Certainly Britain's wealthier citizens - and I know that includes some readers of this publication - will be hoping that some of the tax-raising ideas being proposed by more left-leaning members of the coalition government never find their way into policy. Vince Cable continues to call for mansion tax, an idea so bad that even Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls has started to cheerlead it. Deputy PM Nick Clegg is keen on an equally nonsensical idea: a temporary wealth tax.
Chancellor George Osborne isn't often held in high esteem for his economic good sense, but in quickly pouring cold water on Mr Clegg's latest brainwave he's got this one right. In the 1970s, when the higher rate of taxation hit 83 per cent, many high earners skipped the country. They are now apparently doing the same in France, where a 75 per cent wealth tax is planned by new socialist president François Hollande.
As Mr Hollande will quickly discover, a Robin Hood-style raid on the rich may be an easy populist drum to bang, but it doesn't automatically follow that it will raise more money. In fact, quite the opposite is true, an economic phenomenon illustrated in a theory known as the Laffer curve. Thatcher and Lawson understood this and lowered direct taxes - an economic boom and a rising tax take followed.
That's a signal that if tax is fair then people are happy to pay it. And so we should be. Most of us recognise that a government needs cash to provide essential public services. We need to look out for the less well-off, and should be proud to live in a country that provides a safety net for those that have, through no fault of their own, fallen on hard times, or healthcare for those that couldn't otherwise afford it.
Yet there reaches a point at which taxation becomes destructive. It sucks investment out of industry. It encourages the super-rich into Jimmy Carr-style tax avoidance schemes, which means a bigger bill for the rest of us. It eats into investment returns - Gordon Brown may have been disliked for many reasons, but to many his tax grab on pensions ranks up there with the worst of his malfeasances. It's said to have cost savers at least £100bn.
That damage, sadly, can never be reversed. But as we show in this week's issue, there are still many decent tax incentives in place for investors that could help you claw some of it back.
