A wealth tax is usually targeted at people with substantial assets. In the UK there is discussion of charging people with total assets of more than £10 m an annual levy of say 2% of the assets. This is a kind of income tax surcharge. If someone is managing to earn the current 4% return you could get on a bond it is effectively a 50% income tax on top of the 45% tax the rich are already paying. It means lower risk investing ceases to produce any return for a well off saver. How long before that saver goes somewhere else or at least stops financing the spendthrift UK government.
Wealth taxes elsewhere have led to the exit of rich people, as in France.They can lose the state more total tax revenue from departing millionaires than they recoup from those who stay to pay.When Labour last squeezed the rich in the 1970 s with a 98% tax on savings income there was a big exit called the brain drain. The state ran out of other peoples money to spend and had to beg a loan from the IMF. They imposed some spending cuts.
Charging on total wealth is complex and expensive to enforce and complex and expensive for the taxpayer. Much wealth owned by the very rich is in the form of property assets which generate no income and impose substantial costs on the owner. Many have a large home which is expensive to maintain, heat and run. Annual revaluation could be expensive and would be a matter of judgement as these properties are usually one offs with no ready market. People who own art or other valuables get no income from them and have maintenance and insurance costs. Some of the wealth is the consequence of someone now on a modest income or pension living in London house which they bought years again when they were more affordable. A wealth tax could force them to sell their family home as they may well not have the income to pay the state 2% of the value of their property. Enforcement will be difficult with smaller items of wealth like stamp and coin collections, gold, furniture and smaller works of art.These would all become more popular with the rich if more measurable and visible things were taxed, especially if they are left out of the wealth tax demands.
August 10, 2025
There is a huge difference between liabilities and income generating assets. Homes, cars, private aeroplanes and much else which require wealth to obtain are in fact liabilities.
Seizing liabilities does not improve the State’s balance sheet.
Destroying wealth held by the population so valuable property is beyond their pocket reduces the most valuable property to worthless status, it becomes unsellable, then derelict.
Those in the state sector are awash with money, if you comprehended the fact that without a rich private sector they would not exist, we might get some rational action, but they don’t.
August 10, 2025
Well the state would not seize the assets/liabilities they would demand cash or force people to sell them to raise the cash. Homes are usually assets they often go up in value, can be lived in or worked in or produce rents. Cars and Planes likewise can get you to work and be used to produce income.
As I have said before the current taxes combined income tax up to 45% NI both circa 24%, IHT (on death) 40%, IPT insurance 12%, fuel duty 50%, carbon taxes, VAT 20%, landfill taxes, alcohol taxes, council taxes… can easily take 90% of your wealth and returns off you over circa 20 years. It is actually rather hard just to keep your wealth intact after inflation and taxation in the UK. You need to make about 10% gross PA and certainly not die!
August 10, 2025
A wealth tax robs money off people who made it and generally invest and spend it quite well and gives it to the state who invariably piss it down the drain often doing huge net harms. On say net harm Covid Vaccines, Net Harm Covid lockdowns, augmenting the feckless, HS2, over regulation, restrictive planning, restrictive employment laws… it also make the rich and hard working leave the country or not arrive or return – another policy to kill growth to go with all Rachael Reeves’s many other anti-growth agendas!
August 10, 2025
It is a reckless, dangerous government that taxes people at an extremely high level and then carelessly wastes the money.
August 10, 2025
Worse than just “waste” they actually spend much of it doing actual net damage – Net Zero, net harm Covid Vaccines and lock Downs, Over regulation of everything, HS2, augmenting the feckless, augmenting low skilled and often criminal immigration…
August 11, 2025
Agreed.
August 10, 2025
For government as with individuals heading for bankruptcy the answer is to reduce spending and devote more attention to creating wealth. However this is not within the DNA of socialism or socialists. They prefer to exist as parasites on othe peoples wealth. They take this course every time they gain power, and bancrupt the nation on every occasion. Today they are even worse in that they set out to deliberately destroy wealth creation. My advice to anyone with serious hard earned wealth is to get out of the UK before they come for you.
August 10, 2025
Sir John,
I find it rather offensive that the state believes it has a right to dip into people’s pockets and help themselves. This notion becomes even more offensive when you see what the state does with that money it’s relieved it’s people off.
It seems that, neither the PM nor the Foreign Secretary can go out of the country without hammering the nation’s credit card. A billion thrown at this stupid cause a couple of million at that stupid cause…. If only our nation’s bank balance was as big as our PM’s and Foreign Secretary’s egos.
August 10, 2025
+ 1 let us hope Vance can educate the moronic Lammy in the Cotwolds together it seems – or better still get him fired!
August 10, 2025
Exactly Cliff
August 10, 2025
To socialists we are all slaves of the state and should only to retain sufficient to eat just enough etc. so we can still keep working mainly for their benefit.
August 10, 2025
We have a “modern slavery law” but this seems not to apply to the state effectively enslaving the public! We also have fair competition laws but likewise not applicable to state provision like social housing, NHS, schools, universities, it seems!
August 10, 2025
John, we all know it’s not about raising money, it the ideology of liebour to raising everything. The vat raid on private education won’t raise anything like the £1,6 billion touted by the government. It will probably cost money
The idea to tax private health care will lengthen NHS waiting lists and be a net loser for the government
No matter what is logical or not, these shysters actually believe their brand of Marxism will work.
We have 4 more years ofvthis wanton destruction by the most anti British government in history and the people are getting restless.
August 10, 2025
Indeed the VAT on schools with raise nothing net and do vast harm top. The daft as a brush Lord Kinnock even suggest VAT on private health care so people pay four times over for education and four times over for medical care (or even five times over if Lord Kinnock got his way with VAT and IPT on premiums.
Both these policies are the exact reverse of what is needed which is more people to pay their own way on health and education so as to put less demands on state provision.
August 10, 2025
@Ian Wragg. “…tax private health care…”. What? Is this a serious proposal? They should be making expenditure on private health care available for tax relief, to help steer people off the NHS.
August 10, 2025
Yes, some politicians are suggesting 20% vat should be levied on private health procedures
Marxist don’t like choice.
August 10, 2025
Lord Kinnock!
August 10, 2025
Indeed. They should also deal with waiting lists by giving people perhaps 50% of the cost to go privately. This saves them 50% of the cost and shortens waiting list for everyone!
August 10, 2025
You pay four times over allready taxes for the NHS, taxes on earning to pay you medical insurance, 12% Insurance tax and the premium – now Kinnock want 20% on top which would of course put you medical premium up 20% plus the 12% IPT to 22.4% up and you would have to earn this so perhaps more like 40% up! Freedom of Choice this dies!
August 10, 2025
The super-rich have paid their school fees up front, ahead of the introduction of VAT. This leaves struggling aspirational parents paying the VAT, which has resulted in students opting for state education and reducing the income from this policy.
August 10, 2025
The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has terminated 22 messenger RNA vaccine research projects, totalling $500 million (£370 million) in funding from its Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (Barda). Very sensible I am not in favour of vaccines that clearly do net harms! I am not anti-vaccination just anti-net harm and ineffective vaccinations.
Dame Kate Bingham was appointed chair of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, without a competitive recruitment process. She was interviewed on the Today programme on Wednesday. This being the BBC no sensible questions were asked. She said mRNA has been very extensively tested. Indeed it has and it has done vast net harm as is rather clear from the statistics (though in the UK they are hiding most of the appalling stats.) – live births down hugely in the vaccinated (see the Czech Republic study), heart issues, strokes, allergic reactions, arrhythmias…it is amd will all coming out. Unsafe, ineffective and absurdly even given to the young and those who had had Covid already!
August 10, 2025
Bingham is married to Jesse Norman. I do not think she, the MHRA, Handcock etc. have apologised yet for the appalling use of net harm Covid “vaccines” and the vast net harms done yet have they? Not even asked about it on the dire propaganda outfit BBC.
August 10, 2025
Lifelogic
You must surely realise by now that no one is going to apologise for the Covid vaccines, because for the vast majority of people there was no bad reaction.
Virtually the whole World Craved the need for a Covid vaccine and accepted it willingly, rightly or wrongly.
Very few people were forced to have it !
August 10, 2025
They were coerced into taking them for travel reasons, job reasons etc, further more they were lied to and they were never safe or effective. Also the regulators were incompetent or worse – plus largely were funded by Big Pharma or had other conflicts of interest. Giving them to the young and people who had already had Covid was surely criminal?
There will be apologies eventually – how long did it take for the blood contamination scandal, the Post Office or Hillsborough? These “vaccines” did vastly more damage circa 100+ worse than the blood contamination scandal and with far less excuse.
Thank goodness for Trump’s appointment of Kennedy to health! It will all slowly come out despite the best efforts of the NHS, statistics authority, government and the civil service to hide this appalling scandal.
August 10, 2025
Lifelogic
I understand perfectly your arguments, but do you really think anyone is going to apologise ? Perhaps in 40 years time like the blood scandal you outline, which certainly was and still is a huge national scandal, but where has it got the victims so far, most dead and the survivors still waiting for some sort of compensation, which will never be enough!
August 10, 2025
No one was frog marched to a place where they were forcibly jabbed. Many were however given option regarding losing employment due to risks with passing Covid to older vulnerable people who may well die as a result, and did! – or accept the well intention jab.
August 10, 2025
They never protected against transmission another liiss was ” take it to protect granny”
August 10, 2025
Depressing news, LL. Our establishment closing ranks with the WHO and big pharma, as usual.
August 10, 2025
Indeed we are not even getting the truth or full information on Air India 171 crash. It seems there was certainly a power problem (probably due to liquid spill issues) well before the engines were allegedly “transversed” to off by a pilot as the RAT deployed before they did this!
A good podcast by Dr John Campbell the other day on significant excess cancer rates in young people (US and UK etc.) starting shortly after the mRNA vaccines! So are we going to be given the vaccination status and numbers of injections broken down on this or will this be hidden too?
August 10, 2025
When this current administration were seeking support for office they claimed they would be focused on growth.
That to some voters was seen as a sound objective. Growth should improve the government’s ability to cover standing costs such as pensions, defence, NHS etc. At no point did the incoming Labour administration say, “we will focus on taxing everything more that impacts growth” but that is what they have done?
Nothing introduced by the chancellor or by any other department within the Labour team has increased growth other than the growth of national debt and inflation oh and unemployment that has grown.
Poverty has also grown, and of course I should mention the growth in uncontrolled migration. The growth in wealth flight to less challenging parts of the world where being rich is not considered a crime has also grown.
Beware any government that advanced increasing growth. Look for the Party that is advancing the objective of increasing,….. wealth.
NB did I mention the growth in thought crime policing and Non Crime Hate Incidents as a thing?
August 10, 2025
Reeves did a growth, growth, growth rain dance (as David Starkey put it) but all the governments policies are clearly very anti-growth – other than relaxing planning (which had not happened yet and probably will not in reality).
August 10, 2025
indeed they want to insist on solar panels, heat pumps and EV charger on new houses all anti-growth, damaging to housing provision and a waste of money for most people!
August 10, 2025
Growth is a strategy advanced by governments that can’t do their bit on controlling spending.
August 10, 2025
To be fair to this government when asked about a wealth tax they have said that they consider the current taxs to be balanced. But they didn’t rule it out , sensible governments don’t.
August 10, 2025
All taxes tax wealth they leave you less to invest next year and this less to tax the next year. Strangling the golden geese that lay the golden eggs.
August 10, 2025
Balanced – 50% for you and 50% for us to waste?
Or if a bit richer 70% for Government to waste and 30% for you to live on and 40% more of all your assets stolen by government when you die!
August 10, 2025
but the ‘50% for you’ has further taxes collectable as you get older ( example: local authority Care homes cost ), perhaps passing on inheritance.
August 10, 2025
Plus the 12% VAT and IPT (12% or 14%) if you spend it and council tax, fuel tax, road tax…
August 10, 2025
No sensible government thinks wealth tax is a good idea.
There are only three countries that do and they are actively eliminating them.
August 10, 2025
Of course it won’t work; nothing about Socialism does.
Having alienated just about every demographic in the country, the only card they have left to play is the traditional Labour one of Class War and envy.
It isn’t just the seriously wealthy who are being targeted. The DWP is considering changes to the way Pension Credit is calculated, for introduction in 2026. Under current regulations, a pensioner’s main home does not affect their eligibility for Pension Credit. Under the proposals, the exemption is being reassessed because many pensioners, particularly in London and the SE, who may be on low incomes and qualify for pension credit, have significant equity in houses which were bought many years ago.
They are coming for anyone who has accumulated any assets/wealth. When they said “you will own nothing” they meant it.
August 10, 2025
Donna
Indeed according to Politicians wealth starts at a figure of £325,000 which is the level at which you pay Inheritance Tax !
Afraid Politicians of all of the main political party’s in the past think that more and more taxation is the answer to the Country’s problems, when in fact it is the enemy of growth and wealth creation.
If you are going to Tax people to death and indeed after death, then eventually people will say why bother to Invest, Save, or even Work.
Afraid as I have said many times before Politicians do not understand human nature.
August 10, 2025
Correct. History tells us that when excessive tax is levied people will avoid out of principle.
A classic expensive loss to the Exchequer was musicians (pop groups) who decided f.you and off they went to France or elsewhere.
August 10, 2025
Labour one of Class War and envy – and using the proceeds to try to buy votes and gerrymandering the voting system with votes for children, family postal voting…
August 10, 2025
I’m not wealthy but I would deeply resent being taxed on 2% of my net worth. That really is theft.
I can understand taxing me on a percentage of my income, it will at least reflect what I can reluctantly afford (if it’s not a penal rate). But tax me on the value of my assets and I may have to sell them to pay the tax, much like IHT. What’s the point in accruing wealth (assets) if they’re just going to grab it?
What’s being proposed for “the wealthy” will be used on the rest of us before too long. I do own my modest house. I can see further dreadful hikes in Council Tax which equate to a wealth tax. Already the CT is far and away the biggest bill I have – roughly double my energy bill.
August 10, 2025
If you net worth earns you 5% then after tax that might only be 3% after 3% inflation depreciation nothing. Then they want 2% PA of the capital. So you get poorer by 2% PA then after say 30 years of this you have less than 40% left and then you die so they grab another 40% so only 24% of you capital left for the children etc.
August 10, 2025
Fourteen frustrating years out of office and the eager and expectant now in power do not want to the thwarted by a lack of spending power so a wealth tax can fix the debilitating shortfall in ways that Wrecker Reeves’s revenues from growth expectations never will. The mad act of killing the golden goose will not deter the Lefties surely?
A 4 per cent. return looks very meagre before any tax is taken, given inflation.
August 10, 2025
Really it’s worse than you say, because you should look at the Bond return minus inflation, so approximately 0.4%, on which a 500% wealth tax is being applied after the 600% income tax. Just to maintain wealth, you’d need to have a gain of about 10%.
Switzerland has a wealth tax, usually sub 1% on assets, but it has neither CGT nor IHT in any meaningful sense. So planning, at least, is easier.
This lot want to grab your assets throughout your life and thereafter, and degrade assets, be they farming land, business or residential, to zero over a generation or so.
August 10, 2025
Rachel from Accounts has snookered herself.
August 10, 2025
We are one of the most heavily taxed nations on earth. We are taxed when we earn it, taxed when we spend it and now, we are even taxed if we save it.
The government is having difficulty with the interest on the humungous national debt. In 2010 at the start of the Cameron/Clegg administration it stood at about £1.6 TRILLION. After 14 years of Conservative tax, borrow and spend policies, last year it stood at £2.5 TRILLION (about 100% of GDP) and the interest is costing us about £120 billion a year and rising. Twice as much as we spend on defence.
We have to cut our cloth accordingly. The solution is for Reeves to cut the welfare bill. The best way to do this is for us to implement a 5 year moratorium on accepting more asylum seekers, intern and repatriate the boat people, restrict NHS access to indigenous Brits who have paid NI and end the mental health sick note culture.
AI has already started to replace white collar jobs; we will not need so many immigrants. The welfare bill is going to surge. I suspect that eventually we are all going to have to contribute more anyway, including the rich.
August 10, 2025
It isn’t just that the wealthy will be intimidated from coming to the UK, or if already here they will leave, it’s that a continuous appetite for tax sends the message to any innovator and entrepreneur that it isn’t worth the effort of starting and growing a business. Why bust a gut when your efforts are taken to reward someone who just sits on their backside demanding benefits?
They often talk about glass ceilings. What about the glass ceiling that says don’t work any harder when you reach the higher rate tax point? Time to relax and take country walks.
If there was no higher rate tax, I predict many people would carry on further and build the economy far more than the tax lost.
August 10, 2025
‘Country walks’ could soon include lots more land no longer used by farmers feeding cows/bulls, or sheep or weather affected arable not worth trying to get the labour to work it seasonally.
And of course lanes, hedges, ditches will not be maintained so the ‘going’ might be more of a challenge.
August 10, 2025
Or take the case of an entrepreneur whose company is valued highly in some fund raising but who has not sold shares and doesn’t take a big income. Suddenly he/she is liable for a 2% tax on the notional value of their company, to be paid in cash. And the eventual value if and when the business is sold or listed, may be below that earlier value. Or nothing at all – business is risky. Entrepreneurs and founders need to get out of the UK the moment this hits or they face bankruptcy. No doubt the morons who promote this will then say ‘OK let’s have an opt out for entrepreneurs’. And so of course begins the whole merry-go-round of tax structuring and definition to avoid this absurd and immoral tax.
The fact this is even under discussion is a sign of how unattractive the left is making the UK for business, entrepreneurship, investment and of course growth.
August 10, 2025
Absolutely right Richard
Well said.
August 10, 2025
So what is inheritance tax if it is not a tax on wealth. It just happens that a person is deceased which politicians think is an excuse to ‘steal’ it.
The fact is that mobility of capital together the ability to employ specialists means that the truly wealthy can legitimately avoid the rules.
A wealth tax and IHT are an attack on the ‘middle class’ as are most taxes because as ‘ordinary’ people they are tied to this country and lack the ability to avoid them.
Both parties see the middle class and now increasingly, with allowance freezes, the working class, as milch cows.
August 10, 2025
Unless general unrest is going to break out across the UK this Labour Government will have to stop taxing and spending, and start saving.
In the same sentence you hear the words £40 billion black hole, raising taxes on almost anything you can think of, and giving millions away to other countries to achieve their net zero targets;This makes no sense!
If you tax the wealthy, the wealthy leave and you don’t have the benefit of their money being re-invested in the UK economy.If you tax the middle incomes you take away incentive.If you tax the lower incomes then the work force come out on strike for more pay and labour lose voters.The result is a lot of dissatisfied people.
If we had a Government who were clever, intelligent and savvy and knew something about economics and business and weren’t so single minded about net zero we could fill the black hole without further taxation within the next 12 months as follows;
Bring back gas/oil exploration to UK and sell to the home market rather than expensive imports from abroad.
Stop HS2 until further notice.
Stop funding other countries including Ukraine.
Stop building nuclear power plants until further notice.
Stop giving away UK owned property abroad unless its not required and at a price based on proper valuations
Stop illegal immigration and make it difficult for people coming to the UK from abroad legally or illegally.
Control and manage local authority and Government spending.
Stop trying to get to Net Zero unless Russia,India,China,USA and the rest of the World does it first.
Most of all stop trying to be World leaders on the World’s stage and concentrate efforts in getting Britain and the UK back to what it was and what it should be.
Make Britain great again!!
August 10, 2025
‘Great’ may be a step too far, I’d accept Britain with a decent society and ruled by people who evidenced at least half a brain, unlike what we have experienced for years, now becoming decades.
August 10, 2025
Well Said, Paul!
If only we had people like you in Government, we wouldn’t be in the mess we are in now. I have seen several Labour Governments in my lifetime, and they are all the same, spending taxpayers money like water.
All Starmer, Lammy etc. are interested in is being perceived as ‘World Statesmen’. They don’t have the interests of people in this Country at heart. I am sick to death with my taxes funding their stupid giveaways. When the dam breaks and there is trouble on the streets, they will wring their hands and say, ‘ What did we do wrong’. I despair. !
August 10, 2025
PW :
What on earth makes you believe that the PM wants “Britain and the UK to get back to what it was and what it should be? Once this fallacy has been grasped all his actions become completely transparent.
August 10, 2025
The real problem is not a handful of folk with £10M to squander but the big international corporates who suck £Billions out the clutches of Rachel et al. If we look at the likes of the Big 5 tech companies and the Big 5 accounting companies, there looks to be a source of wealth – if only Rachel can get her hands on it.
However somewhat hard to get blood out of Microsoft et al, foreign and well protected. Looking closer to home we might ask who are the expensive useless? Too many MPs and too many Lords for a start. Then the churches, ready for a Henry VIII rerun. Tax all the Bishops, Rabbis, Imams etc etc to a minimal existence, separate Church and State and remove all legal status charitable and otherwise. Flog off the gold and land.
The service industries of law and finance look ripe for plucking. Good at screaming and wriggling, will need some sharp claws to get hold of them. Do those things and let the dust settle and look again.
Taxation is about plucking the goose – without it hissing too much. What we need is a bit of hissing.
Reply Why waste so much in undesirable and inefficient public spending?
August 10, 2025
“A wealth tax could force them to sell their family home as they may well not have the income to pay the state 2% of the value of their property”
This is already happening with inheritance tax.! This will happen also for farmers.
August 10, 2025
Wanderer
Your concern about Council Tax is interesting.
Savills have estimated that UK housing stock is now worth £9Trn. So a 1% tax could theoretically raise around £90 billion.
Simply adding this to coucil tax bills would seem be easy administratively and would fall most upon those with the greatest asset
Subtract Reeve’s newly created £50 billion black hole and she would have £40 billion for her union backers
RESULT…??
Reply Thats not a wealth tax, it is a property tax. How would highly mortgaged lower income people pay that.
August 10, 2025
@Michael McGrath. The problem for me would be that the asset being taxed is the home I need, to live in. It doesn’t produce an income stream for me. I’ve already tried letting out my spare room for Airbnb and it paid next to nothing, for a lot of hassle and loss of privacy (shared kitchen). I’d just have to pay the “wealth tax” and end up with even less disposable income.
I can see the attraction of it to Labour, though.
August 10, 2025
It’s always more tax MM.
Why not some reduced State spending?
Quangos, NGOs, Funding Charities, Overseas Aid, Net Zero expenditure.
A few percent saved off these areas would raise tens of billions
August 10, 2025
+1
August 10, 2025
435 criminals were illicitly shipped, into the UK yesterday on the 9th August from France……
August 10, 2025
The justice secretary is to return all foreign criminals that are in jail ….but they’re not returning the visa over-stayers criminals nor the illegal immigrant criminals
August 10, 2025
Government Ministers reportly lost trac of 150,000 immigrants on social-care visas – GBNews
August 10, 2025
Will there be any means to stop them returning immediately? Or will Border Force (?)/passport control simply wave them through? I heard that once returned to their home countries their UK deeds/misdemeaners will be wiped off our databses.
August 10, 2025
These “criminals” have been rewarded for their breaking into the UK with free 4 star hotel accomodation (or given a house they can later no doubt apply for squatters’ rights), free clothing, free healthcare, free entertainment, £40/week pocket money, mobile ‘phones and the freedom to roam our streets (including loitering around schools) and if they want take black market jobs to boost their spending power. What’s not to like, particularly those who get to stay in a nice hotel by the sea?
August 10, 2025
With respect, Sir John, I think you are missing the point of a wealth tax. Just as high, wasteful spending is used to justify high taxation, so a wealth tax is not to generate state income but to destroy the personal and hence wealth of a country for socialism depends upon making and keeping people poor. If the administration needs money it can simply print it. Net Zero is another vehicle for destroying wealth with high energy prices, expensive transitioning to electrification and the rationing of energy, food and travel. That a wealth tax, together with mass immigration and Net Zero, is promoted by the PM should come as no surprise to anyone as before he was elected to Parliament he served on the executive committee of the Fabian Society, a Far Left movement, whose logo is a wolf in sheep’s clothing.
August 10, 2025
We’ve already got a wealth tax via one of the most penal inheritance tax regimes in the world. The Laffer Curve will apply to any further attempt to soak the rich.
August 10, 2025
Aside from double taxation how does one measure wealth as opposed to income?
I would advocate for a larger council tax to be paid on more valuable homes and this should be set by the purchase price not the value of the home.
At least double the amount of council tax could be collected if higher bands were used and the top rate increased.
This would save central government oaying out grants.
However before any attempts to raise tax are attempted, I would like to see government spending slashed. Benefits, public sector pensions and civil servants numbers and pay rates are all something that could be cut
August 10, 2025
The 10% of income taxpayers with the largest incomes contribute over 60% of income tax receipts. So the Government want the largest contributors to the tax take to leave, that is what will happen with a wealth tax…
August 10, 2025
For those of a Liberal, Social Democrat or Democratic Socialist outlook one of the great attractions of taxing wealth is to redistribute it. This was explicit, for instance, in the proposals of the high-powered, non-party Meade Committee commissioned by the Insitute for Fiscal Studies way back in 1978.
In our fiscal reality, however, capital taxes do not redistribute wealth. They destroy it. That is evident from the Budget arithmetic. Capital Gains Tax, Inheritance Tax and both stamp duties are all used to finance current government consumption. Even in the disappearing chance of a current surplus in the last years of this Parliament , seven eights of public investment would still be financed by new Treasury borrowing – more than 2 per cent of GDP.
Professor Meade’s exhaustive 500 page report recommended an expenditure tax and a wealth tax and has largely been ignored on practical grounds ever since, both being ridiculously complex. It envisaged annual property revaluations for Wealth Tax and what is now Council Tax, something councils say they cannot afford for decades. He noted that an equitable Wealth Tax would need to include accumulated pension rights (sorry Sir Keir) and would cause problems about the share of different members of a family. He also noted, as you have done, that combining income tax with wealth tax would virtually eliminate the return on many investments.
Let us hope that Lord Kinnock and others blithely recommending a wealth tax 1} reread the Meade Report and 2}wonder how a family with a net worth of , say, £9.5 million might change their behaviour in response.
August 10, 2025
Bye bye Starmer and Reeves.
August 10, 2025
Plus the 12% VAT and IPT (12% or 14%) if you spend it and council tax, fuel tax, road tax…
August 15, 2025
Extremely wealthy people will just up sticks and move. The people who will suffer from this kind of nonsense are the ones who have diligently saved for their homes and paid huge mortgage rates at times of labour governments (up to 17% in my case) so we have paid more tax than most but are used as cash cows now for people who do not have the basic skills to know how the economy should work. Firstly, they should start reviewing and changing the welfare laws which are often talked about but nothing is done. You cannot expect tax payers to keep funding those who do not work even if they are ill. As a lot of welfare payments are larger than those who work for a living get, something is very wrong. The NHS also needs reform into a private insurance facility. We cannot keep paying into a system that does not work and you are holed up in ambulances for hours on end whilst people coming over on boats are given free treatment as soon as they come off the boats. Mrs Thatcher got it right with her comment about labour being good at spending other people’s money and that is what this lot are doing now.