When It Has to Pay.

Via the UK’s Daily Mail comes a report that the US is demanding an exemption from the 50 million pounds (about $82 million) in VAT taxes it would have to pay to construct a new London embassy. It’s nice to see our government so concerned about conserving taxpayer money spent on enormous public projects of dubious utility, but the same sort of considerations ought to apply to its own citizens’ expenses. Tory politician Edward Lister has worried that:
‘Substantial’ economic benefits and future tax revenues risked being lost to London if the Treasury’s ‘rigid attitude’ [is] not reversed.
By the same token, our own government’s burdensome tax rates discourage private industry right here in the United States, in commercial sectors that by their very existence must satisfy a real and important demand. Our government ought to spend at least as much time worrying about the taxes Americans pay at home as it does about the taxes it pays abroad.