To think the world should have a 100% tax rate

Isn't the OP discussing this at a global level. It's far from a joke.

EU and the UK could coordinate their fiscal policies to reduce competitive disparities. Obviously, you could move your family to a country that has hallowed out all societal infrastructure and allows you to keep 99.9% of your wealth but I suppose then you have to live in an environment that leaves most destitute.

Yeah millionaires in Iran and Indonesia maybe.

Many have tried to discuss this on here OP and have similarly failed.

MN posters in general love billionaires and love the super wealthy and will never entertain the idea that they should have less or pay more.

It isn't communism though and to argue that it is, is quite simplistic. Even the millionaires are arguing the balance is wrong- Polling by Survation, commissioned by Patriotic Millionaires, has found that 77 per cent of millionaires from G20 countries think extremely wealthy people buy political influence, and nearly three quarters recognise that extreme wealth threatens our democracies.

It is highly unfortunate that media and successive governments have perpetuated this myth. There is no such thing as "non-dom" in UK tax, since April 2025.

I pull this one out quite a lot when people say ill-thought out things like the above quote (and the OP too!). It's from the West Wing, so v old now, but still relevant:

"Henry, last fall, every time your boss got on the stump and said, “It’s time for the rich to pay their fair share,” I hid under a couch and changed my name. I left Gage Whitney making $400,000 a year, which means I paid 27 times the national average in income tax. I paid my fair share, and the fair share of 26 other people. And I’m happy to, ’cause that’s the only way it’s gonna work. And it’s in my best interest that everybody be able to go to schools and drive on roads. But I don’t get 27 votes on Election Day. The fire department doesn’t come to my house 27 times faster and the water doesn’t come out of my faucet 27 times hotter. The top one percent of wage earners in this country pay for 22 percent of this country. Let’s not call them names while they’re doing it, is all I’m saying"

In the UK the top 1% of earners account for roughly 13% to 15% of all total taxable income in the UK, but they pay 28-30% of all tax, so pay twice their relative share - not just twice as much (they pay many, many more times) than the rest of the UK, but twice as much relative to their income.

Bashing the wealthy might be fun, and you may feel schadenfreude when they get taxed more, but if they leave in vast numbers, the UK is screwed. We are unable to fill the gap they would make without leaving many, many people seriously uncomfortable or worse. The Adam Smith Institute estimated that with a "medium number" of non-doms leaving the impact could be a cumulative loss of up to £32.4bn in lost growth by 2035 and the loss of 28,322 jobs by 2030. You can read the whole report here:
https://www.adamsmith.org/press-releases/abolition-of-non-dom-status-could-cost-up-to-111-billion-by-2035

Wes Streeting has suggested equalisation of CGT with IT and HMRC has an interesting chart which shows that if this happened, the Treasury would lose money. You have to account for human behaviour. Would OP be happy if her 100% tax rate reduced overall tax revenues?

We don’t have a World Government though. So people would just shift over to a different regime.
Bit like all the climate change stuff. No point in a few countries having policies when the greatest polluters don’t. Manufacturers just shift to the easier regime.

And money doesn’t work as simply as that. It’s not a pile of gold or bread that can just be shared and suddenly poor people can have the houses and food and infrastructure they want. Resources are finite even if money is just a concept allowing exchange. Changing economies doesn’t mean resources expand to suit.

OP can stop worrying about billionaires in this country. They are leaving anyway.

In other news government borrowing was 25% up year on year in April. The government borrowed £25b to pay for welfare and freebies for people with same mindset as OP who want free stuff at other people’s dime.

The billionaires must be laughing at this stupid country. And rightly so. You can hate them all you want. Until you want their businesses and jobs they create and the tax they pay. And yes 1% of a billion is still better than 0% of nothing. Not to mention the fact conic activity a billionnaire would create.

Well, how’s that working out?

How old are you OP? Are you still at school or something. You seem to be incredibly naive.

By the way communism or whatever version of communism this is has never worked. Ever. Like Ever.

You seem like you haven’t really lived or built anything yourself.

Money gets spent as well as made so the incentive would be to maintain the billionaire status.

We should separate the two issues being debated here:

1. is it morally right that an individual can own wealth that is significantly beyond what a normal person can own, and;
2. as this situation exists today, what changes to the tax code / environment can we collectively (internationally) make such that this situation goes away.

To me, 2) has been answered. We can’t really do much about this situation by forcing people to pay more tax etc etc, as for lots of reasons (see above) it would just not work / have some big side effects. They could willingly donate their wealth to charity (or pay off some of the national debt, etc), but we would need common agreement on 1) to make that happen.

so let’s move to 1)?

On this - it’s clearly a complex issue. To me, I go back to my previous point. I would argue that it is morally ok for this, with the assumption that those people have built that wealth by building businesses (ie employing others) and thus generated wealth beyond just themselves, and paying lots of tax. If it’s inherited, then that assumption is not valid.

So my conclusion on 1) is, if it is earned, fine. If it is unearned, not fine.

The OP is discussing Billionaires though, to be in the top 1% of earners in the UK that's £201,000 before tax as much as this is beyond the dreams of many it is not billionaire status.

I mean, is it about motivation to earn money at "billions' level?

The problem is billionaires structure their income as wealth, not salary, so it is taxed less than someone earning way less. Our tax system is criminally inadequate and assets should be taxed too. The problem is the UK allows vast amounts of potentially taxable wealth to be hidden offshore or to be avoided. We need global tax reform.

How could it be morally right to take all of the money which someone has earnt?

Start your own successful company maybe and then you can donate the profits to who you like.

And before you say "not everyone has the same opportunities". My husband grew up in an abusive household in a tiny council flat in an ex-mining village and is now one of the 1% top earners in the country. My upbringing was less abusive, but not much richer.

Are you trying to be patronising?

Are you going to do the "finance gaslighting" that people love to do where you say that being a multi billionaire is actually a really good thing for the world and we shouldn't question it if we haven't done a degree in economics or don't "work in finance"?

The way people, particularly on here, are about extreme wealth is so odd. Like it's almost sacrilegious to question the morality of people amassing more wealth than they can possibly ever hope to spend.

You don’t work in finance do you @notanothernamechange24 ?

You are on a hiding to nothing with this kind of argument unfortunately because people are now immune to the concept of what a billion pounds actually is.
The fact that a poster has already compared this idea to someone not wanting to move up an ordinary tax bracket just shows that.

Actually the idea is the sort of thing we need to look at but because we are so used to hearing about billionaires now (a thousand million!) we seem to think it's within anyone's reach and becoming a billionaire is some kind of incentive - so people say taxing billionaires in this way would demotivate people.
It's ludicrous because the majority of us will never see or make a billion but for some reason a lot of people think they will and are very protective of the idea of the uber wealthy.
In a lot of ways we have lost all perspective on wealth and it's hard to discuss things like this rationally.
It is disgusting that people like Musk exist.

We already have an effective 100% tax rate in the UK for people earning >£100k with kids.

I take home £0 between £100-155k between tax, NI and loss of benefits.

There have always been highly successful people, who build companies and employ lots of us to work for them. There are a few lucky people who inherit family wealth. They should pay a fair tax, but your idea is crazy. We need more and more of these people. You will discourage growth and development.
I take it you resent extreme wealth.
we want more wealthy people, spending lots of money, growing businesses and developing new projects.

But you are taxing all income, right? Any savings interest is taxed as income, and is therefore subject to 100% too. If I had £1bn (big if unfortunately) and I know interest above £1bn would be taxed 100%, I would spend the amount needed per year (gin, etc) so that I had the amount in saving that would compound to £1bn, avoiding your tax. As a PP says, Laffer is your answer to this question (just Google).

So conclusion, you would raise a lot less in taxes that you do now, so that we are all poorer, fewer libraries, teachers, police etc. Kick the rich and we in fact kick ourselves. To me - this is a strong moral argument against your proposal.

ie would you do this on moral grounds… absolutely not.

This is no way as near as simple as you think.

Billionaires would give wealth away to family etc if faced with a 100% tax rate on assets.

And wealth taxes are very complex and difficult to implement. We can barely manage it in an effective way for inheritance tax. Billionaires don’t just have a billion pounds sitting in a bank account making interest.

Let’s say you have a company worth £1bn. It goes up in value to £1.1bn. You need to pay £100m tax so sell some shares (as you’re unlikely to have the liquidity to just pay it). This in itself affects the markets. It affects the model you have to use for your company and generally taxes which limit the business model which has to be used are a bad idea.

The value of the shares then goes down again for whatever reason. But you already paid your tax. Can you get it back?

And how do you deal with this on an international basis (as almost all billionaires will be internationally mobile and have assets outside the UK). We don’t really have international wealth taxes in this way so there isn’t a framework for them. Do you want the UK to effectively confiscate foreign assets?

Don't conflate people making 90K with billionaires. It's not the same.

People have always done this though.

people in this situation are looking at the extra work they have to do for a smaller increase than it first looks on paper - they aren’t getting less money. Just less than the overall figure suggests.

you could argue it clears the way for younger people- it’s worth it for them as it’s a couple of years working for relatively little extra, but gives them experience for the bigger jobs with huge money.

the people not going for them are people who are happy with their lot and don’t want added stress.