopted countries (of whom there appear to be a few on Thai Visa), while being completely oblivious to those who have relocated to their adopted countries upon retirement after a lifetime of working and paying taxes in the UK - and who, as you intimate, are not permitted by the powers-that-be in HMRC to have any say in where they could continue to pay their taxes.

Edited February 25, 2018 by OJAS

[billd766]

4 hours ago, steve187 said:

Labour MP Sandy Martin suggested the Conservatives found it "embarrassing" to extend the vote to people who have "chosen not to pay their taxes in this country".

 

its only a dream to not pay UK tax as an expat

 

I started to pay income tax at the age of 15 years and 2 months when I left school in 1959. That was just 2 years after Sandy Martin was born.

 

Alexander Gordon "Sandy" Martin (born 2 May 1957) is a British politician of the Labour Party. He was elected at the 2017 general election as the Member of Parliament (MP) for Ipswich succeeding the Conservative Ben Gummer.

A former Labour group leader on Suffolk County Council, Martin is a member of the LGBT Labour campaign. Martin describes himself politically as a democratic socialist and an environmentalist. His father was the late actor Trevor Martin.

 

He was only elected as an MP last year.

 

I would politely suggest that before he opens his mouth he does some simple research.

 

ANY income deemed by the HMRC to be UK based income is taxable after you pass the tax threshold. Any income earned in another country CANNOT be taxed by HMRC if the person concerned is NOT working for a UK based company.

 

As an example I used to work for Motorola based in the UK and was paid by them. Any country I worked in I was exempt taxes due to a double taxation agreement (if there was one). When I quit Motorola and went self empolyed as a contractor I was working for me, not living in the UK, and ANY tax liabilities that were due were my responsibility to pay to the country. That happened to me in Thailand.

 

In my last working year in NZ I was employed by a NZ company and not as a contractor and as such I paid tax to the NZ authorities.

 

It is now 2018 and in May I will be 74 years old and STILL paying income tax on my pensions that I earned and paid into during my working life.