The Student Room Group

Very rich people call for higher taxes - on themselves

Some awfully rich people are demanding that governments impose higher taxes on them.
https://www.theguardian.com/news/2020/jul/13/super-rich-call-for-higher-taxes-on-wealthy-to-pay-for-covid-19-recovery

A letter signed by 83 super-rich people has been circulated demanding they be taxed properly to provide funds to tackle the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic crisis. The letter was organised by, amongst others, Tax Justice UK and Oxfam.

Globally, taxes on the very wealthy are the lowest since the 1930s and huge amounts of global wealth are hidden in tax havens. Many of these tax havens are British overseas territories.

We will all be facing deep economic recession and higher tax rates and we should return to the position in the 50s - 70s when the rich were taxed properly and society worked far better than it currently does.

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Publicity stunt, nothing more, which the left wing rag would have absolutely jumped on, which they did. I’m more interested to see the list of 83.
Reply 2
Call me a cynic but given most of them probably don't pay any of the tax they owe anyway i find this little gag little more than an excuse for their accountants to bill more.
multi-millionaires like Messrs Starmer and Corbin can afford to shell out a few ackers for the rest of us :h:
I read a while back that the top 1% of earners pay 25% of income tax, the top 20% of earners pay 80% of income tax and the bottom 50% of earners pay 10% on income tax.
Original post by Just my opinion
I read a while back that the top 1% of earners pay 25% of income tax, the top 20% of earners pay 80% of income tax and the bottom 50% of earners pay 10% on income tax.

Not sure that those figures are correct (the right wing media often quote from very out of date sources on this topic) but also it's not just about earnings. People doing a 'normal' professional job earning £100K are counted as top bracket for tax purposes, but they aren't the real rich. The real rich are people living off investments with offshored tax avoiding trusts and the like, with extensive assets and portfolios. Sometimes there's an overlap there, but the real issue is that wealth remains untaxed and the taxes on it have lowered, not gone up.
It’s such a publicity stunt. You can choose to pay more tax than you have to if you’d like, if they really only cared about paying more and not looking like a saint they’d just voluntarily pay more.
Original post by Underscore__
It’s such a publicity stunt. You can choose to pay more tax than you have to if you’d like, if they really only cared about paying more and not looking like a saint they’d just voluntarily pay more.

Actually, I might be wrong, but I don't think you can 'voluntarily' pay more tax in the UK - if you send the money, the HMRC will just send it back.
I think they're full of it. The super rich do everything to avoid paying higher taxes through various loopholes. Aren't taxes quite high for rich anyway? makes sense they avoid paying them.


Taxing them more just means even more will find way not to pay taxes.


I remember G20 saying tech giants pay hardly any tax using loopholes and these are full of leftist progressive people LOL
(edited 3 years ago)
From the article it seems that most of the celebs mentioned are American (where you can pay more tax voluntarily) but according to the below article, in the UK, it seems like you can make a voluntary donation to the national debt. I guess it’s not quite the same as paying more tax but to me it seems to be almost the same thing.

Even if you couldn’t, why not just donate the money to charity? I would trust them to put the money to better use than I would trust the government

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/4b3e6db0-e57a-11e7-8b99-0191e45377ec
If they want to "pay more tax" they can write out a cheque for HMT, would be a far better publicity for them because they'd actually be putting their money where there mouths are.
If this is an honest response then I welcome it. However, we've seen so many celebrities in schemes to avoid tax that one can't help being a little cynical.

I hope to be proved wrong and this is a genuine offer.
Original post by Underscore__
Even if you couldn’t, why not just donate the money to charity? I would trust them to put the money to better use than I would trust the government

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/4b3e6db0-e57a-11e7-8b99-0191e45377ec

We don't know that they don't?

But leaving everything up to individuals is no answer and no realistic way to run a complex society for the general good. Does anyone in their right minds honestly think we would have hospitals, motorways, unemployment benefits or social care without government? Only libertarian extremists would genuinely want the sort of anarchy that would ensue if taxes were a matter of choice, but unfortunately, for the very rich, they have become exactly that.
Reply 13
Original post by Underscore__
It’s such a publicity stunt. You can choose to pay more tax than you have to if you’d like, if they really only cared about paying more and not looking like a saint they’d just voluntarily pay more.


You can't voluntarily pay more tax.

And in any event, it will raise far more money if all persons of that wealth paid more tax than just the 83.
Original post by Fullofsurprises
We don't know that they don't?

But leaving everything up to individuals is no answer and no realistic way to run a complex society for the general good. Does anyone in their right minds honestly think we would have hospitals, motorways, unemployment benefits or social care without government? Only libertarian extremists would genuinely want the sort of anarchy that would ensue if taxes were a matter of choice, but unfortunately, for the very rich, they have become exactly that.


I agree that there are plenty of things which should be left to the government, as much as I hate people being involuntarily deprived of their money I can see that it’s a necessary evil.
Reply 15
Original post by Underscore__

Even if you couldn’t, why not just donate the money to charity? I would trust them to put the money to better use than I would trust the government

What evidence are you basing that opinion on?
Original post by DSilva
What evidence are you basing that opinion on?


If you donate money to a charity you have a degree of choice over what your money is being spent on. You can choose to help overworked donkeys or people with cancer. If you give the government money it goes into a pool that you don’t have much say in

Original post by DSilva
You can't voluntarily pay more tax.

And in any event, it will raise far more money if all persons of that wealth paid more tax than just the 83.


If you look at my previous post you’ll see that’s not really right, especially considering most of these people are Americans.
Original post by the bear
multi-millionaires like Messrs Starmer and Corbin can afford to shell out a few ackers for the rest of us :h:
Then surely Mr Johnson and Sunak should too? Since their wealth is also of some considerable millions last I checked. :wink:
Original post by 04MR17
Then surely Mr Johnson and Sunak should too? Since their wealth is also of some considerable millions last I checked. :wink:

If he can afford a £180 smart mug out of his salary I’m sure Rishi’s good for an extra fiver.
Reply 19
Original post by Underscore__
If you donate money to a charity you have a degree of choice over what your money is being spent on. You can choose to help overworked donkeys or people with cancer. If you give the government money it goes into a pool that you don’t have much say in



If someone wants greater funding for the police, NHS, social care, armed forces, local governments, education system, public transport, social housing etc then it makes much more sense to call for higher taxes as those are all predominantly government funded. Why would donating to a charity be better for any of that?

Donating to a charity would only really be better if it was for a more niche cause.


If you look at my previous post you’ll see that’s not really right, especially considering most of these people are Americans.

Donating to the national debt is not the same as paying extra taxes. You may reasonably take the view that the most important issue is not the size of the debt in absolute terms, but rather its size as a percentage of GDP.

In any event, it seems to a be a silly argument. Because if everyone who had that much wealth paid extra taxes, it would raise far more than if just 83 people, spread across different countries, did.

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