A body that has called itself The Wealth Tax Commission has reported today and has said that if all people in the UK with net asset worth of more than £500,000 had to pay a wealth tax of 1% of their worth over that sum then £260bn could be raised in a one-off tax charge. I'm not very keen on tax increases right now. But this idea is useful nonetheless. In this video I explain why.
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Argentina is doing this I see
I agree in broad principle with your point of view.
May I suggest however that a useful tweak to your proposal would be to define net income. In other words I would define it as income invested in bank accounts building societies shares bonds property and other assets but excluding repeat excluding the value of ones primary residence. especially if this is your only residence which you use for living in on a day-to-day basis.
Would you agree with this?
Also, the FT article today mentions the rate of tax is proposed at 5% but you mention it is 1%. Which of you is correct?
It is 1% for five years
It is not my proposal – I can’t tweak it
We have very high inequality in the UK, and a wealth tax is one way of addressing this problem. I personally find it attractive because most wealth growth appears to be unearned.
Spain reintroduced a 1% wealth tax – above €700,000 – in around 2012, and it has helped to bring their GINI rate down by about 1.5% to date after an initial rise.
I accept that a wealth tax does have a negative affect on GDP, but this appears small:
“An increase in the wealth tax with one percentage point leads to an estimated decrease in the growth rate of between 0.026 and 0.042 percentage points.”
Conversely the OECD puts the UK loss of GDP (1990 – 2010) due to inequality at 9%.
I agree that wealth inequality needs to be tackled urgently
I just think there are better ways to do it
See here http://taxresearch.org.uk/Wiki/2020/05/11/tax-after-coronavirus-tacs/
And you seriously think the Rees Moggs of this world would not find ways to hide their wealth?
This would be manipulted to suit the rich and shaft the people who have worked to earn their ‘wealth’.
Very Naive!
Have you read the report?