Labour ‘will charge Americans to enter Britain’

Labour ‘will charge Americans to enter Britain’

main

norman lebrecht

November 18, 2014

An increasingly desperate Labour Party has trotted out its latest election-year pledge.

Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, is about to announce a plan for a £10 entry charge to citizens of the US and 55 other countries. The money will go to pay for extra border guards.

Just what we need right now, a fortress mentality.

Read here.

 

 

airport shoes

 

Comments

  • sdReader says:

    … and a £20 entry charge to American musicians, unless they play cello, in which case £40 plus bribe.

    They’ll be in good hands with Labouuuur!

    • Will Duffay says:

      Where do you get those figures from?

      It should be noted that the US currently charges a similar amount. (Not that that’s necessarily a reason to copy them.)

      • John says:

        But the US charge ($14) covers multiple entries for two years. According to news reports this proposal would charge per entry.

  • Oswald Harris says:

    Only 218 planned terror attacks avoided so far this year – no, fortress mentality is not needed.

  • Brian says:

    This American has no problem with the fee. We need extra border guards here, too. I doubt this will affect tourism. Not a Labour-ite either. Like Strephon’s upper half, I am a tory of the most determined description.

  • Roland says:

    Americans should indeed be charged, but should be the only nation charged this fee. Are people reading this aware that the U.S. is the only nation in the world practicing citizenship based taxation, as opposed to the rest of the world, which practices residence based taxation? In short, what that means is that any person who the U.S. deems to be “American”, even if they are British, or any other nationality, simply because they were born there, and left with their parents after three days, never to return to U.S. soil again, is under US law still subjected to the most draconian regime of tax reporting and attempts, under threat of prison and enormous fines, to declare and pay taxes to the United States for life, even if they don’t live in the United States, never lived in the United States and even if they haven’t earned a cent there. This is particularly outrageous when it comes to the sale of one’s principal home in the UK, which is exempt from capital gains taxation, but not in the U.S. London’s own mayor, the very British Boris Johnson, who was born in New York and returned to the UK at 5 years old is currently being pursued by US tax authorities for capital gains tax on the recent sale of his private home in London. What is unacceptable is that the U.S., by doing this, have entered into the British tax base and regularly and according to their perverse laws will be siphoning off money from the British economy, money that had it remained in Britain, would be reinvested in the British economy. Therefore the Americans should be taxed at a special and extremely punishing rate to compensate for this moral and fiscal outrage perpetrated by them on the world. The same thing is currently transpiring throughout the world, but there is now a major backlash against them. For more info about Boris Johnson’s situation and the 7.6 million other non-resident accidental Americans caught up in this “made in America” nightmare, please read:
    http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2014/11/18/mayor-boris-johnsons-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-day-as-an-american/
    and the Canadians are fighting back in their own way, defending their sovereignty and their own tax base, with a law suit:
    http://www.adcs-adsc.ca

  • Horace says:

    I know all too well about the greedy Americans and their sinister tricks to extort money in any way they possibly can, even from people who have never lived in their “free” country, nor ever worked there. My aunt, who is now 78, was born to two Canadian parents in 1936. Her parents at the time lived in a rural Canadian community on the Manitoba/US border. A few days before her birth her mother began to suffer from uncontrollably high blood pressure and the village doctor suggested that she go immediately across the border to the US, where they had a well-equipped clinic. She remained there until the birth of my aunt, two days later, and they returned across the border to Canada five days later. She has remained in Canada all of her life since. Now, 78 years after those three or four days spent in a clinic in the U.S. the U.S. tax authorities are threatening her with taking away her life’s savings through penalties, fines and interest, claiming her as an American citizen who is guilty of tax evasion for more than 50 years! She has now had to hire a lawyer, at tremendous expense on her limited income, trying to resolve this horror story. I have seen some of the correspondence from the “friendly” American tax authorities, only threats and demands for her money When she told them that she had only been to the U.S. four times in her life, once when she was born and three other short visits of less than one week, they replied that was of no consequence and referred to her as a “tax evader”.
    I agree with the comment above, fine the hell out of those people!

    • Bill says:

      I have heard of similar stories from friends and acquaintances. The moral of the story is to stay away from the U.S., as far away as possible!

  • Anne says:

    Has this genius factored in the cost of collecting the new tax? Does she know what the net benefit to the Revenue will be?

    Very little, I suspect.

  • MOST READ TODAY: