THE RICHARD J MURPHY YOUTUBE CHANNEL
DEBATE AMMUNITION
THIS WEALTH TAX WILL NOT WORK
Funding the Future | June 2026
TODAY'S TOPIC
This wealth tax will not work.
A critique of the Global Justice Report from the World Inequality Database, written by Thomas Piketty, Gabriel Zucman and colleagues, which proposes a global wealth tax and global income tax to fund a worldwide income guarantee and limit global warming to 1.8 degrees by 2100.
The video that this Debate Ammunition supports is available here.
THE CORE ARGUMENT
The Global Justice Report's plan for a global wealth tax is fantasy, not policy: it assumes away tax havens, tax competition, the impossibility of valuing and locating wealth, and the fact that owning wealth does not give you the cash to pay a tax bill on it. Real tax justice comes from reforming existing income, gains and corporate taxes, which can raise more money, more fairly, and can actually be collected.
KEY STATISTICS
| Statistic | Figure | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Number of existing tax havens worldwide | Around 70 | Cited in the video |
| Wealth tax threshold proposed: no charge below this level | $1 million | Cited in the video |
| Proposed annual wealth tax rate on assets over $1 billion | 20% | Cited in the video |
| Approximate share of UK population that could be affected by the wealth tax (largely via property wealth in London) | Around 15% | Cited in the video |
THE ARGUMENT STRUCTURE
Step 1: A fantasy built on global cooperation: The report assumes every country in the world will agree to impose a global wealth tax and a global income tax on top of existing local taxes, with no country opting out. With around 70 tax havens already in existence, and states routinely captured by wealthy interests, that level of cooperation is simply never going to happen.
Step 2: Wealth cannot be reliably found, owned or valued: The plan assumes that ownership, location and valuation of wealth are all straightforward, when in reality wealth sits behind layers of trusts and companies spread across jurisdictions, and the value of assets such as art, antiques or even a London home shifts the moment a tax liability is attached to it.
Step 3: Owning wealth is not the same as having cash to pay tax: Most wealth, from family homes to early-stage shareholdings, generates little or no income. A homeowner with a £1.5 million London property would face an annual tax bill with no income stream to pay it from, and a billionaire whose wealth is based on a company's future earnings, illustrated by Elon Musk and SpaceX, cannot sell or borrow against shares without collapsing the very valuation the tax depends on.
Step 4: This is wealth confiscation dressed up as tax: Because the tax cannot realistically be paid in cash, the only honest description of what is being proposed is the transfer of ownership of assets into a global fund: in other words, nationalisation. The report should say so plainly instead of pretending this is a tax. A fairer and far more deliverable route is reform of existing UK income tax, capital gains tax, inheritance tax, National Insurance and corporation tax, which the Taxing Wealth Report shows could raise far more revenue using information the tax authorities already hold.
THEIR ARGUMENT → YOUR REBUTTAL
| They Say | Your Response |
|---|---|
| A global wealth tax is the only way to raise the huge sums needed to tackle inequality and climate change. | Money raised on paper is worthless if it cannot be collected. The Taxing Wealth Report shows the UK alone could raise around £90 billion a year through reforms to existing taxes that the authorities already have the data to administer, without waiting for a global agreement that will never be reached. |
| Wealthy people are simply choosing not to pay their fair share, so a wealth tax forces the issue. | Forcing the issue only works if the tax can be collected. Annual wealth taxes require valuing assets that are deliberately opaque, hidden behind layers of trusts and companies across multiple jurisdictions, every single year. Taxing the income and gains that wealth already generates is administratively realistic and uses information already in tax returns. |
| Billionaires can always sell a small portion of their shares or borrow against them to pay a wealth tax bill. | Selling shares to pay a tax bill that is itself a multiple of the company's annual profits would crash the share price, and the tax liability with it. No lender will accept as collateral shares in a company that cannot generate enough income to service the resulting debt. The mechanism is not workable. |
| Even an imperfect wealth tax is better than nothing, and international cooperation can be built over time. | An imperfect tax that cannot be collected is not a smaller version of a good policy, it is a different policy: effective expropriation of assets. If that is the intention, the report's authors should say so honestly, rather than dressing up nationalisation as tax justice. |
THE ONE-LINER
“You cannot tax wealth you cannot find, value or turn into cash, and pretending otherwise is not tax justice, it is wishful thinking dressed up as economics.”
FURTHER READING
| Title | Date | Relevance |
|---|---|---|
| Wealth taxes won't work | May 2024 | Sets out Richard's core objections to annual wealth taxes: identification, location and valuation of wealth, directly underpinning this video. |
| The right way to tax wealth in 2026 | December 2025 | Sets out the alternative approach: taxing the income and gains from wealth via existing taxes rather than wealth itself. |
| Launching the Taxing Wealth Report 2024 | September 2023 | Introduces the Taxing Wealth Report's central claim that a wealth tax is unnecessary because existing taxes can raise sufficient revenue. |
| The introduction to the Taxing Wealth Report 2024 | March 2024 | Quantifies the £170 billion annual under-taxation of wealth in the UK, providing context for the scale of the problem this report addresses differently. |
| The Taxing Wealth Report 2024: a pre-Budget summary | March 2024 | Sets out the £90 billion a year revenue figure from reforming existing taxes, the practical alternative referenced in the rebuttal table. |
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[…] The Debate Ammunition for this video is available here. […]
I’m in favour of higher taxes on wealth, by whatever means is most effective, as a progressive means of raising a lot more public money.
But I don’t see how this would address the structural causes of concentrated wealth. Even if they can be made to pay their taxes, billionaires will remain billionaires (with all the clout that comes with that) unless the tax is set at a very high level, which seems politically unrealistic at the moment.
Some of them, I imagine, would just pay the wealth tax as a social licence to remain incredibly rich. Others will do their best to evade it while deploying their wealth and political influence to chip away at the base of the tax, year after year, via small and incremental changes to the law, until they’ve hollowed it out. Given the character of democratic politics, sooner or later parties will be in power which allow them to do that.
To repeat, I’m in favour of much higher taxation of wealth because states need more money to pay for just and necessary ends. But I sometimes worry that people are jumping on the idea because it’s simple to grasp and communicate, rather than asking harder questions about what kinds of rules and institutions allow certain people to amass staggering wealth in the first place.
We do not need to tax to raise funds – that is never true
But you are right – we do need to tackle wealth
Much to agree with. I have looked at wealth/assets and taxes and concluded that its actually quite difficult to just tax wealth. A number of other policies are needed instead to raise taxes and reduce wealth inequalities.
https://www.cornwallecon.com/post/wealth-issues-inequalities-and-taxes-1
https://www.cornwallecon.com/post/the-problem-of-wealth-to-tax-or-not-to-tax-2
https://www.cornwallecon.com/post/land-wealth-and-taxes-time-for-change-the-options
Thanks
Taxing the income from wealth, including the imputed rental enjoyed by home owner-occupiers and realised capita gains, is feasible and is effectively a tax on wealth.
I agree on realised capital gains, of course.
How does a tax on the imputed welath of a pensioner living on low income in their own property work?
I’ve always thought that there was more harm done by the excess ownership or speculation on some assets (e.g. property, energy sources) than others (e.g. vintage cars, fine art) and that rather than imposing a blanket wealth tax it would be sufficient to tax excess ownership of specific assets.
So someone who wants to own 3 or more residential properties in the UK for example ought to be subject to an appropriately levelled tax on all of their UK property (I guess there could be some kind of carve out for a landlord who agrees to keep their rents below a set threshold in a tax year). Other countries should act similarly to protect their interests against those who would speculate on key infrastructure and needs of their people within their borders .
But otherwise I agree, it makes much more sense to reform the taxes we have to ensure the very rich pay an appropriate amount.
Thank you