Honorary research fellow University of Liverpool, UK; Honorary volunteer Professor, Zaporizhzhia National University, Ukraine
My friend Grahame Jackson posted on Labour's plans for a wealth tax. This is my thoughts, taken from long comment(s) on Grahame (international tax law expert's) thread. With an added comment criticising the Labour class warriors hostility to private schools based on inverse snobbery and prejudice. What is needed is a philosophical and economic basis to a tax policy. The comments so far are simplistic - this isn't framed as a hit the wealthy (they - Labour - mean 'the Rich', the kind of rich 'they' don't like), it isn't a 98% tax, but it is simplistic group think. 1. There is merit in the idea of taxing 'unearned' wealth, just as there is unfairness in wealth being passed on to successive generations, getting money they haven't earned. 2. But Labour in Britain seem to equate property and owning stuff with wealth and money (just as many old Liberals equate land with wealth) and fail to understand that people with property, land, assets, etc. are often not wealthy or rich. For me the same is the Labour and Tory addiction to unfair National Insurance . 3. National Insurace is a tax on jobs and working people that both Labour and Conservatives claim to oppose but utilise while always failing to get working age people off benefits in to work. 4. Labour and Conservatives both love unfair local property taxes - yes Poll Tax was wrong as not based on ability to pay but Labour believed in rates where people paid tax totally unfairly just based on the value of a property. Neither have proposed a local taxation system based on income and ability to pay. It is massively hypocritical. 5. Liberal Democrat local income tax is fairer, but still doesn't reflect equality in terms of everyone contributing 6. Of course Mansion taxes are aimed at oligarchs and billionaires, but still a taxation policy based on house prices (as Labour love) ignores the fact that house prices are often accidental and often elderly people or retired or older people are living in houses worth a lot but they don't have a lot of income themselves. There is an inverse snobbishness and 'class war' element about these policies. Policies mostly propagated by 'middle class' professionals who did elite degrees at elite universities protesting that they are 'working class'. 7 follows - my comment on the Labour prejudice against parents spending money on education.
International Tax Barrister based in the Temple, London. Specializing in international legal & tax dispute resolution across the UK, EU, and Middle East.
Tax in the UK needs simplifying. The Labour Party plans to close non-dom Income & CGT, plus IHT loopholes on offshore trusts by abolishing transitional reliefs and ending 'excluded property' status. They also confirm no plans for a Wealth Tax or targeting expensive houses. Is this simple enough?
Kiron Reid
10mo
... Ok, this was a different age, forty years ago, but my father wasn't rich - he was a doctor, well off, but not rich - he saved his money so that he could put his children into private school that he believed in (I had a good education but otherwise not convinced). We didn't have all the stuff that everyone else had, we didn't have the foreign holidays, we didn't have all the latest things, but my father invested in our education. Why should a politician stop them spending on education instead of improving education for others
Justin Hayden Miller
10mo
Some interesting points Kiron. Surely wealth, though, equates to net worth which includes the value of one’s real estate. The question as old as time is whether tax is best and fairer raised by taxing net wealth, or income, or added value or all of these. The answer too often depends on the particular personal interests of the person providing their opinion!
Honorary research fellow University of Liverpool, UK; Honorary volunteer Professor, Zaporizhzhia National University, Ukraine
10mo7. Labour and many Liberal (Democrats) war against private schools is based on the same prejudice and stereotype. Private schools are not all like Eton and not all parents who send their children to private schools are rich. I went to a private school and don't stick up for them. I don't know what private schools are like now, as opposed to twenty five or thirty years ago. But I know that most were not the stereotype portrayed by Labour politicians (many of whom went to private schools and Oxford or Cambridge), that plenty of 'ordinary' working people aspired to put their children into private school and into the early 2000s could still afford to do so; that no one in Labour has thought about all the people that will lose their jobs if they price the schools out except for super rich; and why is it for Labour and some Liberals that you can spend your money on whatever sh*t you want but not education. ...