It won't be a popular thought, but I would suggest that perhaps the issue has been an unwise reduction in overall taxation levels over the last decades. I know many feel any tax is a bad thing, but how else can a society function? Go far enough back, to agrarian times, and you simply had to hand over part of your crop to the local landowner / lord / warlord, and just hope you had enough left to survive on. At least today we collectively set the levels and uses of our taxes, however flawed that process might seem at times.

Whether a society should expend energy on trying to be "fair" is arguably a philosophical question, but if we answer yes at all then the question of wealth matters in deciding what is "fair taxation". In the UK "The richest half of elderly households hold 90% of the wealth, with the richest 10% holding a 40%."

https://www.walesonline....it-more-wealth-12403909

With our current taxation model wealth disparity is increasing with each generation as that wealth is handed on, not because of the hard work or moral rectitude of those benefiting but because of their good luck in having one set of parents rather than another. Inheritance tax should be re-thought and its overall take from the very wealthy increased. People could still give their wealth away before death if they see fit.

On income tax, I read that the USA in through the 20th century had marginal rates in the 70-94% area, and they only fell below 50% in the 80s.

https://bradfordtaxinsti...l-Income-Tax-Rates.aspx

Did their super wealthy flee abroad or fail to create businesses and jobs? How are things looking there today?

On double taxation, we all pay double taxes. You pay tax on your earnings then pay tax on the goods and services you buy with those earnings. Is that a big deal?

On ISAs, they should never have been increased to £20,000 p.a. I say that as someone who has made full use of the limit, but it seems excessive and is effectively a benefit handed out to a very few who are already doing fine.

The Chancellor should be putting all his efforts into increasing growth and productivity. Fiddling with property taxes when you have asked the BoE to print you half a trillion pounds is an unwelcome sideshow. Now that we are out of the EU, he should cut corporation tax to less than Ireland, business and jobs would flood in. No society in history has made the poor richer by making the rich poorer.

I just cant see any government getting elected that had this on their manifesto in a way that affected any more than a few percent of the population. It would be the end of a Tory government and ensure a Labour government was never elected.

I would regard it as a confiscation of assets.

Even myself with my modest total assets would work hard to protect and hide wealth from any such tax, either by moving assets abroad or converting into physical like gold. I'd rather hide money in a mattress than pay such a tax.

Under declaration would be rife and that in itself would lead to unrest as whatever "loop holes" were left were exploited to the full.

It would be akin to a middle class Poll Tax moment.


Perhaps bitcoin may have a use after all.....?

Under the circumstances, I think people would accept a rise in income tax, as you say it's the obvious solution, it's also the fairest.

Sunak needs to come clean imo and say xxx is the amount of money we need to raise, giving his reasons.

I'd suggest raising the income tax at each tier by the same proportion.

In opinion polls most people are in favour of tax increases as long as they only affect people richer than themselves. The problem then is that the further up the income scale you go the fewer people are in that sector and most of us who have been high earners only achieve high earnings for part of our careers anyway. At the end of the day the tax burden has to fall on the ordinary folk.