Cable wants to lock them in

Tax super-rich properly, Cable tells Brown:

'If we are not careful, Russian and Ukranian oligarchs living in £80m houses might go somewhere else,' Vince Cable tells Lib Dem conference. 'That's tough. Let them go'

Cable, the Liberal Democrats' Treasury spokesman, condemned what he described as "our spineless government" for allowing the rich to enjoy tax breaks not available to the poor.

"The idea that the super-rich should be elevated above taxation is immoral and deeply insulting to those on modest incomes who pay their full whack of tax," Cable said, in a speech to his party's spring conference in Liverpool.

If showing courage on the wrong issues was a hallmark of Tony's administration, craven cowardice is a hallmark of Gordon's. Vince Cable has picked a good issue here, where both the popular will and fairness are on his side. Let's hope Gordon is sufficiently embarrassed to actually do something.Tax avoidance is not a victimless crime. It is just a crime with many, many victims. Tesco's unethical if hardly unusual scam to avoid paying tax on £1B of earnings, for instance, is morally equivalent to a theft of about £10 from every British tax payer. (Roughly 30 million tax payers, roughly £300M tax saved.) Worse, it is a crime the government could prevent by a reform of the law so they are complicit to this tax avoidance. Flat rate tax systems might be regressive, but that is easily fixed, and crucially (when combined with rigorous policing of transfer pricing) they make it a lot harder for one group to avoid their responsibilities and raise a finger (corporate or individual) to society.