If a wealth tax brought in zero revenue to the government, would people still support it? If yes, why?

[percypiggy200]

I’m curious and I’d love to know people’s reasoning.

Sounds like the OP is working the angle that a desire for a wealth tax is as much if not more about envy than more money for the government to spend on public services, infrastructure and social security payments.

I'm of the mind that due to the insane transfer of wealth from the many to the hoarded bank accounts of the very few and the huge increase in inequality we've seen in the past few decades that something has to be done to reverse this trend and to signal to those who are stealing the wealth of the ordinary people that it isn't ok and a blind eye will be turned no further. If we don't do something we'll be dealing with issues far more serious and frightening than pot holes and reduced bin collection services.

The UK does have a markedly high discrepancy in the tax they charge the average earner and the tax they charge those in the top 5%. The average earner is getting away with paying very little income tax in comparison with most Western European nations. And yet there the ones wanting others to suffer yet more tax increases, not them.

Do you think tax policy ought to:

a) punish the wealthy or;
b) raise money to spend on public services.

Wealth taxes actively REDUCE the money raised. That’s why they have been quietly dropped by pretty much every nation that have tried them. Like UBI. Like rent controls. All sound great. All utterly terrible in practice. Populist nonsense, spoon fed to gullible fools while policies that could make a difference (like scrapping the triple lock) are overlooked yet again.

At least Rachel Reeves isn’t daft enough to do a wealth taxes actively reduce. She’s not a complete idiot!

The UK's housing stock is considered to be a safe haven for extremely wealthy people (Russian oligarchs, Saudis etc.) to put their capital into. Large numbers of houses and apartments in London are bought up and left empty, pushing house prices up for everyone else. This doesn't really help the economy, these aren't entrepeneurs, they made all of their money overseas and it's just sitting around in Knightsbridge. An annual levy of 1% on individuals who hold property portfolios of over £5m isn't going to have consultant surgeons and hedge fund managers running for Dubai, but it might help to deflate London's property prices, or at least encourage these people to try and get some rental income from their holdings to compensate, rather than letting them sit empty, thus increasing housing availability.

High incomes might be overtaxed in the UK, but high wealth is not.

Where is your evidence? You are going off 1 statement, no evidence.

There are fewer pupils in independent schools than forecast so how can the income be more? There are 8 x fewer than predicted. That impacts income. So the income per pupil may be higher but there are fewer pupils.

Getting personal attacks in though, par for the course!

Pretty much what Gary's Economics says.

The txfer of wealth to the elite has to stop, a pp went on (and on) about the % differences between lowest and highest tax rates.
But the real issue is the difference between the poorest and the wealthiest in our society.

If only history had any lessons for what happens when this isn't addressed.

Your options aren’t all that tax policies do. Tax policies also help to shape how wealth is distributed in society. And this is one way a wealth tax could potentially benefit the UK as a whole without raising more money for government coffers. That isn’t punishing the wealthy.

Ideally to raise money, perhaps other policy would help to redistribute more of the wealth to more people. I'm not an economist myself. I've seen mentioned that assets could be taxed given that the very rich often hoard their money overseas but they can't do it was UK assets.

There has to be something we can do to redistribute the wealth in the country a bit more fairly. The leader of the greens for example said recently that more than 50% of the wealth in the UK is held by only 50 families, so 50 families have more wealth than everyone else in the UK put together if he is right. Something should be done about that when people can't afford to heat their homes or eat properly or even afford a roof over their heads.

We keep squeezing ordinary working people because they are the sitting ducks who have no choice but to pay even if they can't make ends meet otherwise. While very wealthy people multi millionaires and billionaires not to mention many large corporations just pick and choose how much tax they want to pay while benefiting from the the UK state that. you and me pay for, NHS treatment for their staff, Infrastructure, Education etc. They are also quite happy to take bail outs and corporate welfare when it suits them but get all sniffy about a disabled person needing financial support.

Private companies who own and operate essential services like Thames water prioritise dividends for their shareholders (its literally a legal requirement) don't use that money to reinvest in their infrastructure and when it fails they want government bailouts or their customers to pay even more to cover the costs of upgrading the system when they should have been doing that all along. Its criminal and I'm fed up listening to people who say nothing can be done to stop these people. I'm fine with them being rich but I'm not fine with them hoarding all the wealth and leaving ordinary people living hand to mouth, I've no desire to go back to the Victorian Era.

How does a wealth tax benefit society if wealthy taxpayers leave in their droves? I agree that we should ban overseas investors from holding UK residential
property - as happens in many countries - but trying to take a set % of a persons wealth over a set threshold is lunacy.

Thames water is a private company. Of course they shouldn’t have been allowed to take all of the profits and give it to shareholders instead of investing in infrastructure but good luck with pulling that one back now. Who do you think the shareholders are? It mainly the pension schemes of ordinary citizens.

You can’t just look at tax policy and decide if it’s a good thing or not without looking at the behaviour that will arise from that policy. The behaviour that is driven by the policy is the ONLY thing that matters.

I live in a country that introduced a lot of different tax to affect the wealthier including ‘luxury’ tax on property, cars, etc over certain amount, tax on unoccupied homes etc. It killed those markets within a handful of years and drove those prices down (but not enough for the general population to be able to afford any of it) so didn’t achieve anything really.

Not just UK based ones though plus plenty of others, who we have no interest in.

Thames Water's main shareholders are a consortium of institutional investors, including pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. The largest shareholder is the Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System (Omers), followed by the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS). Other significant shareholders include Infinity Investments (a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority) and the China Investment Corporation

A 1% Wealth tax on assets over 10m, is unlikely to have behavioural changes, the CGT's alone would make selling up, pointless, it would also make ordinary people feel less hard done by.

Spain's wealth taxes don't appear to have driven people away? though it needs to tighten loop holes.

Well do you agree that something has to be done to stop wealth being hoarded by those at the top, if so how do you suggest we do that? I understand that many ordinary people are shareholders that pension fund can be invested in these companies and even government debt bonds. If this is the way the system works and is how private pensions are paid for then perhaps the system just doesn't work that well given that it is now eating itself in sense.

So what is your solution? Perhaps you think its fine for the majority of people to slide into destitution while the rich get ever richer?

I always think it’s funny people pointing out that some of the biggest investment companies are the biggest sharing companies. Investment companies are supposed to buy up share holdings. That what people give them their investments to do.

If I want to invest in the FTSE 100 I don’t buy a share in each company, I buy a unit trust from an investment company who’ll do that for me.

You can think it as funny as you like but you re still wrong

I get very annoyed because our young people are severely limited in their opportunities to leave because of Brexit.

they simply do t earn enough to Russify.

Anyone who can afford to emigrate to Dubai can certainly afford to buy a home in the UK and contribute to society. Sadly, they choose not to.

Russify?🤣 No idea. Typed emigrate.

So you want some young people to be able to leave but not others?

Sadly not because Brexit has made that option far more difficult.

Most young people who are able to leave are not deliberate tax dodgers.

If people go they’re not paying tax here. It’s a bizarre distinction. You are ‘sickened’ by some going and sad others can’t.

Will you downsize out of interest? That’d help young people.

Depending on how implemented, a wealth tax won’t necessarily lead to wealthy people leaving in droves. But even if it did - it would bring about lower inequality. Lower inequality generally leads to greater quality of life for the population as a whole and faster GDP growth. So very much a benefit to society (provided we can keep that lower inequality as GDP grows).

As I said above, the devil is in the details, though.

We just have. 5 bed family home to 3 bed flat. Gifted our kids house deposits because they want to stay.

Ah so perpetuating wealth inequality then? Bank of mum and dad driving up house prices

Boom to you. Yes. Would you not do the same?
We love kids above equality. Doesn’t everyone.

True that was a bit unequal. Still the op got the sickening, selfish etc