Rachel Henry Tax Justice UK: not high or low tax but tax the super-rich, fiscal drag, Election 2024

Right time for taxes on wealth

https://politicsthisweek.wordpress.com/2024/05/30/not-the-bcfm-politics-show-presented-by-tony-gosling-192/

https://www.taxjustice.uk/blog/right-time-for-taxes-on-wealth

Forbes has released its annual ‘Billionaire List’. It shows that there are more billionaires than ever before, and they have increased their wealth to record levels.

The Forbes wealth editor stated that ‘It’s been an amazing year for the world’s richest people’.

This comes at a time of massive global instability, staggering inequality and an urgent need to combat climate and environmental breakdown.

According to Forbes, there are 55 billionaires in the UK. 

Showcasing the massive intergenerational transfer of wealth, every single billionaire under the age of 30 - of which there are 15 - inherited their riches.

Just one billion is a staggering amount of money. 

In fact, if a teacher on the average salary saved every single penny they earned, it would take over 30,000 years to become a billionaire.

Raising revenue

The level of wealth on display also highlights how much revenue would be raised by introducing wealth taxes. 

Our work on just six taxes on wealth shows that up to £50 billion a year could be raised and go straight into public services.

That’s money to pay for nurses, doctors and dentists and resuscitate Britain’s ailing health service.

As Tax Justice UK Executive Director, Robert Palmer, said on Twitter, world leaders need to ensure the super-rich pay their fair share. You can share his response here.

Making the right case

You may be surprised to see, but taxes on wealth do have popularity across the political spectrum.

In a recently published collection of essays for the centre-right think tank, Bright Blue, Conservative MP John Penrose makes just this case. 

While we may not agree on all points, Penrose argues that rebalancing our tax system from work to wealth would be better. 

He argues that Britain taxes income in a ‘thoroughly regressive way by systematically giving a better deal to the rich at the expense of the poor’. 

Taxing wealth at the same rate of work would be a popular proposition. 

The Fairness Foundation recently commissioned public opinion polling that showed two in three people (65%) support reforming capital gains tax so that income from wealth is taxed either at the same rate or at a higher rate than income from work.

Bright Blue also published a report in 2022 proposing that wealth should be taxed at higher levels, offset by a reduction in taxes on work.

The think tank argued that wealth should be taxed at higher levels to respond to rising accumulation of wealth, and the role of inheritances in determining life outcomes.