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

The richest 50 families in the UK have more than wealth than the poorest 50% of the population.

They haven't worked hard for their money the main . They've often inherited it going back centuries of criminal exploitation of own working people ( including very young children, in mines, farms and factories on poverty wages, no holidays, no sick pay, no job security - lining up every day hoping to be picked for work ( docks).

Plus the centuries of slavery in our colonies .

The richest don't pay their fair share of tax . They off shore, use tax exemptions etc. Incidentally, after the recent poll of the very rich, most said they wouldn't leave the UK. They like it here.

What is criminal is freezing tax bands so that the poorest are paying more and more. £12,570 plus is far too low an income to be paying tax on when people can't afford food, let alone sky high rents, electricity and gas bills or water bills.*

*BTW Thames Water chief executive Chris Weston gets paid £1.16 million a year! - for eg polluting the shores of the Isle of Wight. (Plus Thames Water paid £4.09 million in bonuses to 'key management personnel'.)

Do we think he's working so much harder than the rest of us?

It’s unlikely you’ll get what you want from it. People and businesses are mobile.

'Why is there no uproar about benefits?' Lolz. Come on mumsnet, if you're going to write your own goady posts to raise your revenue, at least be a tiny bit subtle about it!

Have you ever compared the Times Richlist with the top tax payers? The top earners in this country are not those
paying most tax.

If a 2% wealth tax meant many of the tax dodging millionaires leave the UK then so be it.

Why would they ? It would be a tax on their wealth, not any business.

In fact, a wee bit off thread sorry, but it is a documented fact that higher corporate tax regimes can be, and are, better for business. Because R&D is tax deductible, so more profit is circulated into the business rather than be taken out.

But yeah. If someone has 50 million they have made from their business, why would what cause job cuts. The wealth and business are separate.

A lot of wealth/gains in the hands of the wealthiest have been accumulated through:

• quantitatve easing pushing up asset values
• rock bottom interest rates ("cheap money")
• land/property gains
• government policies allowing migration in many sectors such as healthcare to ensure labour costs/wages were kept low
• money pumped into the economy during covid which propped up asset values more.

Anyone who thinks its down to millionaires hard work needs to study economics a bit more. I say that as someone who may well get hit by a wealth or property tax. I'm ok with that.

Actually we have had them but they haven’t been supported financially to grow their companies so they sell them to foreign investors at a relatively early stage, usually the USA where wealth is not demonised in the same way.

Agreed

This is also true to an extent. And we’re not going to encourage more late stage VC investment by increasing capital gains tax.

£200,000 is a fifth of a millionaire’s million.

I don’t like it. Not because they can’t afford it.

Not even on a principle point because 100 million is obscene.

I don’t like it

a)because it won’t work. I just read careless people and it’s made me realise the west are actually very soft and corrupt.

b) because it’s already 10 million from 100, next it will be 1 million which is actually not that much money now in the west and that will be frozen. In 30 years people who own a standard 3 bed semi in teeside will be dragged in.

I think we need to have a serious conversation about whether we can write this money off. It’s not going to be used for actual physical spend. It might be manipulating markets and financial products but it’s never going to be spent on bananas in Tesco or childcare at the local nursery. Can you separate these markets somehow and create a fund to offset the written off and target it into circulation again.

Yes and funnily enough those that for "the many" don't ever seem to want to pay themselves.

This whole debate would be more useful if we had some modelling of what such a tax would look like.

Everyone assumes it would raise billions which could then be spent on stuff. But a) policies often underperform government projections and b) are we sure it would continue to raise billions year after year. What if our economy contracted even further as a result and it became a Ponzi scheme?

So what is fair then?

I see a lot of moaning about tax and the way it’s set up (or is proposed that it’s set up) but not much in the way of solutions.

Maybe we need to move to a society where we just accept the government will do the bare minimum basics - defence, etc. - and beyond that we all have to fend for ourselves and make the best of it.

Respectfully, you’re talking rubbish. Stop reading the Daily Mail and listening to Nigel Farage.

The majority of our ‘welfare’ budget is pensions, and of the rest, the majority of payments are top up benefits for low income families, people who are working but don’t earn enough to live on. There are not millions of lazy workshy families living it large on ‘welfare’ like the media portrays.

Taxing assets of £10m+ at 2% will raise significant money for our economy, but still leave these people with more money than they can spend in a lifetime. They don’t have £10m because they’ve worked hard and earned it, it’s often inherited wealth that’s been built on by paying poverty wages to employees, and from being hoarded in high interest ‘off shore investments’. They aren’t spending their millions in the UK, that money is separate from our economy and not doing anything except making greedy people richer.

So yes, tax them, and the multinationals like Starbucks and Amazon, that make enormous amounts of money from the UK and pay no taxes. They don’t contribute to our economy at all, and if they did flounce off in a huff over being taxed we’d get uk owned independent coffee companies in their place who do pay uk taxes.

@ElizaMulvil
The richest 50 families in the UK have more than wealth than the poorest 50% of the population.

ONS figures would put it at about about the poorest 15-20%. Still a lot.

But your picture of the richest 50 families is very outdated. The wealth is far more recent and international than your description. That matters because: i) it's far more mobile, and ii) the UK's moral claim to tax is much weaker when the wealth is essentially foreign.

Basically when it comes to the top 50 families, what we are doing is making an offer to a small group of very mobile people whose money was largely created overseas, on whether they would like to be taxed by us.

Get that offer wrong and our poorest people are further screwed because our tax take goes down.

But the idea is for a 2% wealth tax. Not 20%.

Social workers, teachers, nurses all have degrees, they need them to do the job, and the job makes huge demands on them. Now I’m not saying they should be super rich, but they certainly shouldn’t need to rely on benefits topping up their income.

I’d start by looking at the businesses funding the “super rich” lifestyle. If that profit is coming from paying staff low wages which are supplemented by Universal Credit, they should be expected to pay additional tax or pay their workers an actual “can live on” living wage.

I was just listening to Dan Neidle on this. He’s easy to understand on tax. Ik mn is very pro tax but it doesn’t always work out as expected.

Only three of the top 50 wealthiest people in the uk actually inherited from uk historical dynasties. The rest are self made or international dynasties (who have even less barriers to withdrawing their wealth from the UK)

People hate people who have money!!

The top earners get taxed enough (and are paying for all the benefits) and the majority of people don't know what it's like having pretty much half of what you've earnt being taken away immediately!

You mention trusts, and I agree that lots of the mega wealthy assets are held in ways to tax them - a 2% wealth tax isn’t touching them either. Instead it would hit those building and earning now, which would have an effect on growth and will result in an exodus.

Emotive talk about taxing billionaires to pay more to nurses is lovely, but when real life collides with idealism it won’t work that way. Socialism has been tried and tended to just benefit local government bureaucrats. Look at the wealth of senior Labour Party figures for an insight into how that would go (Kier could be reportedly stumping up on a potentially £10m plus wealth tax per Wikipedia).

Not the same but not 10, 50, 100, 1000 or in Jeff Bezos case 500,000 times more. Wealth and income inequality has reached insane levels, it’s not healthy for society and it needs to be addressed by taxation or legislation.

Some businesses are mobile. Property isn't. And there's always exit taxes.

It's taxing 2% of 10 million plus however 2% of 1 million is 1/50 which would be £20, 000.