Should the next Budget tax wealth more rather than cut pensions and welfare?
The UK has no annual wealth tax. Wealth is taxed in parts, including capital gains tax at 18% and 24% and inheritance tax, and a surcharge on homes in England worth over £2m, announced in 2025, is due from April 2028. Chancellor John Healey delivers his first Budget on 28 October 2026 under Prime Minister Andy Burnham, who has said he will not go straight to a wealth tax. Burnham has also said some benefits will become conditional on work, and the triple lock on the state pension is committed until 2030. Campaigners back a 2% tax on assets above £10m, while the IFS has warned a wealth tax is hard to implement.
5 Opinions
Inheritance tax is the most obviously underutilized tax with so few paying, scrap trusts and properly charge people
There are no taxes on asset value, and there shouldn't be, because they are cumulative. Just 2% a year means 25 years from now, UKGov is the majority shareholder in every private company. Slow communism is still communism. Also 2% is a significant haircut on ROI for investments, and the capital flight would be extreme.
Yes, obviously tax wealth before slashing the safety net. But campaigners demanding a magical 2% wealth tax are living in fantasy land. The IFS has explicitly warned it's an administrative nightmare. Instead of inventing a shiny new uncollectable tax Healey should do the boring, sensible thing and close the loopholes in Capital Gains and Inheritance Tax rather than further penalise those with wealth that are already paying their fair share
A conservative estimate reported by the Sunday Times is that Chris Rokos alone paid around £330M in tax per year. And for anyone saying "Good riddance!", that's roughly the equivalent of 40,000 normal taxpayers.
Some of Britain's highest taxpayers are either leaving or considering it. This would only push more out the door and end up costing us money. And it will end up hurting middle class people who have saved all their lives, paid a lot of tax and will suddenly have the rug pulled out from under their feet by a wealth tax.