Serious answer: the actually wealthy are too good at tax dodging, so taxing them is rarely effective, plus they can scare governments by threatening to fly their private jets to some other country if they were actually threatened with effective taxation.
I’ve heard it claimed that the only effective way to run a wealth tax is to do a single massive one off tax with no warning or lead time, that way the cockroaches wealthy can’t run and hide in the woodwork quickly enough.
Indeed. Unfortunately in the age of abundant air travel and being able to do basically everything online, including remaining in contact with people, it’s not hard to just move out of the UK if you’re super wealthy.
We absolutely can and should tax assets that can’t be moved out of the UK, though, like land. A multi-millionaire can move all kinds of things out of the country, but they cannot take their land with them. Land value would of course go down or stagnate, but I don’t personally see that as a bad thing.
That said, even if you took all billionaire wealth in the UK (while somehow simultaneously preventing a crash in the value of those assets), it’d last months. It wouldn’t be a permanent solution. State spending is £1.2 trillion, a small amount of billionaires aren’t going to plug the gap for long.
There’s no simple solution to the financial situation this country is in.
E: I guess people don’t want solutions, they just want someone who agrees with them.
Ah - a sensible comment in a thread about a wealth tax 😁. Yes - wealth taxes do raise money if they’re on things that are hard to move - so land, property. Also death duties - add up the estate, take a percentage. Anything else is more trouble than it’s worth. Better to effective and enforced income and consumption taxes.
And no getting away from the fact that it doesn’t solve the problem - to do that most people will have to pay more tax, and government needs to get much more efficient.
Serious answer: the actually wealthy are too good at tax dodging, so taxing them is rarely effective, plus they can scare governments by threatening to fly their private jets to some other country if they were actually threatened with effective taxation.
I’ve heard it claimed that the only effective way to run a wealth tax is to do a single massive one off tax with no warning or lead time, that way the
cockroacheswealthy can’t run and hide in the woodwork quickly enough.Tax assets instead. Then it doesn’t matter even if they do leave the country because their assets are still here no matter where the owners go.
Also, if the rich leave because they were told to pay fair tax then good riddance, they were a burden on the country.
Indeed. Unfortunately in the age of abundant air travel and being able to do basically everything online, including remaining in contact with people, it’s not hard to just move out of the UK if you’re super wealthy.
We absolutely can and should tax assets that can’t be moved out of the UK, though, like land. A multi-millionaire can move all kinds of things out of the country, but they cannot take their land with them. Land value would of course go down or stagnate, but I don’t personally see that as a bad thing.
That said, even if you took all billionaire wealth in the UK (while somehow simultaneously preventing a crash in the value of those assets), it’d last months. It wouldn’t be a permanent solution. State spending is £1.2 trillion, a small amount of billionaires aren’t going to plug the gap for long.
There’s no simple solution to the financial situation this country is in.
E: I guess people don’t want solutions, they just want someone who agrees with them.
Ah - a sensible comment in a thread about a wealth tax 😁. Yes - wealth taxes do raise money if they’re on things that are hard to move - so land, property. Also death duties - add up the estate, take a percentage. Anything else is more trouble than it’s worth. Better to effective and enforced income and consumption taxes.
And no getting away from the fact that it doesn’t solve the problem - to do that most people will have to pay more tax, and government needs to get much more efficient.