Proposed Wealth Tax

[BootsieBarnes]

It's been discussed in the press that the Chancellor is considering a one-off wealth tax of 5% on assets over £500k. Allegedly this is being considered as part of the March budget to make a dent in the huge Covid debt the UK is facing.

So in real terms that would be a £25k tax bill for someone who has assets valued at £500k, such as property.

What do you think about this? would your family be able to swallow a tax bill that size?

I'm not doing any research, I just read that and thought about the impact it would have on families living in houses in that price bracket.

I've put on voting as well for interest. I'm not actually sure where I stand on this as I can see both sides, so this is just an arbitrary allocation just for voting.

YABU - people with assets that big should pay

YANBU - that would be unfair

@LimitIsUp

I'd rather they target the super rich than the squeezed middle

There is nothing in the report to suggest that tax would impact the median, or even the mean, owners of wealth.

Don't they say that £400,000 in a pension is what to aim for though for £20k pension a year and an average house is £250-£300k which would tip people in their early 60s with mortgage paid off and pension fund ready for retirement over the top if they are either single or couple, add in cars and other things that might be included and you could end up paying quite a bit in tax.

I wish they would put public tax rating on businesses, a bit like food hygiene ratings. So they have to prominently display a sign on the door or website giving a tax avoidance rating and people could vote with their feet. Not sure it would make that much difference (even if doable). I was on that 'last five things bought on Amazon' thread, and I was the only poster in about ten pages who said they don't shop on Amazon, so I'm not sure people care about tax avoidance despite all our talk.

[quote PigletJohn]@Notgoingouttoday

What is the Annual Tax on Enveloped Dwellings?[/quote]
That is for companies rather than individuals, but it does work like a wealth tax. It catches those who were failing to pay Stamp Duty by using a company to purchase.

Not this again. It will never ever happen as it will lunge huge amounts asset rich cash poor people into extreme poverty.

I believe that the initial increase in tax will be on the basic rate by 1-2p.

I was on that 'last five things bought on Amazon' thread, and I was the only poster in about ten pages who said they don't shop on Amazon, so I'm not sure people care about tax avoidance despite all our talk

Kendodd - Imagine what would happen if suddenly Amazon, Facebook, WhatsApp etc was suddenly banned in this country. There would be absolute uproar.
Rightly or wrongly these businesses have become essential to a large proportion of the British population (I say British as we are talking about tax in this country).
Removing them would be seen as the action of an authoritarian regime such as China or North Korea.
Kendodd would your solution be to start up a British version which could be taxed?

‘Were’ banned not ‘was’.

@Kendodd

I wish they would put public tax rating on businesses, a bit like food hygiene ratings. So they have to prominently display a sign on the door or website giving a tax avoidance rating and people could vote with their feet. Not sure it would make that much difference (even if doable). I was on that 'last five things bought on Amazon' thread, and I was the only poster in about ten pages who said they don't shop on Amazon, so I'm not sure people care about tax avoidance despite all our talk.

People only care if it doesn't affect them. They're happy to pay tradesmen cash in hand so they dont pay the vat. If you have two shops next to eachother, one paying full tax, one using tax avoidance, most people will shop at the one with cheaper prices.`

Food hygiene door stickers don't work for everyone. Plenty of takeaways with low ratings are still surprisingly busy if they're popular for other reasons, such as right location for clubs/students, or cheaper, or whatever.

The solution is a global crack down on tax. Get rid of tax havens and bring in and enforce international tax laws so the likes of Amazon have no hiding place. Then we could have Amazon and its tax. Win, win.

@Barbadossunset

I was on that 'last five things bought on Amazon' thread, and I was the only poster in about ten pages who said they don't shop on Amazon, so I'm not sure people care about tax avoidance despite all our talk

Kendodd - Imagine what would happen if suddenly Amazon, Facebook, WhatsApp etc was suddenly banned in this country. There would be absolute uproar.
Rightly or wrongly these businesses have become essential to a large proportion of the British population (I say British as we are talking about tax in this country).
Removing them would be seen as the action of an authoritarian regime such as China or North Korea.
Kendodd would your solution be to start up a British version which could be taxed?

You say "banned."

Requiring companies to pay some tax in the countries where they operate and make profits is not a "ban."

Piglet sure, but surely if there was a way to make Amazon etc pay tax in every country in which it operates then it would be done.
I think it would be great if it paid its fair share of tax.

Simply saying the asset rich (large house) cash poor can downsize ignores the reality of the housing market. House prices will be compressed, as there is an insufficient number of smaller properties for people to downsize to, presuming they can find someone to buy their existing property. It will replicate some of the issues with renting; poeple stuck in larger properties and having HB restricted but unable to rent a smaller place

@Barbadossunset

Piglet sure, but surely if there was a way to make Amazon etc pay tax in every country in which it operates then it would be done. I think it would be great if it paid its fair share of tax.

would?

Could.

France is having a go, but the squealing from the rich and powerful multinational tax-dodgers is deafening.

www.ft.com/content/2cfe3d07-7e69-4f57-b634-8b6002f967cb

@Barbadossunset

Piglet sure, but surely if there was a way to make Amazon etc pay tax in every country in which it operates then it would be done.

There is. Countries just need to collaborate with each other instead of letting multinationals put them against each other.

@Barbadossunset

Piglet sure, but surely if there was a way to make Amazon etc pay tax in every country in which it operates then it would be done. I think it would be great if it paid its fair share of tax.

Shops/online sellers who sell via Amazon ARE paying their tax on what they sell through the platform. That's thousands of small/local businesses.

There is also the new digital sales tax that's been introduced for online platforms, and also VAT on sales (quite a recent development to make the platform liable for VAT on sales made by it's sellers as opposed to the old rules where it was the seller who was liable).

So, things are being done to stop the tax avoidance. Just like many years ago, firms were stopped from selling into the UK "VAT free" from the Channel Islands.

[quote PigletJohn]France is having a go, but the squealing from the rich and powerful multinational tax-dodgers is deafening.

www.ft.com/content/2cfe3d07-7e69-4f57-b634-8b6002f967cb[/quote]
Can they not see that this is a very bad time for the wealthy to be squealing about their 'misfortune'👀

Shops/online sellers who sell via Amazon ARE paying their tax on what they sell through the platform. That's thousands of small/local businesses
Meanwhile Jeff's wealth makes him king of the universe😳

Can they not see that this is a very bad time for the wealthy to be squealing about their 'misfortune

That would require a degree of awareness the very wealthy appear to lack. Any very wealthy person with an atom of sensitivity would contemplate the vast riches they’ll never spend and start giving some of it away instead of moaning about taxation. And, yes, I’m looking at you, Philip Green.

@o8O8O8o

Shops/online sellers who sell via Amazon ARE paying their tax on what they sell through the platform. That's thousands of small/local businesses Meanwhile Jeff's wealth makes him king of the universe😳

Yes, but even if he made a profit of just a pound on every single Amazon sale worldwide, he'd be a billionaire. You have to look at scale and the numbers involved.

It's like a few years ago, everyone was piling on whingeing about Tesco's profits, but if you took the total profit and divided by the number of stores, the "profit per store" was about the same as privately owned/independent supermarkets. Same if you divided their profits by number of staff employed.

Removing them would be seen as the action of an authoritarian regime such as China or North Korea
As said we don't want to remove them we just want them to behave in a socially responsible way, we cannot allow a huge powerful entity like this to do exactly what it wants and to be unaccountable.
Jeff bezos did not invent the internet, obviously he's a clever man but he's not a trillian times more clever than the rest of us, he is not an Island he is not self-made, he was in the right place at the right time, as was Zuckerberg.
Both have behaved in an authoritarian manner, buying up or crushing any companies which look as if they might usurp them or pose a threat to their dominance

@VinylDetective

Can they not see that this is a very bad time for the wealthy to be squealing about their 'misfortune

That would require a degree of awareness the very wealthy appear to lack. Any very wealthy person with an atom of sensitivity would contemplate the vast riches they’ll never spend and start giving some of it away instead of moaning about taxation. And, yes, I’m looking at you, Philip Green.

given this ought we not to recognise that wealthy people are a specific category who are socially harmful and need to be managed accordingly? Or something like that.... I suppose this is just part of the human condition, how to mitigate the tendency of power to concentrate?😳

@VinylDetective

Can they not see that this is a very bad time for the wealthy to be squealing about their 'misfortune

That would require a degree of awareness the very wealthy appear to lack. Any very wealthy person with an atom of sensitivity would contemplate the vast riches they’ll never spend and start giving some of it away instead of moaning about taxation. And, yes, I’m looking at you, Philip Green.

Whilst I agree with the sentiment, the reality is a numbers game. If Philip Green donated his entire wealth, it wouldn't scratch the surface to help the poor. Just gesture politics really. You could take all the wealth of the countries top 100 millionaires, but it would just be a few pounds if you spread it over the country's 60 million population.

It's exactly why all the recent tax hikes of the past 20 years or so have been directly at "middle earners", as there's millions of them, so you get more money from relatively modest tax rises to those on £30k to £80k incomes than you would with massive hikes on relatively tiny numbers of millionaires. Middle earners are also "trapped" in that they can't easily move abroad or set up trusts etc to reduce their tax, unlike the real millionaires who are far more flexible (i.e. premier league footballers setting up limited companies abroad for their UK clubs to pay "image right" monies to avoid UK taxes!).

You’re right @user1497207191 but nobody can solve the world’s problems. Bill Gates has managed to do something meaningful as has Dolly Parton. The Victorians saw philanthropy as a moral duty for wealthy people, I wonder when that changed? Does anyone know?

I think there are still rich people who are philanthropic.
The Rausings have been generous to all sorts of caused and apparently so has JK Rowling.
I’m sure google will produce lots of examples of generosity by the super rich.
Not all rich people are like Philip Green, Fred the Shred, Robert Maxwell etc.