London has long had a policy of allowing rich foreigners to live there tax free.

FT columnist Martin Wolf looks at proposals to eliminate this immoral give away to the rich, and finds that too many people in the UK subscribe to the Leona Helmsley way of doing thing.

We live in strange times, as evidenced by his concluding paragraph:

Yet the experience also shows that the case for a simple, neutral and stable fiscal system, which taxes the worldwide incomes of all long-stay residents on the basis of ability to pay, is overwhelming. As soon as one departs from that principle one enters in a maze of special pleading or invidious distinctions, in which failed ideas of industrial policy – subsidising winners through the tax system – return to the fore. If the application of that great principle means some rich people leave the country, so be it.

(Emphasis mine)