One of the arugments against a wealth tax is how damn difficult it is to define, measure and caclulate wealth:
Given the attention now being given to that group in society, this is significant because it reveals that, despite all the political talk about cracking down on tax avoidance, the UK’s tax authority still does not know how much wealth billionaires actually hold or how much tax they really pay.
Quite. No one really knows how much wealth people have. Which is why a wealth tax etc etc….
Surely the value of assets is hard to asses? Also if I had an expensive painting and had to pay 2% of its value in taxes, its value might go down as everyone starts selling them.
For most billionaires, the wealth is because they own a significant chunk of listed businesses (or a massive property portfolio) – e.g. Musk owns 13% of Tesla ($124bn) and 42% of SpaceX ($136bn). It’s easy to get the latest share price and multiply it up, but it’s essentially meaningless, because (as everyone on this blog, but not Spud, understands) if he tried to offload a significant fraction of his holdings, the price would plummet.
There is no asset commie dick Murphy wouldn’t take from EVERYONE. Everything should be on loan from the government.
“You will own nothing . . . .”
‘does not know how much wealth billionaires actually hold ‘
Then how do you know there are ANY billionaires?
“If you are a billionaire, check here:___”
Looking forward to the pop up box on my next online tax return: “We’ve identified that you are a wealthy person and the government are asking people like you to pay a little more tax. Would you like to?”
“Looking forward to the pop up box on my next online tax return: “We’ve identified that you are a wealthy person and the government are asking people like you to pay a little more tax. Would you like to?””
I’ve said for years that a savvy Right wing government (which tells us why it hasn’t happened) should introduce a simple voluntary tax system, that means you pay extra tax across the board. Higher income and NI taxes, higher CGT, higher IHT etc etc. Make it really simple – one form to send back to HMRC and you’re in for a fixed period (no suddenly getting out of it, because you want to sell your house and under the Lefty Tax Rules you’d pay 40% CGT on the profits). And publicise who has signed up to it.