“Thinking is one thing no one has ever been able to tax.” Charles Kettering

I’m not setting out ideas for a new tax – we certainly don’t need another one but I wanted to weigh in on the subject of UK non-residents and non-doms as they are making quite a splash in the press. Don’t worry I am not adding to the non-dom discussion.

But here is another little gem. There has been a lot of noise about non-residents not paying capital gains tax in the UK. So here is a new rule: as of 6 April 2015 capital gains tax has to be paid for all residential properties, which non-residents own and sell in the UK – before this change they paid nothing.

Clearly this makes sense and will be a welcome addition to our economy, but have you spotted the “small print” in these rules? The capital gains tax rule does not apply to commercial properties like office buildings and so on, so why are commercial properties excluded? I’ve no idea but I can tell you that all the multi-million and multi-bullion commercial property deals completed by non-residents especially in London may not be taxed whenever they are sold at a profit – and if you follow the recent transactions published there is a quite a healthy profit being made.

I am not sure if I am in sync with this small print exemption – what do you think?

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