YOU may be a little absorbed with the news that David Cameron will - even quicker than Gordon Brown intended to - delay your retirement to the age of 66.

You may be wondering how the nation is going to drag itself back from its record £175bn debt.

But spare a thought for poor Tracey Emin, who will very soon have to part with an extra 10p in the pound on everything she earns above £150,000. She's not happy about Alistair Darling's new 50p tax band. In fact, so unhappy is Emin that she says she may go and live in France.

Now I like Tracey Emin. I was intrigued when I saw her stumble drunkenly into a live Channel 4 TV discussion 12 years ago, ramble entertainingly and then totter off. I like that she forced us to think again on the hoary old topic of `What is art?', particularly how a bed surrounded by mucky detritus would stack up against a Turner or a Henry Moore. I like her searing honesty, and she seems like a good sport.

Complain

But it's one sure way to fall out of love with an artist to hear them complain about coughing up a little more of their lavish earnings for the good of the nation. You don't want to listen to an artist talking about income tax any more than you want to hear Sting talking about the rainforests or professional footballers talking about football.

It's not just Tracey threatening to up sticks and go offshore. Sundry hedge fund managers and rich-as-Croesus Premier League players may flit to Monaco or the Isle of Man too. Bad news for vendors of Ferraris and crocodile-skin designer handbags then, but a big 'so what' from the rest of us wage slaves.

Funny isn't it, how the people who threaten to quit this country for tax reasons are so often the ones you're not that bothered about keeping anyway. We can be a little wistful that the odd national treasure such as Sir Roger Moore and Lewis Hamilton chooses to live abroad. But are we really so sorry to see 'comedian' Jim Davidson decamp to Dubai? Did we shed a tear when Phil Collins made good on his promise to quit Britain if Labour won the 1997 general election? Weren't we, come to that, just a little disappointed that Paul Daniels reneged on the very same election-related promise? And didn't we feel just a little jaded about the world-hugging saintliness of Bono and co when we discovered that U2 had moved their publishing business to the Netherlands to avoid paying tax on royalties in Ireland - the now heavily-indebted nation U2 were allegedly so proud to call home?

While we are in pop territory, one of the most mean-spirited bleats in pop was the Beatles' song Taxman, penned by George Harrison in protest at the 'super tax' imposed by Harold Wilson, which ate up 95 per cent of the very top earnings. We all know that pop stars have accountants but we don't want it to seem like a song has been written in that accountant's office on the back of a tax return form.

Whinge

By way of counterpoint to Harrison's whinge, we saw the Rolling Stones going into tax exile in the 1970s, an experience which caused Bill Wyman to deliver up the execrable Je Suis Un Rock Star - positive proof that home thoughts from abroad should sometimes be kept to yourself.

By comparison with the 1960s, today's chancellor smiles benignly on the squillionaires in our midst. I'll start worrying about whether Britain is unjustly bleeding the rich when the likes of Roman Abramovich feel that this is no longer the best place to park their gold-plated Bentley.

But whether or not a tycoon pays tax here or in Jersey or even Bermuda is by the by. An artist, however, tends to draw from their own place in the world, and depends upon that place for validation and inspiration. If Emin scurries away to France merely to avoid putting a few extra thousands into the public pot, I reckon we will feel a little cheated about her relationship with the British people. The leading Young British Artist would grant us her ludicrously-expensive art, but not her presence among us.

Unusually, I can look to Ricky Gervais to sum up this argument nicely.

"I love paying tax," says Gervais. "It helps justify how much I earn. There's something unsavoury about tax exiles. Pay your tax or **** off."