Rachel Reeves to defy Labour MPs’ calls for a wealth tax
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/rachel-reeves-wealth-tax-kl6zj9kvz
Posted by CaseyEffingRyback
Rachel Reeves to defy Labour MPs’ calls for a wealth tax
https://www.thetimes.com/uk/politics/article/rachel-reeves-wealth-tax-kl6zj9kvz
Posted by CaseyEffingRyback
28 Comments
Lol. Not surprised that a centre right party is not too keen to go after the wealthy….
Remember folks, “Difficult decisions” only apply to cutting public services and squeezing more tax out of the middle. The wealthy must not be inconvenienced in any way.
so instead she will increase everyone else tax then act shocked when they spend less and growth gets even worse. she’s stuck in a doom loop without the ability or imagination to get out of it.
>Reeves is preparing to raise taxes in the autumn budget after the government was forced by Labour MPs to abandon welfare cuts and reinstate winter fuel payments for millions of people. The backpedalling on both policies will cost more than £6 billion combined.
She can either tax work or wealth. If wealth tax is ruled out then tax on work it is!
I guess it doesn’t matter what they do now. Who knew we would live to see the big two disappear!
Labour have to get radical. They can’t just keep squeezing PAYE earners, leaving un earned income alone and providing masses of benefits. Something has to give
Rachel reeves again showing why she cried in pm questions when she couldn’t take the money from the sick and the poor children of the UK. england is on in knees and she still won’t take from the top to level the playing field for the rest of the country stuffing the burden of supporting the wealthy tax avoiders.
“We’re all in this together”. especially you scumbags pauper (ordinary) folk.
Inflation inflation inflation is all I’m hearing. We’ll be taking money from inflated assets caused by QE and putting it into the goods and services market
In this case, Reeves is more or less right. A blanket wealth tax similar to what was implemented in Norway doesn’t work. It makes the ultra wealthy leave and Norway ended up causing a loss in their taxes coming in.
What I’d like to see happen is the 50p tax for high earners come back, and ensuring that massive corporations pay their fair share of tax, unlike Amazon who pays about 3.5%.
Is defy the right word here, rather than decline? Labour MPs’ calls are just that; Reeves is not defying a court order or even a Labour Party rule. Not that one would normally accuse the right wing press of clickbait.
The government (I don’t think it matters which political party is in power, we always get the same government) have been pushing everyone onto PAYE for a reason.
Fiscal drag and tax rises for mid-high earners coming your way.
After ww2 social security and the NHS were created, debt dropped and we had significant economic growth. Remind me what the tax rate was again?
I would rather see a wealth tax wait until whoever wins the election after next. This is because if the next government is one that tries to emulate what the USA is doing then they are likely to plunder what gets taken as a wealth tax change under this government.
Wait until after the next lot actually drive the car off the cliff, then it also can’t get criticised.
“I do think that people who get their income through wealth should have to pay more”
(Rachel Reeves, not but four years ago)
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-opposition-hints-wealth-taxes-shareholders-landlords-2021-09-26/
It sounds easy, just tax the rich more.
What it really should be is get the rich to pay more tax. If we collected what is fair and right from the rich based on systems we already have in place then we wouldn’t have to “tax the rich” more. Block the loop holes.
She is trying her best to make 6 digits pay in London can live a miserable life.
To my mind tax policy has to have 2 pillars, firstly insofar as it is at all possible it has to be equitable, but also at the end of the day what’s most important is that revenue to the exchequer is maximised.
There is absolutely no point raising rates in any area if that ultimately results in lower revenue because that just hurts everyone as everyone else then has to contribute more to fill that gap. I know people scoff at this, but the reality is that in particular for the wealthy we live in a global highly connected world nowadays where relocating is easier than ever before. If you create enough of a disincentive to being here some will go. Not to say that rules any ideas out, it may make sense but It would be far better if decisions were made pragmatically rather than pursuant to ideology alone.
They don’t want to do a wealth tax as that’s their retirement package money.
Best they will do is hurt Henry’s while letting the truly huge asset owners off the hook.
They don’t tax the ultra wealthy because they’ll find another way to avoid it, and if they cant they’ll simply leave the country.
The whole capitalist system is farcical, when everyone is out for themselves regardless of how much they hoard it can only ever turn out worse each year, somethings snapping soon.
So we can’t cut WFA for the richest pensioners, we can’t cut £5bn from welfare, we can’t look at PIP, when inheritance was looked at farmers clogged the streets cos God forbid they pay tax over £3m, and we can’t tax the richest with not even a one-off wealth tax, and the triple-lock on pensions will bankrupt us in a few decades and we can’t look at that.
What exactly are we going to do? Because it seems nothing and then get Farage elected and then have an economic catastrophe.
And this is why they’re losing. Seriously, how is she this out of touch?
Of course she is. Can’t possibly tax them because they’ll all run away or some shit so better stick it to everyone else instead.
The most serious expert-backed proposal came from the Wealth Tax Commission (2020). They recommended a one-off wealth tax targeting individuals with over £500,000 in net assets.
Their main proposal was:
1% per year for 5 years (so a total of 5% over that period)
Only on wealth above £500k per person (i.e., £1 million for a couple)
It would raise about £260 billion total, or £52 billion a year
That’s way more than what a permanent wealth tax would raise. A smaller annual tax (like 1% on wealth over £10m) would bring in maybe £10–15 billion a year, but it’s easier to avoid. The one-off version was seen as harder to dodge and fairer in a post-COVID recovery.
🔗 Source (full report with executive summary):
https://www.ukwealth.tax/
There’s also a great summary in the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/09/one-off-wealth-tax-uk-could-raise-260bn-says-report
It surely cannot be beyond the government and their advisors and all our finest minds, to come up with a model of taxation and redistribution that actually works, based on what we think is needed for our society. Every problem has a logical/best answer.
The only argument I’ve ever agreed with against a wealth tax is that it never closes the loopholes that the people it’s aimed at can’t afford to go through to avoid it anyway.
This doesn’t seem like Reeves’ reasoning. Plus I’d ignore the doom and gloom about how ineffective these taxes are from the right wing press owned by literal private island billionaires.
I love how the media has strawmanned “tax the rich” and “tax wealth” into “wealth tax”, which is a specific tax policy, and then gone “we can’t tax the rich because a specific tax policy won’t work”. Wealth taxes can take many forms, not all of them smart, but still:
* Property taxes
* Land Value Taxes
* CGT
* Stamp duty on stock market transaction, e.g. LSE transactions
* Inheritance taxes
* Taxes on unrealised gains (e.g. when someone borrows against assets they have)
The fact is that inequality is causing our economy to work to the benefit of wealth rather than workers. If 50 families own more wealth than 50% of the country, markets are much more likely to cater to *their* needs, rather than the needs of common people.
Nah mate, let’s just tax working people more instead. According to every UK sub, it’s the doctor who went to uni/med school for like a decade and is now on £100k that’s the real enemy. Let’s tax them more. Those poor billionaires hoarding unproductive wealth have done nothing wrong.