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.

In the case of a wealth tax, people might leave the UK (I already know some older couples who have left due to IHT as an example).

They should reduce the % and lower the threshold

Yes this argument keeps coming up. In fact Bridget Phillipson herself said that would happen. How insulting to state school parents. Saying that now these pro-active indy parents will show them how to support their kids better. How patronising.

Income tax receipts are at all time highs, up 3.7%, despite the claim everyone is leaving the UK.

We cannot compete with Dubai on tax, even if we halved rates.

What we need is to make the country a better place to live in, atm the UK feels run down and broken & has done for many years.

I dislike disproportionate wealth accumulation. The point of a wealth tax is to undo that capitalism tends to lead to a small proportion of people hoarding all the assets - it rewards capital ownership above labour, so once you have even a bit of capital, you tend to pile up more.

There are various different ways to address this:

• strong trade unions and labour laws to ensure workforce can argue for a higher proportion of wealth generated (somewhat flawed as can simply lead to ever inflating prices as business simply put prices up to preserve profitability)
• employee shareholding/profit share requirements (i like this)
• wealth/capital gains taxes to counteract individuals who hold ever increasing pots of wealth

Even if the tax doesn't appear to raise money, it can encourage wealthier people to spend rather than hold wealth

Its getting harder to simply move money around to tax havens to pay less. There's a global minimum rate regime now which a vast number of countries are signed up to, lots of countries have exit taxes as well so if you try to funnel your wealth off shore it will cost you a lot.

When I've argued with Greens on social media about how their proposed Wealth Tax wouldn't raise enough to cover their planned spending I get told it will reduce inequality.

Another claim I've seen is that it will be necessary to gain consent for more general rax rises - to show the burden is shared.

I don't find either argument hugely convincing but those are ones I've heard.

We cannot compete with Dubai on tax, even if we halved rates.
What we need is to make the country a better place to live in, atm the UK feels run down and broken & has done for many years.

Yes, not possible to compete with Dubai.

Agree, what we are seeing now is years of underinvestment and a lack of planning.

Firstly you've assumed people will leave.

Secondly, if they leave, will no one ever become wealthy in their stead?

You oppose a wealth tax, but what research are you offering to back up your personal political position?

Your comment says it all about the bitter and sad little approach people like you have to people who are more wealthy and more successful than you.

Many people in the uk are like this, hence the hectoring and braying over private school VAT.

Let’s see how happy everyone will be when the tap stops.

No doubt those who would like to punish people for being "wealthy" would love it.

Rachel is that you?

There is academic research that demonstrates that wider inequality increases social problems. Their position sounds compatible with that.

Which all takes money to fix, growth is very hard to achieve, without investment.

Why invest in the UK, when it has poor transport, terrible healthcare for their workforce and shite schools, turning out poorly educated children?

I think people leaving the UK purely to avoid tax, are extremely unpatriotic & selfish, they got their skills/education either directly or indirectly through the state but now want to stop paying into the system they benefited from.

@Southernecho you can’t grow without investment & now we are stuck playing catch up and costs will keep increasing just to stand still. I don’t know what the solution is tbh.

There would be many people that would still support it. You can tell from other discussions on here about wealth tax that some people hold so much vitriol towards the rich that it is irrelevant whether it has any benefit to the country. Their motivation comes from wanting to take something away from people they perceive as rich out of jealousy.

Rachel Reeves should never have promised not to increase income tax. If she increased it by a tiny amount for every tax bracket including low earners she’d have enough to start investing back into big projects that will generate jobs and thus bring in more revenue from more tax.

She needs to generate growth and to do this she needs to be bold. Tinkering here and there and gimmicks like VAT on school fees and wealth tax result in zero money. The truly wealthy will make it impossible for her to get anything and it will cost more to administer than it will end up bringing in. Everyone else will feel they are being cheated by stealth taxes. She also cannot contemplate putting more taxes on businesses.

Why are our countries finances being dictated by the OBR? Have they been given ancient Greek oracle powers - nonsensical. They should be wound down straight after the next budget.

It isn't a question of punishing the rich. The 50 richest families in the UK hold more wealth than the 34 million people at the bottom of the economic scale. We have 156 billionaires. No one should have that much money. It's obscene. More importantly it is not compatible with a functioning, economically healthy democracy. We can see how the mega-rich in the USA are using their wealth to wield political power - unelected, by-passing the democratic process. This is the ultimate outcome of inequality allowed to run rampant. Any right-thinking humanitarian would welcome measures to re-balance the economy.

I think the root of the problem is defining what rich means. For some, (including Labour it seems) a household on an income of 50k seems rich and capable of paying much more tax. Ditto with 100k incomes but most people understand there's a massive difference between that and the mega wealthy multi millionaires. I don't know where the line should be but some clarity on exactly who we are talking about as having broad shoulders would be very helpful

Income tax receipts are up because of the thresholds not being adjusted so more and more people are being dragged into each of the tax bands.

100% this. Raising income tax by 1% for every tax bracket would raise billions.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/nov/08/rachel-reeves-increase-income-tax-budget-rises-salary-bands

There might be some forms of wealth tax I might support for practical/administrative reasons even if overall tax remained the same. For example, replacing stamp duty and council tax with some form of property value tax and/or changes to CGT on the other end, so that over the lifetime of a property you pay a similar amount but aren't made to pay a big upfront cost before you've even made any money.

However I think this is not the example most people have in mind! Most people don't think "their" wealth (incl. things like inherited houses that were under IHT threshold and the capital gains therefore never taxed at all) should come under wealth taxes.

To be honest overall I don't think most people know what they mean when they say wealth taxes. I think they mean the government should just go into Elon Musk's bank account and take out 10%. How often? Who knows. Elon Musk is a jerk and we hate him so who cares. Next.

It's very difficult to tax a lot of wealth, especially if it is held in fine wines, art and stuff like that. So easier to just tax middle income that live in a £500k house that happens to be band G.

Anyone seen the group Patriotic Millionaires? A group of people who a wealth tax would target practically begging to pay their bit. They don’t seem to think it’s not going to bring in any revenue.

A tax that raises no money at all would be pointless. It has always been easier for the extremely wealthy to avoid (legally) and evade (illegally) paying taxes and no doubt they would all threaten to leave the UK if any sort of wealth tax was proposed.

Income from investments and capital gains is taxed at lower rates than wages. According to Oxfam, billionaire wealth soared three times faster in 2024 than the year before, and UK billionaire wealth rose by £35 million each day. Taxing immovable assets such as land/property would be harder to avoid by leaving the country.

Anyone can pay extra tax anytime they want

I agree with this, 100%.
Thread after thread on MN about how to raise money. No ideas off limit as long as it does not affect the poster personally.
In the past few weeks, I have been on threads discussing how fair it was to double council tax for houses worth more than (i think) 2m as long as people living in the SE were excepted and how all income should be taxed regardless of its source as long as CMS was excepted.
In other words, it's fair tax anyone else apart from the posters.
Them you get the 'high earners' who state they are very happy to pay more tax but don't, despite having the mechanism via HMRC to do so.
Tax the Rich really means Tax the Rest

I realise this is a thread aboutctaxing wealtj not income, but the principle stands.