AIBU to think a 2% wealth tax on the rich is unfair?

[Mrspepperpotpot]

i just saw an article and petition from oxfam saying if we taxed the ‘super rich’ 2% it would solve a lot of problems. They were suggesting 2% on anyone worth 10 million. Everyone in the comments agreed

I just don’t understand this mentality. High earners are hit at every turn. They usually use private health and private schools, pay the most tax, get hit with tax on savings, IHT, land tax, pensions etc etc Why on earth should people earn money to be taxed on it, to then be taxed on it again and again.

Why do people begrudge others having money when they’ve worked extremely hard to get it? Why isn’t there uproar about benefits instead?

I know this will never actually happen but the amount of people who seem to want it to is astonishing

Sorry I meant the software engineers. I think Amazon outsources the delivery drivers

Good for you, glad to hear you plan to start contributing to the economy.

0.6% is feeble on static wealth that is not benefiting the economy but us helping exclude others from wealth.

The super rich can avoid inheritance tax too easily the king didn't pay a penny nor did the duke of Westminster.

I would welcome some other mechanism than taxation but nobody has come up with a way.

The increasing gap between rich and poor and the super wealthy pooling more and more riches shows that trickle down does not work.

When there is more supply than demand the win win of market forces price lowering is a thing, but that doesn't feel like it's working anymore. There needs to be some form of check and balance in the billionaire ls and trillionaires.

The system is too rigged.

She is being taxed.

Yes. Her dad wanted to give it to her. He wanted to give his daughter all he had.

Poor people who "work hard" are usually in low skilled jobs.

You're using phrases like "benefits as a lifestyle choice"

Goady

Obviously

Supply and demand is now broken.

Look at musk, he is not adding any value. He inherited and is now a financier. He didn't invent electric cars.

Venture capitalists are terrible people, short termist gains, margin above everything else. They are not adding value, they chew people up and spit them out.

The super rich can avoid inheritance tax too easily the king didn't pay a penny

You can hardly include the King in with the standard super wealthy - the Monarch has specific tax rules for transferring estate to the incoming monarch.

I have an immediate relative who is very open about using benefits as a lifestyle choice. Openly brags about receiving UC and now PIP all the while working FT cash in hand. I have seen all the paperwork, he definitely receives those benefits and he definitely also works full time. He has been reported but nothing has happened. He cannot be the only one.

'The majority now use it as a life choice'? Please. Do you actually know what benefits amount to? Which ones in your deluded little world pay 'far more than those working', exactly? I'm sure we'd all be fascinated to know so we can all quit our jobs and adopt this dream lifestyle for ourselves... 🙄

The pp said SWE not delivery.

The issue with the tear down any business is people need jobs. Look at the up tick in threads for adult dc on here. If you keep ensuring businesses can’t set up and thrive those threads will increase. Do you have dc who will need to work?

They'll get round to him and he'll be expected to pay it back. It might take a while, but people actually don't get away with this stuff once it comes to light.

Musk didn’t inherit - his father is still alive. It is disputed how much money he had to move to the US and start up but it was certainly wasn’t ‘super wealthy’ - possibly tens of thousands. He made money from early investment in PayPal and others and whilst he may not have invented the electric car (which was invented in 1832) he certainly led Tesla to massive growth.

How could they possibly be unable to afford it if they have £10M. Perhaps me and everyone else on minimum wage could have a whip round for the poor buggers.

Surely someone with over 10 million has already earned their money though (by which I mean they aren't starting out)?
This isn't about penalising "hard workers" by increasing income tax on higher earners, or stopping entrepreneurs from starting out. If you have 11 million in assets and are taxed on 2% of one million that won't even touch the sides of money earned as passive income alone.

Also, it's actually harder for hardworking entrepreneurs to build their business when the economic climate is dominated by multi-millionaires, billionaires and monopoly businesses. They are a big reason for why the economic climate is now less favourable.

Benefits ARE a lifestyle choice for many. My SIL worked at a school in a deprived ex-mining village with multigenerational unemployment and the children all planned to follow their parents onto benefits. That was their culture and what they had grown up with. To choose otherwise and leave the village was seen as a rejection of their community. That choice was pretty standard across many ex-mining villages in the area.

But wealth tax won't stop businesses setting up and thriving. You could make that argument about increasing business rates for example as that effects those starting out businesses. Wealth tax would apply to people that own businesses that are already very larger and doing very well. And the amount that is being suggested would be tiny so not exactly a punishment.

For some maybe, yes, many no. Many (most, I would imagine) on disability benefits ARE sick/disabled.

it was a diamond mine wasn't it?

him being a trillionaire is not good for the world and humanity as a whole. every billionaire is a failure of policy in my eyes. Nobody needs that much money, it needs redistribution in some form - ideally he would pay his lower paid staff more but that is not how becoming a trillionaire works.

I appreciate that he probably thinks the poor just need to work harder and there are deinitely some poor people gaming the system which should also be clamped down on and discouraged but right now, the hoarding of the super rich is a much bigger problem than a few people on benefits not working as much as they should

Because the money is tied up in the business paying people’s wages, or in the form of stock or equipment necessary to carry out the business.

2% represents the entire profit of most supermarket firms and most people seem to think that is a huge profit.

UK born ?

I was responding to the pp are their comments on businesses. You can see the posts if you scroll back.

On wealth taxes, not sure. France tried it and scaled back. What are you proposing, how would it work?

It should be a voluntary line at the bottom of the tax return, like a gratuity on a restaurant bill. Please enter the amount of wealth tax you would like to pay ......
Away of thanking the government for all that they have done for you in the preceding tax year.

His father apparently owned an emerald mine and went bankrupt. But you seem to forget what the dot.com boom was like if you think he couldn’t have made a fortune from it on his own back.

People talk about Musk because they don’t like his politics but are happy to embrace other billionaires like Soros or Piltzer who have been significant in underhand political manipulations in the UK. I do agree that the amount of control these billionaires have with their money is scary. Just look at the simultaneous push for identical legislation across numerous countries fronted by well-funded lobbyists with huge additional backroom funding - things like self ID, assisted suicide etc It is not a coincidence.