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

I suggest you watch garyseconomics as he is behind this movement and explains in clear terms why this is important for our country.

After the war tax on the rich was up at 90%, the goverment had money, council houses were built, there was infrastructure, amenties, good healthcare, free education etc etc - but since 70's80's this has slowly been reduced and now there are loopholes for the rich to pay no tax at all. If a billionaire makes £1m a week, they can reinvest it and avoid tax. Meanwhile people on minimum wage pay tax - how is that right, its not

I suggest to anyone to watch garyseconomics on youtibe to at least listen to his point of view. The unique thing about him is he is from s working class background but secured a place at london school of economics, became a trader and was a millionaire by age 25. Now he is speaking out for regular people, that taxing the wealthy on their assets including property and stocks and shares needs to be done to prevent growing inequality, to prevent us returning to the wealth disparity of the pre war times.

No time in history has ordinary working people been able to live comfortably and buy a home as they did, in the decades after ww2 and Garys trying to prevent a collapse in living standards for ordinary working class and middle class families - while the ultra wealthy pay no tax on their assets and reinvest their passive income tax free.

I thanked the pp for the Guardian article. Did you to the pp or just say link wont open for me.

But yes it’s easy to find, put in wealth taxes plus France. It’s all there for you. I said it was scaled back, which you’ve missed. Read on what was initially put in place and what was reversed.

The 'failed' wealth tax in France was different from what is proposed here. The tax was set at a significantly lower level of wealth and impacted large numbers of people. Many of whom were the 'ordinary people who've just worked very hard' that people on here keep conflating with the elite that a UK wealth tax would target.
There's a world of difference between a tax on regular people who've just done well for themselves, and a tax on the passive wealth of billionaires, who lives wouldn't be even slightly impacted by it.
These are people who are 'earning' £1.4m every day, without the need to lift a finger for it. They couldn't possibly miss the tax on this.

Wow, she's paid. If that's one of your reasons for calling her well treated then that's a pretty low bar. She's not a slave.

Maybe read this report from Amnesty International.

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2026/07/global-filipino-domestic-workers-exploited-in-saudi-arabia/

Are you really this naive, or are you just wanting to brush the human rights abuses under the carpet so you can go on about how good it is there?

I don’t know if you’re really that naive or just ignorant.

The working class in the UAE ( cleaners, cleaning kid, wait staff, Nannie’s, construction workers etc) have no rights whatsoever. They have to surrender their passports to their employers, are paid a pittance and have no freedom of speech.

If they were caught criticising the country or situation they would be sacked and deported. But as long as the rich don’t pay tax, and t
you felt safe I guess that’s ok 🤷🏼‍♀️

And Hong Kong arrest anyone who publicly criticised the Chinese government- whether they are successful economically isn’t my point
www.amnesty.org/en/location/asia-and-the-pacific/east-asia/hong-kong/report-hong-kong/

Unless there is some international agreement on this between OECD countries it is not going to work.
The US has a billionaire president on the side of billionaires. That is all deliberate. The US is an ally and there is far more at stake really in terms of keeping the country safe. Whilst billionaires have the option to go to other OECD countries for 190 days a year instead, this is not going to work except for the billionaires who want to actually pay.
My approach would be to talk to them and ask them to fund eg defence bonds on favourable terms. These rich people hold all the cards. The top down approach for moral reasons is not going to work in a vacuum.

Trump is a billionaire, Putin is a billionaire etc etc - billionaires are now ruling the world.

It's not like the UK is the only country discussing this, the European commission's Directorate General for Taxation and Customs Union published a report in April this year Outlining the "rising concern about the distribution of wealth in Europe". It raises the questions about the concentration of wealth in the hands of fewer people, a push for a new norm of coordinated EU wide wealth tax and robust measures to deter tax flight.

Whatever the New ultra rich Mumsnetters state about the impossibilities of it all, in Western Europe this is on everyone's political agenda.

I did not miss your "scaled back" bit. That I could not find. That is what I was looking for. And the French wealth tax is a different thing than is being talked about here.

Exactly, these past examples are not comparable.

Has anything been proposed? It’s all just speculation. What the parameters are, if it goes ahead, will determine what the behaviour changes will be.

Not by government as far as I'm aware. The proposal OP is inviting us to discuss I think, is the one put forward by Zucman and supported by Oxfam, Tax Justice UK and others.

Tax should only occur on one's earnings.

Assets are often not able to be liquidated without having to sell bricks and morter buildings and land from businesses that employ people. The assets were built up over decades and add to increased employment anf productivity.

Taxing high earnings a little more is less risky.

No. It is an Oxfam thing.

Did you think it was a new Burnham policy ? That explains why you are posting about France with no evidence to back up your claim.

It's a hypothetical suggestion.

Quote : "The assets were built up over decades and add to increased employment anf productivity."

Can you explain the connection here between assets and productivity ?

For example, how does someone owning several 20 million houses and a 200 million yacht increase productivity ?

I responded to your nonsensical since the revolution post. You struggle to find easily accessible information on the French welfare taxes. Not my problem.

It comes down to detail with taxes, and how does behaviour change. A good example is the NI hike which many backed too but the OECD has listed why it’s been damaging.

So for this lobby groups are one thing but actual parameters and how it’s done will affect the outcome.

FGS 'hard work' does not directly relate to income. The hardest workers I know are middle-earners, doing jobs which are of massive value to society. I'm not saying that high earners don't work hard, but I'm sick of this narrative that they work harder than lower earners because it simply isn't true.

In answer to the question, yes those who earn more should absolutely pay a higher contribution to society. Now the rights/wrongs of how the government spend it is an entirely different discussion...

Of course. But we can't predict that by looking at behaviour following a model that differed from what has been proposed. Hence the 'look at France' argument being a red herring.

It is usual to present even an inkling of evidence when a claim is made. As it is, several posters have debunked your claim about a French wealth tax.

How is anyone supposed to converse if you do not share what you are talking about ? But you appear to still be making the claim, after it has been debunked in so far as people can work out what your claim is.

"Google it" is really not the best way to debate/discuss.

No they haven’t there’s no ‘debunking’. I said they introduced wealth taxes and scaled them back, that is exactly what happened. Scroll back to see the post.

You’ll need to divert to your nemesis Google as I’m not doing it for you. It’ll be good for you to overcome the aversion. There’s loads to read.

Help, my diamond shoes are too tight

People on shit money are often unable to switch off.

If they're being paid large sums, that's the quid pro quo. And, tbh, a lot of people in precarious/zero-hours jobs don't get to switch off either, as a pp said, because there is too much worry about keeping their job/making ends meet (and when they might get called in, in the case of zero hours).

What this means is that these wealth taxes were not well designed, it does not mean a wealth tax can't work, taxes on property have always been employed, actually long before income tax was invented in the C18th, so they do work.

Just because you have assets worth 10m, doesn’t mean you have 200k available in cash to just pay out each year.