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

That is not my point as you well know. Do you think it's fine that someone pays themselves 6 million pounds an hour and one of their employees five hundred thousand times less than that at 12 pounds per hour? Of course success should not be illegal. Hard work should be justly rewarded but the sheer levels of income and wealth inequality in society currently are disgusting.

Poor person here. I work full time for minimum wage. It is enough to live on. I can pay my mortgage all other bills, have a couple of holidays abroad a year. However, most of my colleagues work part time and get topped up with benefits. They are sometimes offered full time contracts or overtime but decline, stating they would lose their benefits so would be working for nothing...

They need more tax because we have a huge national debt and the cost of borrowing has increased.

A large portion of the money we pay in tax is paying interest on the money we have borrowed - which inevitably means far less of it goes towards paying for our public services.

And who owns a large chunk of that government debt? Who is raking in the interest on the loans to our government? answers on a postcard.

Yes, it could be, although I’m not sure many people actually own a business when they die? It will have been sold/disolved before that. So tax could be payable then. But, it’s yet another disincentive to set up a business, bearing in mind employment in this country is falling and SMES employ more than 60% of the workforce……

This is not about earned wealth or people who work.

This is about people who don't do any work, but live on passive income from likely inherited/family wealth.

There are lots of them and they are getting richer every hour, every day.

They don't pay enough and they sure as shit don't work hard for their money

Tax wealth NOT work.

That is true and Labour borrowed substantially in the first budget. Of course it’s costing over £100bn per year in servicing.

The usual Labour let’s go higher, be Keynesian, debt on debt won’t wash. They’re out of road on that too.

What that got to do with it?

McFadden is half right. Certainly we should be looking to support people into work. However, as I've said earlier on the thread, getting everyone into work who possibly can work, a laudable aim that I fully support, won't solve the problem of our huge welfare liability. I've said it before, I'll say it again. Our population is too old and too unhealthy for us to ever be in the position of never having to look at where we can raise the money to fund welfare.

My DH is a high earner. He gets up at 5, is at his desk by 7am, ofthen doesn’t leave much before 730. Works on the train, during flights, doesn’t take lunch and then is screening emails/messages, replaying and reading reports until 11. A recent 7 day holiday involved him spending at least two hours a day keeping on top of emails/reports and three half days were spent in the hotel room on calls/board meetings. He usually does at least 4 hours similar work every day at the weekend. I will see him for 3 evenings and one weekend in the next 4 weeks - he arrives home late from an overseas trip on the day of my DC’s A level results.

I’d say he does 15hours a day Mon-Friday and another 3-5 hours at weekends, so 85 odd hours a week. He does actually love most aspects of his job, and the financial security it offers his family. But it’s hard work - at his level 80,000 employees and their families depend on the decisions he and his co-leaders make. If he/they fuck up, people loose their jobs. So yes, the jobs nurses and policemen do is important, but so is his?

And he doesn’t begrudge the taxes he pays - he begrudges the waste, the inefficiency, the spending it on excessive layers of management (in the civil service, NHS) and the fact that it doesn’t lead to the best quality and most effective services and support being provided to those that need it; that nurses and teachers are not paid enough; and that children in particular are being shortchanged.

High earners should not be demonised or their jobs and contribution to the economy denigrated. We need more of them, we need to inspire kids in schools to become them, we need as many as possible to stay in the UK paying those taxes.

You seem immune to looking for job stresses. There have been multiple news items and threads on it though, for adult dc too.

The highest marginal income tax rate is 45%, so they are not paying 50% as nobody in the UK pays that even if they take all earnings as salary.

however, this isn’t the issue. It is the effective rate that is the problem. We all pay lots of types of taxes and many are a higher % of income for the lower paid. Very wealthy people can structure their earnings in a way that makes the tax system regressive.

Were you at a private school?

Employers pay the market rate. If it was so much below minimum living standards, far more people would be eligible to claim. They are not. And the people who do claim, in the main, are definitely not working full time.
If you want employers to massively increase salaries, do you also want to pay massive amounts more for your goods and services?
And it IS my lived experience! I work and aways have.

The forelock tugging argument is superfluous. Labour’s VAT on education closed schools, the NI hike cost jobs. Labour really need to stop relentlessly piling taxes on people and thinking it’ll change much for the better.

Ik that won’t happen as Labour MPs believe too much in higher taxation, but you’re not getting it right and even McFadden could see that. Using the sycophant excuse won’t wash when the OECD criticises NI hikes.

I can honestly say to you that my children and their two cohorts all have professional jobs, own their own homes etc. Same with friends, neighbours and families children.

Maybe it’s better where I live.

And yes. I retired two years ago on my 60th birthday.

I want them to leave. If they don’t want to be here and pay tax then they can fuck off. I’m sick of wealthy people whinging and whining. Let them go. And when they go they can pay an exit tax as well for everything they have used while they have been here

I don’t disbelieve you. I’m saying it’s amazing you haven’t noticed what’s going on outside that.

Yet you won’t explain what you mean!

2 per cent is too high. 0.5% on amounts above 10 million maybe but how exactly will it work in practice. And if it does not work and wealth flees, then the middle classes just end up paying 60% again on their top slice to make up for the wealth fleeing. It is what happens every time.

Thanks for the question.

Research shows that effective tax rate peaks at an income of around 500k.

For the people we are talking about here, those with vast wealth of 10 million plus, their affairs are generally organised to reduce their income, and therefore their tax liability. There are various ways of doing this, including the use of shell companies. You can also borrow against your wealth - rather than take a salary you take on debt, but the debt is dwarfed by the compounding growth of your wealth. Keep borrowing until you die and there is no income to tax - result!

This leads to situations like Bezos in 2011 who apparently to claimed a $4000 child tax credit in spite of having a net worth at the time of $18billion. He could do this by making it appear as if he had no income.

The people that are richer than you on PAYE do pay.

The high net worths and ultra high net worths will just leave. Now please don’t tell me they don’t. I live in an incredibly wealthy area, they leave (spending the max days they can here without the tax liability (I mean living here by virtue of marriage, I am not from that background).

I also work in an industry that advises the UHNW - and I can verify the UK is losing a lot of them.

one of the big issues this country has, we don’t have enough people that a net benefit to the system. That is because we are low income and high tax. Welfare is insane, as is the international health service that successive governments seem intent on funding.

Ok I’ll google for you ; I usually don’t. Here you go.

The UK is currently experiencing a severe jobs crisis marked by a 5-year low in vacancies and rising unemployment. Young workers and graduates are hardest hit, with nearly one million 16-24 year-olds not in employment, education, or training. Firms are cutting entry-level roles due to rising labour costs, higher employment taxes, and economic strains

Well if it’s been sold there will be cash or assets in-kind. To your point about small businesses though, this for me is why tax reform is important. Wealth inequality widening prices ordinary people out and hurts consumption. Consumption drives the real economy and therefore small businesses. We should also be closing down loopholes for large corporations as this damages small businesses who can’t compete

Waah - won't someone think of the poor millionaires 😱

I think this is multi faceted, though.

I work in recruitment services (Education) and can’t fill vacancies - even those that don’t require qualifications.

We get close to zero UK born applicants for care and SENd vacancies particularly, and then get admonished for using overseas workers.

My brother is out of work, and has been for over 4 years. He won’t work - weekends, evenings, nights, longer than 8 hour shifts, more than 30mins away. Despite having no tangible reason not to.

His partner has never worked, and has recently picked up a care job. That she won’t work more than 8hrs in because she doesn’t want to lose benefits and pay for her own house.

So as much as I absolutely believe there’s an unemployment crisis, there’s also a vacancies crisis, and plenty of people who could be doing them but refuse to. Those people, should be encouraged back into work by loss of benefit.

And yes. That applies to my own family.