Calls for wealth tax as Rich List shows £772bn in the hands of just 350 families

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/rich-list-wealth-tax-patriotic-millionaires-sunday-times-rich-list-b2752300.html

by VulcanSpark

24 comments

  1. Don’t worry it’ll start to trickle down any day now. 

  3. Trickling down as i type this comment, will buy a house (miniature, one bed bungalow in central London) with my portion of the trickle down

  4. This will not happen for sure and they will direct people instead on immigration topics

  5. Even just properly taxing housing would be a huge benefit. Council tax capped at £6k is insane. If we had a 1% market value tax it would not only generate hundreds of billions but it would also

    1. tax wealth locked in residential housing (£9trn)
    2. motivate older generations to actually downsize freeing up family homes in economic centres
    3. help put downward pressure on high house prices.

    High house prices alone are estimated to be a 20-30% detractor to GDP. Brexit is estimated to be 2-4%….

  6. How about alongside the Rich List we list the top 250 tax payers in the country. 

    Number 1 gets to live in Buckingham Palace free of charge. 

    You’re only allowed to own a Premier League team if you are in the top 100.

    Top 250 lets you see an NHS dentist.

  7. The problem with having *that much* wealth is that it snowballs, because you can just use your passive income to buy up all the assets. You don’t even need to invest smart because you have so much money even just 1 or 2 pc interest will be enough to buy a house every day of the year in perpetuity.

    Which is precisely the problem. The core problem is that ultra wealthy people do not invest their money in productive ways, there’s no incentive for them to take any risk whatsoever because they can just keep on snowballing their wealth on the absolute slimmest of margins.

    What needs to happen is either tax + redistribute… Or alternatively, you need to somehow force wealthy people to only invest in productive pursuits.

    My idea… Anyone worth over 5 million pounds (or some other threshold, it’s not important) can no longer buy *existing* properties. They are only allowed to build new ones.

    That one little line of code right there would go a long way. With no tax increase, and minimal intervention.

  8. You see they don’t have that much, they really can’t afford to pay, taxes, higher wages etc..

  9. No, £772bn *worth of assets* is in the hands of 350 families. It’s not like it’s all cash in a current account you could take a few billion from with them barely noticing.

    “Wealth tax” is a slogan, not a policy.

  10. Yeah, sounds great but it better be a surprise move, if it’s given some publicity, they’ll have their wealth out of here so quick you’ll never see the footsie fall so fast.

  11. Taxing them 25% of their wealth would gain us £193 billion, or a 16% rise in our budget for a single year. It barely seems worth it.

  12. Yeah but someday I’ll be a millionaire and I dont want to pay taxes on money I will never spend

  13. Guys no way, they deserve that wealth. They just work 772,000,000,000,000 times harder than us.

    Keep talking about immigrants and trans people instead.

  14. Those 350 families have enough money to bribe all parties. End of story.

  15. We can’t possibly dilute the royal family’s wealth, I mean that wouldn’t be fair at all, right?

  16. People don’t understand, taxing things is a system for discouraging things.

    Wealth tax isn’t just about getting the billions now, it’s about discouraging people buying 50 homes and putting assets back into the lower and middle class

  17. Rich get richer. Big yawn. 

    The real problem is where are trans people are shitting!

    /s

  18. At this point it’s not even about increasing the tax for them. 50% on earnings of a billion/pa is plenty, its more about closing the loopholes they are all using to pay almost nothing.

  19. “Sometimes I do wish apples were our currency So your hoarded millions would rot in their vaults And that’d teach you to lay off the assault That you’re barraging on the lands of the poor” – Enter Shikari

  20. Do you understand what happens when wealth concentrates this much?

    What do you think they do with all that extra money? Wonder why house prices are where they are?

  21. The top 1% in the UK pay 30% of taxes
    The top 10% of people in the UK pay 60% of the taxes

    90% of people in the UK contribute just 40% of the tax bill. So keep bashing the rich and try and tax them more and even more of them will leave for Dubai. The result will be the 90% have to pick up their share of the taxes.

    Like it or not, you need the wealthy to subsidise the poor.

  22. That’s what Starmer should do. Just take £100billion or so off them and do some visible improvements for everyone.

  23. The top 100 richest families in Britain should be asked to pay for things. Like the philanthropist of old, get them to fund;
    – Hospitals,
    – Schools,
    – Universities,
    – Libraries,
    – Public Parks,
    – Bridges,
    Etc. Offload the burden on goverment/councils and leave something with their names on.

  24. It’s a ridiculous idea. Tax the successful and give to the lazy.

Comments are closed.