Once Rich Haley Mills Taxed Into Poverty

Letter to Ephesians: This a “Tax the Rich” story, British Style, a woeful tale of Parent Trap’s child star who was “legally” robbed by the tax man of 90% of her Disney earnings. It’s also a warning how greedy & callous govts can be when you have lousy legal advice to boot.

As Fox News summed it up, “Hayley Mills skyrocketed to fame as a child star under Walt Disney’s wing for 7 years – only to see her once-promising fortune slip away.” That was, thanks to a botched “trust” account set up by the family’s solicitor that maximized rather than minimized the UK’s “supertax” on the rich in those days (not that the socialist UK tax system today is any more logical or fair). Ironically, Haley was supposedly well taken care as the daughter of the acting greats, Sir John Mills; even mom, Mary Hayley Bell, was an actress & playwright. She now shrugs off having to pay a 91% SURTAX on her American earnings. Haley simply says Daddy’s solicitor “was a crook … and didn’t give a flying Dutchman.”

Not that Ms Mills hadn’t bitterly fought the tax heist by the Brits’ equivalent of the IRS, presumably based on an earlier precedent set in a similar case by actor Stanley Hawkins who had been represented by the same incompetent lawyer. Subsequent lawyers failed to overturn the surtax. And not that the Kingly Empire’s outcome hadn’t been called out for what it was. According to Fox, “Lord Denning, one of Britain’s most powerful judges at the time, briefly gave Mills a win in her fight with the tax authorities … by ruling in her favor, agreeing it was unfair [aka “unequitable”] to tax her Disney earnings the way the government had.” But the money-grubbing House of Lords had the final say and it played Robin Hood through the closing scene. Sound familiar? Ever listen to Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren talk about the desperate need to tax America’s rich colonials, that is, except themselves?

Davd Soul