Starmer's vision quest

[CXRAndy]

Well you are lucky where you live. I bet your pound you earn doesn't go as far as it did?

 

[Ian H]

Lazy leftie stereotypes are so yesterday...

Says the spouter of tired, discredited, right-wing memes.
Are you still trickling down, old chap? Or have you bought some continence pads?

 

[First Aspect]

only £3.6million?, if that includes property, I would have thought here are a few 1%ers on here?

And quite a few farmers.

A wealth tax is a stupid idea. Put it at the level at which those who are caught by it can afford to pay it, and you get nothing because they work around it. Put it at a lower level and too many of the
people who are caught by it are put into financial difficulty.

 

[icowden]

only £3.6million?, if that includes property, I would have thought here are a few 1%ers on here?

No - at *least* £3.6 million. That's just the household at the bottom of the 1%. For the purposes of my calculations I averaged it out on the basis that all 1% households had £3.6 million minimum.

 

[icowden]

And quite a few farmers.

A wealth tax is a stupid idea. Put it at the level at which those who are caught by it can afford to pay it, and you get nothing because they work around it. Put it at a lower level and too many of the
people who are caught by it are put into financial difficulty.

Indeed:

Wealth taxes don't work because there are some almost insurmountable problems inherent within them.

First of all, you've got to find out what the wealthy own, and that is not as straightforward as you think. They hide their wealth in companies, which may have disguised ownership. They put their wealth in trusts and will claim this is no longer their asset. And is it, or isn't it? Can you imagine the number of years in court that it'll take to resolve that one?

Once you've discovered what they supposedly own, you've then got another problem to solve. And that is valuing it. Now, people think that valuing wealth is really straightforward. I promise you, it isn't.

How much is a private company worth? Because its shares aren't traded, you've got to work out, therefore, what somebody might pay for it, even though it isn't available for sale.

How much is a racehorse worth? Well, some might only be worth a couple of thousand pounds. Others might be worth tens of millions of pounds.

And a work of art? I can daub a bit of paint on a canvas if you like. How much is it worth? Fifteen quid on a bad day. Twenty quid on a good day. That's about it. But, how much is a Picasso worth? Again, the variation in value is enormous. But it's a lot more than my daubs. Which figure is correct? No one will really know.
The point I'm making is this. By the time you have actually even established what is owned and what it's worth, first of all, you've got to start the process again for the next year because the proposal is that this is an annual tax.

Secondly, you're going to have to do this process for a lot of people who you are never going to tax because it turns out they don't have enough wealth to be charged, but they've still got to prove that point.

And then thirdly, you're going to have to employ an absolute army of tax inspectors to do the negotiations, an enormous number of specialist valuers, and legions of lawyers to take on the wealthy who are going to object to every single thing that is put to them as to that valuation and the tax charge that is being proposed.

He goes on:

if we have a truly progressive tax system that does genuinely increase tax rates as people's income rises, and if we overcome some of the stupidities in our tax systems as well, which means that things like income from wealth are not subject to the equivalent of national insurance charges, which they aren't at present, but which people who earn their incomes from work have to pay, and if we equalise the tax rates on capital gains and income, as well as having decent progressive inheritance tax rules that have limited or no allowances for business assets because there is frankly no reason why the billionaires of the world need to have allowances for their business assets which reduce the tax charge on them when they pass them to the next generation, then we could have truly significant increases in the tax charges on those people.

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/05/10/wealth-taxes-wont-work/

 

[briantrumpet]

Indeed:

He goes on:

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2024/05/10/wealth-taxes-wont-work/

And Murphy isn't exactly right wing.

 

[Psamathe]

I don't think it's as simple as 'Sort housing and you sort everything' like some people say, but the affordable housing crisis is a really big part of the problem. There are affordable parts of the UK but that thing of buying your first flat or house on one income in your mid/late 20's is a pipe dream for many youngsters unless it's Bank of Mum and Dad assisted. I can't see any cheap or painless way out of it either. Not sure the plan to give ftb's a x6 salary mortgage helps.

Maybe the plan is if you're working till 70 you can get a x6 salary 45 year mortgage. Joined up thinking at last ...

Personally I don't understand why in the UK as a population we seem to need far higher levels of home ownership that in comparable countries. I didn't buy my 1st property until I was into my 30's and home ownership earlier would have been a big constraint on my career - you need to go to the job not constrain yourself to opportunities local to where you've purchased.

Also, too often people renting compare the cost of their rent against the cost of a mortgage - and that already shows they haven't appreciated the difference between renting and owning eg when you own you have to pay additional aspects of insurance, you have to pay for repairs, you have to pay for white goods, you have to pay ... and those can significantly reduce what the landlord actually gets.

Trouble is that it is a circular problem. Easier access to loans in order to pay for ever increasing housing costs lifts the amount people can pay so housing costs increase…

Also, developers don't want to build the type of properties 1st time buyers can even consider. Developer high profits come from 4+ bedroom "prestige properties". Seems standard practice these days for developers to abandon affordable houses they agreed to just because they would not make as high profits as they ideally wanted (and Planning Dept. just wave such applications through). So now rather that tighten rules (as LAbour promised pre-election) they are proposing to fund such housing from taxpayers money (despite eg Government debt interest June 25 is double what it was in June 24).

Ian

 

[briantrumpet]

And Murphy isn't exactly right wing.

Nor is Neidle

https://taxpolicy.org.uk/2025/07/22/uk-wealth-tax-anti-growth/

 

[BoldonLad]

No - at *least* £3.6 million. That's just the household at the bottom of the 1%. For the purposes of my calculations I averaged it out on the basis that all 1% households had £3.6 million minimum.

not sure I understand you?, are you saying £3.6 million is the average?, in which case some will have LESS than £3.6million, which makes it even more likely that many people in the South of England would be in the "top 1%"

 

[icowden]

not sure I understand you?, are you saying £3.6 million is the average?, in which case some will have LESS than £3.6million, which makes it even more likely that many people in the South of England would be in the "top 1%"

No - brian's stat is that the top 1% have wealth of more than £3.6 million. There are 28.4 million households in the UK which means that 1 % is 284000 households, each of which has at least £3.6 million.

 

[matticus]

only £3.6million?, if that includes property, I would have thought here are a few 1%ers on here?

Quite possibly; of those 280,000 householders, there's no reason some won't be on the NACA forum. Perhaps they'll speak up and let us know?

What's your point, caller?