There are many things about Barack Obama’s election that are more significant for the USA and the world than his tax policies but hey, this is a column about tax, and of course there is a significant overlap between tax policies and policies for dealing with the current economic crisis (which is not a “credit crunch” – that is simply one of the effects of the unravelling of the games played by the banks with our money).

Obama’s declared policies include small increases in the rate of income tax for those earning over $200,000 a year (hear the piggies squeal!). They also include a recognition that tax havens have formed a large part of the nonsense inflicted on us, and that a workable world financial system, while it will include low tax regimes, cannot include tax havens that operate in secrecy to allow corporations to pretend they are resident there, and wealthy individuals to evade tax. And I mean evade: in evidence to a Congressional Committee the Swiss bank UBS admitted it had 20,000 US resident investors and that 19,000 of them were not declaring the income in the USA.

We may take especial notice here since the Brown/Darling axis seems to be looking for a solution which leaves bankers’ bonuses in place, and the Tories do not seem to have the least idea what to do about a situation created by their mates in the finance business.

However Alistair Darling has now made about the Isle of Man (which also apply to the Channel Islands) prompted by the fact that UK residents holding investments offshore with Icelandic banks now expect the UK government to bail them out.

Before the current crisis all of this might have seemed so much rhetoric – but it is now clear that cleansing the tax havens must be part of any new financial order.

And do we remember the chief argument against taxing the non-domiciles properly? That these were the people who make the City of London great and that if they had to pay tax they’d go away? Digby Jones has even had the nerve to repeat the argument about bankers’ bonuses, suggesting they would all be off to Shanghai and Dubai. The only possible response to that has two words in it, and is followed by the suggestion that they might indeed like to go and screw up someone else’s economy.