Filed under: Switzerland
We recently posted an article about Switzerland being the ‘Pied Piper’ of the financial markets with their attempt to lull fund managers over to the shores of Lake Geneva. It looks like the Times has picked up on the potential for the Swiss to clean up in the high stakes game of ‘Tax Musical Chairs’.As we have said previously the mobile nature of funds and their managers makes a quick skip over the channel an easy issue to deal with and the latest 80% affective tax hike on capital gains in the UK has the Swiss licking their lips.
Switzerland has, over the years, lost out to other jurisdictions and has become less of a tax friendly center than many believe. The ‘forfeiture’ tax (where tax is calculated on the monthly rental value of your property and timesed by 5) is really only affective for the super wealthy, as someone under this tax structure is forbidden to work in Switzerland.
However, times they are a changin. On personal capital gains in Switzerland there is no tax at all, so you can happily invest in stocks, hedge funds and whatever you want, safe in the knowledge that your capital gains are all yours. The problem occurs when it is not a ‘private gain’. Basically ‘carried interest’ in funds are taxed as income and will hit you in the wallet but Mr Derobert of the Geneva Private Bankers Association is optimistic that an agreement to change this rule will be made and describes Switzerland as ‘Capital Gains Tax paradise’. In our opinion, if this happens then it would make sense for fund managers to set up home here.
The consequences of the latest tax hike for the Tax Reich in the UK has also affected the 90 day rule. Whereas before, the day of arrival and departure was not included for the 90 day rule, it now is, at least from next April. This is seen as a direct attack on groups such as the ‘Monaco Boys’ so called because of their routine of living in Monaco, paying no tax but working in the UK for most of the week. Under the previous rule a work week of Monday to Thursday would have only counted as two days for tax purposes, it now counts as 4.
I assume that someone in the UK Tax Reich thought that if they changed this rule everyone would come scampering home and make peace with the Tax Man and take it as a slap on the wrist from the Nanny State.. They obviously do not realise what they are up against.
I only go to London when I have to. Under the old regime I may have stayed three days at a time, spending money in hotels restaurants and bars while I work my stay, bringing revenue to the capital, as many other people do. They and I will now just get the earliest flight in and the latest flight out and get what I need to have done in a day, the rest I will do on the phone, if necessary.
John Carver, a tax partner at KPMG Switzerland, says that ‘There are thousands of people who commute from Zurich to London on Monday morning and return Friday evening. Banks may decide it is cheaper to keep those departments in Zurich than pay the tax for their executives”.
It will only take one straw to break the camel’s back of the daily nightmare that is London. The transport is atrocious the airports are a nightmare and the crime is ridiculous, maybe the tax hike is just enough to kill people’s love of the City. I left the City 4 years ago, for me the red tape, stealth taxes and general feeling that I wasn’t getting my money’s worth for the tax I paid, eventually lead me to packing my bags. I have to say, I do not regret it for a moment. I suspect that many will be following…
Filed under: General News
One of the areas that we have been manically scouring for a decent investment is the Internet advertising sector. Many people think that Google, Yahoo etc have wrapped this area up but we believe that there is still room for a player to come into the market and make an impact.
One of the areas that can easily be confused is the ‘traffic’ networks. Not necessarily advertising but, if you like, a social network of interlinked sites via a widget on your web site.
We recently had ‘Blogrush’ on our site which purports to be a quality network of blogs swapping traffic. The problem, however, is that this network does not do what it says it does… ie, provide traffic. We trailed it on our site for the last few months and received 1 hit… Not exactly a Blog-Rush more of a Blog-Drip. The owner of the site has made a huge deal about new features and reports that will make the system a lot better and they have started viewing each individual site for ‘quality’.
Unfortunately, we here at ‘Asset Manager’ do not appear to meet the Blogrush quality guidelines. We received an email saying ‘..your blog did not pass our Quality Review criteria..”
Considering we are syndicated on other sites, have been a regular ‘related blogs’ site at the Wall Street Journal and appear in the top pages of Google for pretty much anything ‘hedge fund’ I wonder what their ‘quality guidelines’ are.
We spent quite a bit of time ‘cleaning up’ any sites that could appear in our widget, taking out the ‘get rich quick’ schemes and the illegal HYIPS (High Yield Investment Programs) but got a little bored with adding new sites everyday as we saw them appearing on our site.
This maybe the problem, not so much that we do not meet the ‘quality’ of BlogRush, sorry BlogDrip, but do not meet the ‘quantity’ issue. The system will only work if there are a zillion sites allowed to appear anywhere on other sites and those, like ours, that screen for quality are not welcome.
I am afraid then, that BlogRush is just another banner traffic network that will be passed around the low quality sites and, inevitably, will not provide much traffic to anyone… Another one bites the dust.
It brings us back to our point about advertising networks, somewhere out there, there is a giant waiting in the wings. It is a frustrating situation knowing this and not being able to invest, however, we are still searching. After all, you have to kiss many frogs to find a Prince and for us BlogRush is a just a frog.
Blogrush Further Comment:
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