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

He doesn't need it but his companies are successful, employ lots of people and are doing cool things to improve humanity. Thanks to the spacex ipo lots of people in the manual jobs become millionaires.

He will never pay it back. He will simply stop working. And keep claiming.

I don't think they are happy to embrace the threat to democracy regardless of which billionaire that comes from.

He doesn’t live here. So the proposed idea will not relate to him.
I disagree that he does ‘cool things to improve humanity’.
And promotes and supports far right ideas on race.

Many politicians seem to be given the extent of influence their money has granted over them.

Benefits for the relative I described amount to almost £2500 per month. As a single man. And yes, that is true, I’ve seen the paper work. And that is before he earns around £1000 a week cash in hand. I either know the only person in the country who is clever enough to do this (and, he really isn’t) or it’s possible, and it’s happening more than any of us should like to believe.

Space exploration, EVs, green energy. What's not to love?

Starlink and Tesla batteries (no not car batteries) have been vital in hurricane hit areas.

I am going to assume your post to me is a wind up !

I hate the argument that high earners have worked hard for it.
I work fucking hard for NMW.
Tax the rich!!!

Tell you what, you have my cancer, brain haemorrhage, colloid cyst, crippling depression & anxiety and benefits and I'll take your ability to work. Fair swap?

2% of revenue? Or 2% of what the business is "worth" overall? Because a business that is routinely making only 2% of it's value each year is a worryingly overvalued business and you would expect the market to recalculate.
Making 2% profit on every packet of biscuits you sell is not the same thing as the share dividend being 2%.

Wealth taxes are based on a percentage of the value of the business. Not a percentage of the revenue. Which would be a crazy way to do it.

For example Sainsbury's has been paying out about 3.8% dividends on shareprices. If you owned millions already, then yes you could argue that you "only" get 1.8% dividends not 3.8%. But bear in mind that you still own the shares and your main financial focus would be those share prices going up, or the rest of the huge investment portfolio you own going up. The dividend isn't really a huge part of your wealth you are relying on at that stage, its an extra perk that most people just reinvest. So simply by passively owning the stocks in Sainsbury's you are still watching your net worth increase each year AND getting paid yearly for those stocks essentially as completely passive income. And that's WITH a 2% wealth tax. And this only applies to people with over 10 million already. Someone with 11 million in stocks paying out a 3.8% dividend is earning 418,000 completely.passive income and paying 20,000 in wealth tax and still owns their 11 million in shares which went up by 20% this year. So next year they will be "worth" 20% more and receiving 20% more dividends too.

Most investment.portfolios should be delivering higher dividends than 3.8% anyway. And obviously on real life noone is going to have all 11 million of their fortune invested in one supermarket. But hopefully the simplification shows that you really don't need to worry about the multi-millionaires? They will still be OK!

So you want communism? All work the same for same pay? Move to Cuba

I agree with taxing the rich. My net worth is about £4m with about £1m held in cash, and I get more interest in a year than most people earn in a full time job, for doing nothing except sitting on a pile of cash. Before I even take into account property or equity growth. How is that fair? And £4m isn’t even in the same league as some wealthy people. Imagine having 10 x what I do, or 100 x, and not being willing to pay a bit more tax. You’d have to be a psychopath.

See how it went with the private school taxes. Schools closing and fuck all invested in teachers.

What do you mean when you say “self made”

The rich in the UK agree with taxing them a bit more. And I suspect some of them will already make donations to all sorts of good causes.
72% in a poll agreed to it.
So those who are not should not speak on their behalf and against it.

Yes and the NI hike. Both damaging policies from Labour.

So 4 million I doubt you do. However, 10 million rich is bound to be between narc and psycho characters that only think about money.

Why don’t they voluntarily pay it? They don’t need to wait.

Exactly. It’s also naive to think that people with upwards of 10m can’t move abroad. It’s perfectly possible to buy citizenship in numerous places!

Nor will they be restrained by the thought of moving their children’s schools. Their kids are likely to attend holiday camps or enrichment activities abroad and possibly further education overseas. Moving schools and homes is a smaller thing when money provides such choice. They’re quite likely to have a holiday home abroad too already.

I think it is really important for the middle classes in this country to understand the wealth transfer that is happening. Far from there being a trickle down effect, the wealth of society is all moving in one direction, from those with less to those with far more.

I think we can see this happening all around us, but the middle classes are shielded from it to an extent. At the bottom people have to decide whether to heat their home or eat. Move up through the income brackets and people are downgrading holidays, eating out less, wondering why someone with their sort of income can’t afford private school when surely you ought to be able to as that was what happened in the past!

The best way to disguise the transfer of wealth has traditionally been to look at your house price and feel comfortable because it has gone up so much. But one day that asset gets sold, most likely to someone much wealthier. And if the money gets split between your kids they will be very lucky, but they will also soon discover that what they can each afford is still far smaller, or in a worse location than you could afford when you bought your own house.

The real value, the most desirable assets, are getting hoovered up by the wealthiest. Even for the comfortable middle classes, this loss of wealth and status will become increasingly obvious. The lifestyle that once seemed secure will move further and further out of reach. Eventually even the middle classes will have to embrace renting, as the possibility of actually owning their own homes becomes a distant dream.

We’ve been here before in the UK, with a society made up of a tiny elite, a massive “peasant” class and almost no one in the middle. There are other countries in the world we can look to for examples of what this structure looks like today.

I really don’t want that to be our future, but I think we have to think very carefully about what we need to do if we want to avoid it. The super rich have far more resources than us, they exert more politically influence, and increasingly they are buying up all forms of media so we all keep hearing their viewpoint repeated endlessly (it’s too complicated, it’s not fair, we’ll all leave if you try to make us pay our share…). All we have is strength of numbers, and a democracy that isn’t entirely broken yet.

He would need to live in the most expensive local authority in the country and be receiving the highest rates of PIP for both daily living and mobility to recieve close to that as a single man. This level of PIP denotes extremely severe disability and unlikely to be conversent with cash in hand work.
If you're certain you read his paperwork correctly, then he is indeed exceptional. Because for an able bodied man to be able to convince benefit assessors to award the highest rates in both PIP components would take a great deal of skilled deception, involving fooling medical professionals, falsifying test results and so on.
I think its safe to say very few people could pull that off.

They may well already give to all sorts of good causes.

And they want to pay more tax. Easy, transfer to HMRC.