The next PM is excited to harness the energy of @garyseconomics’s mob.
This will mean the UK will become the next failed experiment on wealth taxes.
How can I be so sure that wealth taxes won’t work? Let me count the ways they will be a disaster…
- the UK is already the highest taxed place to be a top earner or wealthy. More taxes at the top will push more away than it collects.
- The engine room of the economy is digital assets that can based anywhere. The only wealth that will be taxed is old money fortunes tied up in real estate… the new fortunes will leave the anti-wealth UK.
- wealth is highly subjective. It’s never a clean number like income or an actual sale. Wealth is a forecast, a projection, a useful guess. Hence it can be litigated and debated - and it will. Wealth taxes tie up the courts.
- it’s not being introduced because it works, it’s being introduced because people are angry. Mostly they are angry at Elon, Jeff, Mark and Larry… all the American Billionaires who will be buying up deflated UK assets after wealth taxes set fire to their valuations. The mob wants blood that is out of reach.
- there’s not that much to tax. The UKs billionaires are already leaving. The total wealth held by billionaires in the UK is sub £700B (less than Elon’s wealth). There’’s only technically 150 of them remaining and most have already started to leave. I’d be amazed if the tax collects more than a few billion.
- this tax is going to end up destroying the middle class. Mark my words… when the rich leave the middle class have to cover the gap that they leave behind. One way that will happen is that they will use the wealth tax framework to tax nice family homes, mind sized businesses, decent sized pension pots. It will be a race to the bottom.
- Wealth taxes have been tried 15 times and tolled back 12. The only places that have wealth taxes don’t have IHT or CGT. Wealthy people pay less than they otherwise would have. It’s a wealth tax in name only. The UK has wealth taxes now in practice (School VAT, IHT, Stamp Duty,etc) but not in name.
Anyway, if it is the will of the people then so be it. I will be advising entrepreneurs to look elsewhere though - it simply doesn’t make sense to build something of value in a country that despises value creation.
@RollingHedge Good points.
I would add to the first that Labour has been losing votes since 2017, and the GE24 had the lowest turnout in almost a century, which I doubt will happen at the next GE.
‘God only knows what generation we’re producing at this rate!’
@NickFerrariLBC thinks schools closing early in the heat shows a lack of 'will to get through’.
If you believe that's insensitive, then what was going to Southport for a photo op over the biggest tragedy in recent times, turning your back on the local people, then scuttling off for a celebratory party in the rose garden?
Less or more insensitive?
Great to welcome the newest member of the PLP, my friend Andy Burnham, to Parliament.
He'll be a brilliant representative for the people of Makerfield, and I am sure he will quickly make his mark in this place!