Jake's View | An appeal for tax overhaul to rise above placard-waving populism
Here’s why a two-tier profits tax and a negative income tax won’t work in Hong Kong
The former financial secretary also called for a review to look into introducing a two-tier progressive profits tax to lessen the burden on small and medium-sized enterprises and a negative income tax that would help low income groups. SCMP, February 7
Politics generally bores me, but let’s give credit where credit is due to one of the political masterstrokes of the age.
British diplomats have known from their monarchical history since the Magna Carta proclamation 800 years ago what a mess can be made of government when you put an unelected chief executive on top of an elected assembly.
Thus, in order to make their own colonial administration of Hong Kong look good in contrast, they left us in 1997 with an unelected chief executive on top an elected assembly. Don’t tell me it wasn’t deliberate. Beijing has since confirmed the fractious nature of this arrangement by declining to change it.
I think of this job of chief executive as a poisoned chalice. The winner can only be embittered by drinking from it, as the three incumbents so far have been.
A CE who asserts his or her authority on any major initiative only stirs up legislators. Real achievement is invariably frustrated. It is inherent in the system.