We’re not talking about the top % of earners here; they’re an almost entirely different group from the top % of wealth holders. Someone earning £100k or £200k a year wouldn't be a target in my mind, it would be those who hold significant wealth.
Take UK billionaires, for example, of which there are 170 or so. Combined, they hold around £653 billion in wealth (an increase of £31bn from last year and £150bn between 2020 and 2020, so an average growth of £45bn pa). If we play conservatively and say that the £31bn increase is a more representative annual growth rate, then we should be implementing policies that capture a majority of that.
Taking 70% of that annual increase would generate the £22bn needed to plug budget "black hole" and it would do that by only impacting 170 people. Not only that it wouldn't even negatively impact them as their underlying capital wouldn't be touched AND they'd still be increasing their overall wealth too.
Yet there’s still opposition from the average person on this, which I find astonishing. I just can't understand why anyone can justify a tiny number of people holding so much wealth when we have so many issues in our society.
And even if you’re right, and implementing such policies causes billionaires to threaten to leave or opt out (the stats don't back this up btw, with 85% of billionaires living in their home countries, regardless of tax regimes). The solution is already well-established and in plain sight.
We'd just need to do what America does: make it so that, if you're a UK citizen, you pay UK taxes regardless of where you live. We could also borrow from countries like Denmark, Switzerland, the UAE, China, Thailand, India, South Korea, and others, which restrict non-citizens from owning land, property and assets.
This would further deter any attempts to circumvent such taxation. There’s no need to let wealth simply flow out of the country—we can close these loopholes and maintain a fairer system for all.