Key to good life in Miami
Crafty tax tickles as Rishi juggles UK’s finances
Miami has been a big draw and we even lived there for four glorious years on Key Biscayne, known as the capital of South America. Our friends were from Cuba, Ecuador, Nicaragua, Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil.
We lived in an apartment with spectacular views of Biscayne Bay in a beach-side condo complex called Key Colony which has several pools, a dozen tennis courts, gyms and barbecue areas where Argentinians will show you how to grill steaks to succulent perfection.
Sailing a
15ft Hobie Cat catamaran in the Bay is great fun. No engine, just sails and the wind and the occasional capsize in strong winds. On a good day of gentle winds, dolphins swim alongside and pelicans dive for fish as they break off from their squadrons soaring through unblemished blue skies.
South Beach, for the incredible art deco hotels and bars, is a must-see.
But it’s south Miami where the true Miami exists with great Latin food and music.
Don’t miss Coconut Grove’s GreenStreet Cafe. It’s a lounge on the street with heavenly cocktails – while Monty’s oyster bar has coconut shrimp which go down so well with cold beer.
In the groovy
Grove, swish Coral Gables and on Little Havana’s edgy Calle Ocho there are loads of great Cuban music bars and restaurants where you can swing to the sounds poured out by authentic bands. Calle Ocho has to be experienced for the Cuban coffee shops where old men who fled Fidel Castro’s Cuba chat away conspiratorially over their cafecito and pastries.
Save some time for the
Florida Keys “highway that goes to sea” – a 100-plus mile drive along a road of bridges connecting countless tropical islets of coral and limestone from Miami, via Key Largo and Islamorada, all the way down to Key West and brilliant sunsets celebrated by the American writer Ernest Hemingway.
He’d spent time in Havana,
100 miles away, before arriving in Key West to make his home and find the inspiration to write or part-write For Whom the Bell Tolls, Death in the Afternoon and The Snows of Kilimanjaro.
Sailing a 15ft Hobie Cat in the Bay is great fun, no engine, just sails and wind
Rishi Sunak’s red case contained a raft of Budget measures as Britain faces a long battle to deal with the financial impact of
the coronavirus.
The Government has borrowed a record £355billion fighting the pandemic and has to come up with a way of paying it back.
Mr Sunak also needs to continue supporting the millions out of work or on furlough. So now we’ve had time to digest his proposals, how will they affect you?
Let’s start with income tax. Rather than increase the amount we pay on our earnings, the Chancellor froze the allowances and tax bands that are used to calculate our tax liability.
This is a very clever way of increasing the tax take because these normally rise with inflation.
With inflation at a low level, very few of us will even notice the effect.
From April 2021, the tax-free personal allowance will rise to £12,570, and will remain at that level until April 2026.
We pay 20% income tax on earnings over and above the personal allowance, up to £50,000 a year. That figures rises to £50,270 from April, where it will remain also until 2026. Mr Sunak didn’t even sneakily increase national insurance rates, and yet the thresholds increased or remained level.
So despite the mountain of debt, we’ll all be taking home a little more money from next month.
What about property? The housing market has seen a boost in prices, primarily due to the stamp duty holiday. While it hasn’t really helped first-time buyers on to the market, the holiday was extended for a further three months.
At that point, the starting rate of stamp duty will rise from £125,000 to £250,000 until the end of September, when it reverts to £125,000. It’s a bit of help for those on the move now.
So the big question for the country... where is Mr Sunak going to get the money to repay the pandemic debt?
From April 2023, corporation tax is increasing from 19% to 25% for companies with profits of over £250,000 – a whopping 30% rise. For companies with profits below £50,000 the rate will remain at 19% and there will be a tapering of tax between the two bands.
This is déjà vu for business owners. The small profits measure reintroduces a rate which previously applied but was abolished in 2015.
Why do they tinker with bands and rates so much? I often ponder if the cost of doing so justifies the extra tax take. With the tax burden of larger companies increasing by 30%, I wonder if we’ll see this compound the number of redundancies later this year as employers look to free up costs to maintain profit levels.
Banks could be a special case. Under current rules, they are subject to an 8% surcharge on their profits, on top of corporation tax.
But the Government has announced a review of the surcharge as it would “make UK banks uncompetitive and damage one of our key exports” if it continued to apply on top of the 25% corporation tax rate in two years’ time.
The review intends to report back in the autumn – when I think we’ll see the surcharge removed.
Despite the mountain of debt, we’ll be taking home a little more next month