Non-dom taxation without information
There's one group of wealthy people who won't feel the full impact of the new 50% tax rate for those earning over £150,000. These are the 'non-doms', who live in Britain but have links to other countries and claim to be 'domiciled' elsewhere. They can then avoid tax on their overseas income.
The became the focus of intense political argument in October 2007 after George Osborne levying a charge for non-dom status.
On 8 October 2007 Gordon Brown that as Chancellor he had 'carried out a series of reviews' of the taxation of non-domiciles and 'all the information should be made available to people'. 
Thinking that it might help illuminate the background to this controversy, I put an FOI request to the Treasury for copies of the reviews of the taxation of non-domiciles which were carried out while Mr Brown was Chancellor
Last week on the eve of the budget, over 18 months later, I finally received some very limited information from the Treasury. During the intervening period the Treasury:
- turned down my initial request on cost grounds
- after an ensuing dispute between us on some procedural points, ignored my request for an internal review for four months until I complained to the Information Commissioner
- apologised for not dealing with the review - 'we had missed it in the email box and no-one was allocated it'
- turned down a narrower request on the grounds that releasing the matirial would harm the UK's economic interests
- took nearly eight months to respond to my request for a review of that decision
Whether all the information has now been made available, as Mr Brown recommended, is open to question. The few documents I have now been sent have major redactions.
The most detailed is a survey in 2005 of the characteristics of non-doms, including their most common countries of domicile (the USA is top) and the occupations they come from (financial services most frequent).
However, the main conclusions from this survey were , as indeed is the fact that a significant number of non-doms are .
Nevertheless it would be wrong to give the impression that I learnt nothing from the material I have obtained. As far as I know, it was not previously in the public domain that the countries in which some non-doms claimed domicile included El Salvador, Azerbaijan and Greenland, nor that their occupations included underwear retailer, concert pianist, tropical fruit importer and cheese planning manager.
Whether it is the cheese planning manager who was domiciled in Greenland is not revealed. And I suspect there are other more important points that are still secret, despite the pledge to make all the information available.
A 
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