As someone who is fairly wealthy but often earns zero taxable income, I wholeheartedly concur.
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What is meant by wealth?
Is it not already taxed?
I put that on last night. Generally, it is regarded as assets as opposed to income. This could be a bank balance, shares, land, property and pretty much anything else that is not cash income.
The problem is that having wealth, as such, isnât really a problem. Itâs inequality where the problems start to arise. Say, for example, a millionaire has a van Goch painting. Itâs a very valuable asset but how does that effect anyone else? It probably means your average Joe canât go down to the local public gallery and look at it but in terms of an asset it doesnât really make a jot of difference to anyone elseâs life.
Now, let suppose that the same millionaire decides to buy up all the farmland in a particular area and turn it into a shooting estate. It deprives local farm workers of a livelihood and quite possibly has a knock-on effect to their suppliers, local services and the general community that relies on the rural economy. The value of the asset is the same as the painting but the effect on everyone else is drastically different.
If you want to tax wealth rather than income, then fine, but you really have to define by what you mean by âwealthâ.
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Capital gains is taxed but not capital itself.
Is this not like savings in the bank or buying an asset,weather that be shares,a house or anything that goes up in value(although thatâs a risk).Wasnât the capital for those things taxed when it was first earned? And then the gains taxed when/if you sell them on.
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Yes, although it is like anything else that you can accrue taxation at more than one point. This is one of the arguments against Inheritance Tax as the accumulated estate has already been taxed.
In fact that is more of a misnomer because what Britain calls Inheritance Tax is actually a death duty as it is applied to the entire estate after death rather than the recipients of the inheritance. I seem to remember that George Harrison wrote a song about it!
There is a similar system in Germany which is a land-value tax based upon the value per square meter of land and itâs purpose (residental, agricultural, forestry etc.)
There is sound economic theory behind it as it provides economic levers to use land in the most efficient manner.
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Taxing capital gains is fine,it should be taxed,but taxing wealth is a bit different.
Could we see a point where 40 years of saving in the bank be defined as wealth.You will have people who have spent the same amount as you have saved over those 40 years but theirs is gone and you are now seen as wealthy compared to some,when really youâre just going to spend it at a different time.
To tax wealth,we would need to be looking at those who have assets in the millions(10s of millions) and up.
This is why you need to define as to what you mean by wealth or, for that matter, what you are taxing it for. Is it to generate income, to leverage the economy, to redistribute assets?
At the moment there are already, effectively, wealth taxes in place by stealth as those with moderate assets are not eligible to the same benefits as those with no assets. For example, in the provision of care for the elderly.
More often than not this tends to fall heavily on those with a moderate amount of assets - particularly if those assets arenât producing an income.
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Argh complex. Just like tax rules / legislation.
Tax avoidance is certainly problematic but so is the legislation itself that allows someone like Sunak to pay only 22% tax on his earnings, or thereabouts while Iâm probably well over 40% and Iâm just a ânormalâ employee with a salary and a miniscule bit of side income.
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When I was self-employed I used to employ an accountant so I knew that I was paying what was legally due. I frequently queried things the accountant did because it looked âbentâ to me. I was always assured that it was standard practice. The tax man always seemed happy.
I have an accountant in Germany and they seem to work the other way around in that if you have PAYE it will always be the maximum that you need to pay. You then get refunds if you have work related expenses, are married, have children and so on.
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Indeed. It just seems bizarre that someone like Sunak is able to legitimately claim that his costs and allowances on his very considerable earnings over ÂŁ50k, are high enough to reduce his tax burden to the level it has.
The âsystemâ is clearly skewed towards the self employed as you claim costs but I canât say how youâd create a more appropriate set of rules. One for the accountants that one.
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Further to the recent discussion on wealth tax
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Being self employed, it bloody well should be.
âBim Afolami, the thoughtful 37-year-old Conservative MP for Hitchin and Harpenden who co-authored the Onward report, argues that the answer is to cut national insurance for the under-40s and hike it for older workers, a bold idea that might be too bold by half for Rishi Sunakâ
This is something that has only this week been suggested(the rise but not the cut)by the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council in order to help pay for pensions as going forward we will have more pensioners with less younger workers putting into the tax system.
Bring back Poll Tax, everybody pays the same.
Glib comments from those that never experienced it! 
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Sorry, wrong.
Social responsibility.
I loved the Poll Tax. It brought down Thatcher.
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