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.

As I say, let’s see if you keep your promise this time.

This males no.sense whatsoever to me. Why in earth would I want to tax a very rich person unless it was to redistribute a bit of their massive excess wealth?

I wouldn't tax then for the hell of it, just to punish them for being rich if that is what you are trying to get at.

Humans have a tendency to be quite selfish and if they have massive amounts of.money, most of them hoard the excess that they can't possibly spend by amassing vast amounts of assets instead. Since there is often a often a finite amount of assets available at a given time, this prices poorer people out of the running for the buying of many of said assets.

I just think that there should be some way to address that tendency by ensuring some of that vast wealth is redirected and not used to drive up the cost of assets and to increase the gap between the very very rich and the rest of us

Very naïve post.

People aren't all the same, don't have the same opportunities, different drives and ambitions.

But more importantly, the wealthy keep taking everyone else's wealth be it in energy, rents, mortgages, food what ever, they keep taking.

All the tax payers money given away in bank support, housing benefit or furlough or energy support? where do you think it went?

Your "oh people just need to work more/pay more tax" You think a farm labourer, cleaner or a care worker etc who works harder/longer will suddenly have enough money to buy a house, afford their rent? buy healthier food?

They'll just lose their UC (which they get even when working FT) and be worse off but now worn out.

The cause? suppression of wages and cuts in support for poorer familes.

We've had decades of your approach and it hasn't worked, nor has it worked anywhere else either, yet you still want more of it.

The French introduced a wealth tax, but then abolished it in 2015 because it was costing too much

https://www.investorschronicle.co.uk/content/c2a0a5ab-11a8-50a3-a098-240f320fc795

France lost more than 60,000 millionaires between 2000 and 2016, and economists estimate that by reducing income tax and VAT revenues the wealth tax cost France €7bn per year and furthermore that it reduced gross domestic product (GDP) growth by 0.2 per cent a year.

France has a similar size economy to the UK. Just as a reminder, adding 1% to UK basic rate income tax would raise £6.9 billion, and UK current gdp growth is 1.5% annually. So these are not insignificant costs.

Yet Spain has one and it hasn't led to the problems often cited & France is trying to reintroduce a tax on unproductive wealth of 2%.

The UK's economy is far more similar to France than Spain.

For a start, both France and the UK have 5.8% millionaires, to Spain's 3.1%
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_millionaires

France and the UK have GDP per capita $50k and $56k respectively, to Spain's $38k

The UK and France have much more to lose.

No tax is a good tax unless the money raised from it is used properly. Otherwise it’s just taking money for the sake of it and losing it in an ocean of poor decisions.

That maybe the case but the wealthy in each country will still act similarly and Spain's tax is a lot more than is being proposed here, a max of 3.75%.

Spain's tax is very different to the old French one.

We need, right now, to massively ramp up defence spend, we cannot wait years for growth measures, which might not even work, look at Japan and the contortions they went through & still haven't really cracked it.

The problem is also the 'right, up in arms about specific welfare reforms, yet shout the loudest for welfare reforms!!

When the rumour was SENDs cut backs.... no thats terrible, cuts to disability? "Labour hate the Disabled" was a headline in the Mail, remove the Triple lock? "Labour attack pensioners"

Regular 'right leaning posters on here, did the same, when Labour tried and failed to reform Welfare.

The Spanish wealth tax raises next to nothing due to the endless exemptions for things that aren’t taxed. Costs nearly as much to administer as it raises.

I do think the rise of social media is one of the root causes of our problems. Getting rid of the triple lock makes sense, but media and social media whips people up into a frenzy of outrage about it when it’s an incredibly sensible thing to do. Same for the welfare cuts. There is no way genuine illness has risen to the extent that welfare claims have, but someone sensible decides to address it and the uproar!

I think its the right leaning media hatred of Labour thats the issue, if the Tories had suggested Welfare Reform or TL changes, the media would be quiet, even supportive.

We wouldn't have thread after thread on here, criticising it.

Yes i agree, not all claims are genuine, there seems to have been a huge push to keep unemployment figures low over recent years, by getting people onto sickness benefits
Reform will mean people denied disability benefits will move onto the unemployment figures and then MN/Media will be packed with posters claiming Labour are wrecking the economy.

It raised 3.2billion euros in 2023/24 & Spain is reforming it, to limit the exceptions.

We should consider it.

Labour really need to move on from it’s the media. They were happy to get into power off the back of partygate and all the briefing against Sunak.

They’re now finding out what it is to be in the same position.

Ah yes all the tweets and Facebook posts calling for Tory resignations etc. None of those have aged well.
They still think they are in opposition ie playing continual blame game rather than admitting and owning their errors.

So you didn't claim Labour hate the disabled whilst they tried to get through Welfare reform??

Because you did.

That’s a pretty rosy view of chattel slavery you have.

Are you really claiming UK workers’ conditions are akin to it? Or even would be without the modern redistributive state?

They might still be stuck there if it wasn’t for the media going for the last lot from partygate onwards. The idea that the media is worse for Labour is tosh.

They’re just struggling and finding it hard to be truthful in media rounds. So it’s gaslighting instead.

Did what?

Nope, I explain exactly what I mean at the end of the post you have quoted.

Yes, the end of the post makes clear what you are likening to chattel slavery. People getting rich off the work of others.

Was that a reference to the UK economic system? (If not, you posted on the wrong thread).

The tax would always generate revenue, there is no way it wouldn't. However If you look at the wider economy it could potentially generate net zero or even negative.

The example would be you currently have 10 individuals paying £10m in tax each (income tax, CGT on shares, dividend tax etc). You introduce a wealth tax that should in theory generate an extra £19m a year. However two of the individuals choose to leave the UK. the £100m in tax that was being generated has now dropped to £80m a year and the wealth tax has generated £19m (assuming the assets of those leaving the country were still taxed, if not the figure would be lower). The wealth tax has generated £19m but overall the government is down £1m in tax revenue (plus with extra costs to run the new scheme).

Not quite the whole picture, France ditched this tax and replaced it with a property tax that starts at any property valued over 800K.

My property in France is worth more than this so I pay this tax. The next jump is 1.3K. I also don’t mind paying this extra tax because you get so much more back in France, health service, roads, trains, cheap childcare and free university.

It was a reference to the thing I was replying to. Sorry I've already spent far too much time on this thread talking with someone who doesn't actually read what I'm writing I don't want to do it again

No one is proposing a 20% wealth tax & it would be on primarily on assets such as land/property.

Would anyone leave the UK, selling up everything they have for a 2% tax increase, esp if a one off.

It hasn't happened in Spain, at higher rates too.

I was part of a team advising on where to relocate a branch of a multinational financial services institution. France was immediately ruled out as an option by the decision makers due to the wealth tax. Wasn’t even in the running. This is the damage a wealth tax does. These people all pay every penny of taxes they are asked - they don’t avoid it - but they’re not going to pay extra taxes on purpose.