Vive La Tax

If one of the goals of a blog is to be thought provoking, the latest post seems to have done the trick. However, as rich as the vein of comments it generates might be, the time has come to bring the curtain down on the debate over whether or not P&L figures belong in a blog such as this.

No argument has been presented as to how they would add anything to the blog, and as the old saying goes, I’ll be damned if I do, and damned if I don’t. As a commenter said, I would “satisfy nobody – too little and you’re a chump, too much and you’re lying”.

Exactly, and as Matt says “time to put this one to bed”.

I did find this comment from Dave worthy of a wider audience.

Until you mentioned it, I did not realise there were net worth sites. Having said that, I recall that in France around the late 70's early 80's, the country was trying to raise more taxes (sounds familiar). Apparently someone in the French Finance Department suggested imposing a one off wealth tax, on people who had a net worth of over a certain figure. The government of the time implemented / introduced the tax. This obviously created a big outcry, however the tax raised more than anticipated, because people inflated their net worth so as to pay the tax then of course complain to all and sundry how much tax they had to pay so as to impress family and friends etc. The Net worth site would be interesting especially to those bright young things in HM Revenue and Customs.

That’s a great story, and very revealing about human nature. I suspect the effect of Betfair introducing their Premium Charge might have been similar. When the e-mail showed up in my inbox revealing Betfair’s plans, I have to admit that there was a certain (brief) boost to the ego to read that I was in the 0.5% of their customers that would be affected, although how true that number was is still not clear.

Of course, I know now that it’s not the big winners that the Premium Charge is targeted at, but the frequent winners. It’s how you win, not how much you win. I’m sure that my profits aren’t in the top 0.5%, but my trading style meant that I was caught in the net.

Anyway, over the next few days, the Betfair forum was full of people protesting their outrage, and one could be excused for believing that it was 99.5% of customers that were affected, not 1 in 200.