I realised over the weekend that my blog from Friday on wealth taxes had been picked up by Patrick Hosking in his business commentary in The Times after we had a conversation on Friday morning.
As he noted:
Most proposals suggest that wealth taxes should be levied on assets less borrowings, and exclude pensions and primary residences. The problem for governments is that this approach immediately wipes out most of the tax base.
Of that £13 trillion, £4.5 trillion is in property (mostly first homes) and £5.4 trillion in pensions. Strip out Isas, which most would argue should also be sacrosanct, and cars and suchlike and you are left with a taxable base of just £900 billion, points out Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK.
It's harder than it looks, this wealth tax idea. A good start, however, would be to tax income from investments at the same rate as income from employment.
I write blogs to influence debate. It's always worth noting when they do.
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Extract from Keir Starmer interview with Theo Usherwood, political editor of LBC radio
“…we will have a fully-costed Labour manifesto in due course and a much shorter one by the way”
https://twitter.com/theousherwood/status/1280062495105966080
Also quoted in the Guardian as part of discerning Labour’s attitude to a wealth tax:-
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/jul/06/uk-coronavirus-live-latest-updates-covid-19-news
Looks like Keir Starmer is playing the Neoliberal game of “we need to balance the government’s books.” He didn’t have to say any of this!
I live in fear…
Another mention for you here too, in a piece by Paul Waugh in HuffPost about Labour’s lack of precision on a wealth tax and wealth taxation. He describes you as “an early backer of Corbynomics”.
Dammit, inadvertently the creator of it….
And the link:
https://m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/keir-starmer-anneliese-dodds-covid-budget_uk_5f038d13c5b6acab28546368
I noticed
Thanks