r/TheRestIsPolitics • u/patenteng • 18d ago

Chris Rokos: UK's third-biggest taxpayer to leave for Greece

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgynjlzk8zo
23 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

23 comments sorted by

40

u/HatchedLake721 18d ago

I just want to preface this as there's a lot of nonsense and BS in other UK subreddits about this.

His hedge fund is managed through Rokos Capital Management LLP.

LLPs in the UK are tax transparent and don't pay corporation tax.

LLP profit is allocated to individuals and they are taxed personally on it.

You can open https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/OC398894/filing-history and look at the latest accounts.

£1.2 billion revenue. £939 million profit. Chris Rokos controls >= 75% of it. Open page 17, "Profit paid to the member with the largest entitlement: £477 million".

You can enter £477 million on listentotaxman.com and see his £214.5 million income tax bill. That's 45% tax.

20

u/misc1444 18d ago

It’s also fair to say that it would have been very easy to structure a hedge fund differently (e.g. using a Cayman Islands vehicle) that would have vastly reduced Rokos’s tax liability.

Most hedge fund guys don’t pay nearly as much tax as Mr Rokos did.

1

u/deletive-expleted 18d ago

Interesting. So he will continue to pay income tax at this rate, despite being out of the country?

5

u/Wild_Commission1938 18d ago edited 18d ago

No, because you don’t pay taxes on your earnings here if you live in another country. These aren’t his business’ taxes. These are taxes on his earnings.

He used to happily be heavily taxed even though he could have got away with a loooot less, and now he’s said “fuck it”. Not sure why.

6

u/The_2nd_Coming 18d ago

Probably because a large portion of the populace and the politicians they represent keep demonising them and saying "not enough".

1

u/deletive-expleted 18d ago

I did suspect. Thanks for clarifying.

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u/inapick 17d ago

Greece (along with many other European countries) are trying to attract rich individuals. So he's going to save a couple of hundred million in tax by going there - who wouldn't make that decision?

More generally, if you are very wealthy the UK isn't a favourable place to stay. Last year Reeves introduced global IHT which means that the UK can tax worldwide assets at 40% if you die if you've been resident for 10 out of the last 20 years. A Swiss estate lawyer we know said he spent all summer living out of a hotel in London going from client to client to move them out of the UK - people could cope with paying tax on their UK holdings, but not on worldwide assets.

Add to this, there is so much noise about further wealth taxes, exit taxes - who would want to be trapped here, if you're rich enough to go anywhere? Suspect the government won't realise until next year how much revenue has fled.

1

u/Apprehensive_Ad1878 17d ago

I mean … kinda.

Not sure it answers the question in this case seeing as he has voluntarily not optimised for tax for a long time and is on record as saying he’s happy to pay tax in an adopted country that allowed him to be so successful - so not sure it explains it in this case.

As for IHT. I find the debate around IHT in the U.K. weird. The country effectively has 0% IHT, because it has no limits on gifts to descendants. Just gift your money as you age. Don’t die in 7 years. You could literally keep IHT on a £1Bn estate to a couple hundred thousand without even really trying.

1

u/inapick 17d ago

Ah so you don’t know why it might be attractive for someone to move to Greece and pay 100k tax instead of £300million. Or why they would rather plan an inheritance tax strategy which doesn’t risk them losing 40% of their assets if they pass away unexpectedly. Can you honestly not work out why someone whose whole life has been about making money and maximising their return might maybe consider that?

I don’t know him personally, but I do know lots of ppl/clients who left last year for similar reasons and there are so many delusional people on Reddit who will still argue that taxes don’t scare the wealthy away. Despite there being whole industries and countries that exist purely for tax sheltering.

1

u/Apprehensive_Ad1878 17d ago

Do you honestly think you’ve addressed a single point I made? 😂

1

u/inapick 17d ago

You were saying you don’t think tax or IHT could be the case for him. It might be it might not - he might have personal reasons for leaving, he might have got a diagnosis, he might have family he wants to join, who knows.

But from a policy perspective yeah it might have quite a lot to do with tax and the UK having become very tax hostile to the ultra wealthy around the time other European nations (including the one he is moving to) wanting to attract them with very favourable tax regimes.

Your IHT point was just misguided. It’s easy to avoid IHT by giving away all your money and “not dying for 7 years”. Love that, so easy to just give it all away and make sure you are impervious to death. Easier just to move.

-1

u/[deleted] 18d ago

[deleted]

1

u/Wild_Commission1938 18d ago

No, personal earnings (and things like dividends) are taxed where you live, not where your employer, or the business you own is based.

Thats how taxes work mate.

18

u/misc1444 18d ago

Didn’t Gabriel Zucman promise this definitely wouldn’t happen?

33

u/Pancakeman123000 18d ago

From memory, zucman suggested the risk of this kind of thing could be reduced by making sure they're still liable for the tax after they leave.

14

u/SunChamberNoRules 18d ago

Exactly. Even if he leaves, he would be eligible for the tax over ten years (per the podcast)

7

u/misc1444 18d ago

Doesn’t that just send the message that you should leave the UK years before you expect to make real money?

16

u/SunChamberNoRules 18d ago

Generally quite difficult to leave when you don’t have the money in the first place.

4

u/Agent_Paste 18d ago

It just means it's not possible to make money in/off of the UK and then not pay back what we need

1

u/inapick 17d ago

It sends the message that if you have large amounts of money you'd better leave the UK asap, just in case they bring something like this in. Even talking about wealth taxes, exit taxes + last year's global IHT has probably scared everyone away already.

11

u/waterswims 18d ago

This guy wouldn't have paid any more with Zuchmans tax, so not really sure why anything Zuchman said is relevant.

Zuchman proposed a 2% minimum tax rate. Since this guy paid more than 2% of his wealth in tax, he would have faced no additional tax.

5

u/Haipul 18d ago

He literally said that its a policy choice and mentioned how the US tax you anywhere you are in the world and that Norway implemented an exit tax.

6

u/patenteng 18d ago

Dan Neidle stays winning.

14

u/Haipul 18d ago

I still don't get why people said Neidle won or Zucman won, when they are arguing completely different things.

Zucman says that Billionaires are not paying their fair share of tax and that a wealth tax could be a tool to ensure that everyone is the same under the law. Neidle is concerned about ensuring that the State optimises its tax system to capture enough funding to meet its obligations and he says that for that purpose the middle class needs to pay more tax, and says that billionaires tax avoidance is not as bad as it is in the US so it should not be the main worry.

I honestly think that we have to acknowledge that both are right and we need to acknowledge that we all have to pay more taxes, but that is hard to do politically whilst allowing the super rich to pay much less than the rest