Gary Stevenson and campaigners want a wealth tax: What is one and would it really work?

26 comments

1. “Suprise” one off wealth taxes can work and have worked in the past.

   The rich don’t pack up and leave because they don’t have time to do so before the tax and afterwards, well its already been paid, whats the point.

   I believe this is the best way to go.

2. Yes it would, we live in a totally rigged society that favours the wealthy

3. Wealth taxes are difficult to implement for a variety of reasons, mainly capital flight and valuation issues. The paradigmatic case study is France, whose first attempt at implementing a wealth tax led to a *decrease* in revenues and was repealed soon after.

   Most countries who have tried to implement wealth taxes have failed miserably and are [rolling them back](https://conversableeconomist.blogspot.com/2019/02/why-have-other-countries-been-dropping.html).

   Land value tax is the way to go.

4. The report asking “what is one” like it’s some alien idea that nobody has ever thought of before. Media run by billionaires trying to make people question their stances on these measures

   People go on about how the 50s and 60s were better, they were better because tax on the rich was 92%

5. The problem with these wealth taxes is when they first get mentioned, we intuitively think of billionaire Elon Musk/Geoff Bezos types with super-yachts and private jets who could surely stand to loose a billion and barely notice the difference… but of course the reality is those people are few and far between. Their wealth is extremely internationally mobile and they have real political power to avoid wealth taxes behind closed doors.

   So what ends up happening instead is we just lazily tax high incomes (which arbitrarily seems to be set somewhere between £100K and £150K) rather than wealth. The people earning those salaries aren’t superyacht owning private jet flying billionaires – typically thats going to be people like doctors/dentists/solicitors/accountants and C-suite roles for small to medium enterprises. Most jobs that pay that sort of salary are also in the SE/London and these people tend to have pretty average lifestyles – semi-detached 4 bed in a london suburb or a commuter town for example. When faced with hefty tax bills they just cut their hours to avoid the tax and so it stiffles growth and wealth creation.

   The honest truth is, if we all want to be richer then it needs to come from growth – which needs to be a national collective effort. We all (and the left in particular) need to get over this idea that taxing one or two billionaires is going to fix all our problems – because it isn’t.

6. But the wealthy just move out of UK if they even hint at it. So there must be something in place for those who take their wealth and run to avoid paying their fair part to the wealth they Earned whilst here, especially since their has been profiteering since covid.

7. This has never made much sense to me.

   We want the government to tax the rich but we don’t care how the rich treat and pay the working class?

   We want the money go from the rich > to the government > and then finally to the people.

   Why don’t we remove the middle man and make sure the rich don’t exploit and underpay the people in the first place.

   Why not increase the tax revenue by increasing how much people earn directly instead of letting the rich pay bad wages which are not enough to live on and once they have enough only then the government go in and take money from the rich and help the people with that money. Why not increase the money the people get in the first place.

   Please someone explain!

8. I wish people would actually look up and listen to Gary Stevenson’s stuff (or even just read OP’s article) before knee jerk commenting.

9. Not only a wealth tax on hoarding top %, but actually clamping down on mega corporations avoiding corporation tax. Amazon won’t leave the country, it’s a fallacy that there will be this mass exodus of money from the UK if we make these companies/people pay their fair share.

10. I always feel really cynical when people say “the millionaires will just leave”.

    I mean, yeah? They probably will? But if they’re the unscrupulous sort that moves for those reasons, isn’t it likely their wealth is all in Switzerland/Panama already?

    And doesn’t their absence create a vacuum that could be filled by new entrepeneurs who are more interested in making the UK a better place?

11. Increase capital gains tax and close loopholes. Increase stamp duty on expensive luxury houses. Increase stamp duty on 2nd / 3rd / 4th properties, including modernising the land registry and companies house to provide transparency and loophole tracking if people are using other names / holding companies. LVT as many others have said for years now. Finesse VAT to be higher on luxury goods like super cars and 20k handbags. If we can tweak VAT to not apply to certain necessities, we can increases it to apply more to pointless super expensive shit..

    The fundamental issue is the asset price increase / wealth / rents / interest / passive income of the super rich not only grows at a rate higher than wages and the economy at large, it is taxed less than income. They use this surplus income that a. earns more than a worker and b. is taxed less than an earned income (think PAYE) to hoard even more assets and distort the economy even further.

    It HAS to be done because the end point is a non existent middle class within 2 or 3 generations.

12. I hope they mean multi-nationals, energy companies, monarchy etc

    Not people who have worked their way up and are considered “wealthy” because they might be worth a couple mil.

13. It works when governments actually want it to work. Look at the Russian billionaires atm.

14. Four most dangerous words in the English language “this time, it’s different”!

15. Gary Stevenson is hilariously bad.

    Wealth taxes do not work.

    If man wants a wealth tax start leading by example.

16. Better to kick up than being shat down on.

    Trickle-down economics was the biggest economic con-job that came out of the 80s. A rising tide doesn’t lift boats when you tie them to the bottom. It just makes more room for the superyachts.

17. I believe there should be an upper limit to liquid personal wealth.

    Like a fixed number in liquid cash, you can increase it for one time purchasing should it be necessary once applied for. But let’s say an arbitrary 500 million.

    If you have that liquid ready to go you win capitalism. Like an elite club the accounts are all the same and managed by the government. All interest and management of the funds above that limit are government/public assets.

    All that 500 million is yours and you can keep earning to top that up but never above.

    Again this is just a hypothetical thought exercise by me and I’m sure it’s full of holes for lots of reasons, but I’m sure the majority of us can agree that hoarding wealth above that serves no one. Not even the person it belongs to. The numbers become meaningless and nothing is out of reach, so why not change the mindset around it and have an end goal.

18. Guys you don’t understand, taxing the rich would be SUPER complicated and the rich might decide that actually they want to pay LESS tax instead.

    It’s a much better idea to just abolish the welfare state and remove the closest thing we have to a wealth tax (they’re talking about scrapping the Digital Services tax to appease Trump and his tech bros).

    That way we can stop all of this pretence that the UK is for anyone other than the rich, and accept the fact that the state is not concerned with falling living standards and will not protect you from the inevitable societal collapse.

19. Multi millionaires and billionaires who don’t want to be taxed will always find a way out of it. People might be surprised how many of these don’t care / wouldn’t notice / would be happy to pay more tax… You obviously don’t hear from them very often.

    I think we need to increase tax on unearned income, i.e. capital gains. The highest CGT rate is 24%, whilst the highest PAYE rate is 45% (47% including NI, even more if you include other stealth taxes on earned income).

    The government should at least find a happy medium between earned and unearned. E.g. 37% high rate for both. This might also encourage more people to work.

20. Wealth tax is a pain in the arse to implement and get reliable valuations.

    You need to hit the ways the wealthy extract wealth. Hiding stuff in the BVI, Caymans, Isle of Man etc. Dividends out to those already in existence. Ensure you’ve actually taxed on transaction (as in when something is realised) then no matter what, the state will get its pound of flesh. Eventually.

    Labour having increased capital gains is great and all but when it’s owned by a BVI company that just stays as belonging to “The estate of” and never passing on for IHT or even being taxed or sold at all it kind of defeats the point. Especially when dividends to it are tax free.

21. I think a lot of the critiques of Gary miss the broader point he’s making. His argument isn’t just about whether a wealth tax can raise enough revenue for public services (although that’s certainly important). More fundamentally he’s pointing out how extreme wealth inequality itself is damaging to the wider economy and the living standards of the working and middle classes.

    It’s not just a question of redistribution for the sake of funding schools or hospitals – it’s about disrupting the relentless concentration of wealth among asset-owning elites. That accumulation drives up asset prices (which includes housing – go figure) making it harder for ordinary people to build security and get on the property ladder etc. Unchecked inequality doesn’t just leave people with less, it actively reshapes the economy in ways that are harmful to the majority.

22. Interest allows rich people to do nothing and still have an amazing life, off the back of the poor paying that interest and living off beans on toast. Inherit £5m and you can easily live off the interest for the rest of your life without even getting out of bed…you are a parasite in society. Banks lend that money to the poor and force them to pay it back with interest, which then gets handed to the rich. This is the immoral society we accept as ok. If a poor person stays in bed for whatever reason they get beaten by society with benefits cuts, even if they are too ill to work. Why then, do we allow the rich to do nothing and not contribute – in fact, worse than not contribute, they are actively stealing from the poor through interest rates. For moral reasons alone, we have to implement a tax on wealth.

    Not every rich person is evil, not every poor person is good. But, the system is wrong and facilitates parasitical rich lives feeding on slave like poor lives. The balance needs to change. If we cant stop interest, then we can claw it back with a wealth tax

23. I love when this kind of topic comes up

    It’s always full of folks who probably have mortgages they will never be able to pay off or are stuck in a loop of renting to pay for someone else mortgage all while watching more and more foodbanks opening up in their towns and cities yet they defend the wealthy.

    Then we get all the lads turning up who think they’re fucking Warren Buffet because they made a hindered quid on Crypto meme-coins to give us all some kind of armature lesson on bro-ecconomics. Trying to convince us that the guy who as a studded Economics at LSE, Oxford and actually worked in the industry making money is talking shite and we should all listen to them.

    Wealth inequality is a massive issue in this country, a wealth tax is one option to try to fix the problem, we can either start trying things to fix this or just keep going letting the wealthier accumulate more and more of the wealth.

    But yeah….lets all sit about like the good little plebs we are and defend the wealthy while some of us are trying to decide if its going to be going to be cold or hungry tonight.

24. Brit here, living in Switzerland now and we have a wealth tax that raises about 7 billion a year. Works well and no-one disputes it.

25. Many commenters here don’t understand the point of a wealth tax. It’s not *just* to raise revenues, it’s there to slow down the passive accumulation of wealth. That’s the whole point – to prevent concentration of wealth.

    Why is wealth accumulation bad? Well, because it concentrates power into fewer individuals, who can now buy media outlets, fund political campaigns, or set up corporations that are “too big to fail” or “too big to tax”, they buy out the competition thus stifling free markets. It leads to more financial bubbles as the same money is chasing a diminishing number of assets, thereby raising the price of any assets which could potentially return profits – whether it’s equities, mortgages (as a lender), real estate, etc.

    Is this accumulation actually happening? Well, if the economy grows at 0.9% and the top 1% are increasing their wealth at ~7% a year, then their extra 6.1% wealth is something they are buying from the bottom 99%. The wealthy are buying this with the proceeds of the wealth they already own and don’t spend.

    Doesn’t this affect entrepreneurs? Not really, for two reasons – first, startups grow at a much higher pace than 1% a year. A business worth £10M it would be returning about £500,000 every year – that’s profit that can be distributed as dividends. Second, and more important – when people don’t have to rent assets, they can spend more, which improves the environment for businesses in general.

    A 1% wealth tax on assets above a certain value most people can agree constitutes a shade of “rich”, i.e. 1% on wealth above £10M could begin addressing that problem of concentration of wealth.

26. Man the billionaire toadies are out in force in this thread, they’d probably be kicking up this kind of stink if you asked them to pay an extra tenner never mind what their worth. Greedy inhuman bastards

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