This video, made by me and my son, Thomas, is an introduction to the Taxing Wealth Report 2024:

The transcript is as follows:

I wrote the Taxing Wealth Report for 3 causes.

The primary was to point out that the declare being made by UK politicians that there isn’t a cash left is flawed.

I’ve proved that. The report means that as much as £92bn of additional tax might be raised every year within the UK, and on high of that, as much as £100bn of extra funding for funding functions might be discovered by altering the foundations on tax incentivised financial savings, like ISAs and pensions. There’s cash left.

Second, I wished to point out that the rich folks of the UK and people who have the very best incomes, and naturally the 2 teams largely overlap, are undertaxed at current. I did that by their incomes between 2010 and 2020, i. e. after the worldwide monetary disaster of 2008 and earlier than Covid hit. In that interval, they loved fairly phenomenal will increase within the worth of their belongings, which have been very largely untaxed. The common tax price on that development was simply 4. 1%. whereas the typical tax price on earnings throughout that very same decade was 32.1%. The consequence that I’ve estimated is that £170 billion a yr is undertaxed on these with wealth within the UK. There’s, then, ample capability to cost these with wealth and excessive incomes within the UK to extra tax, and they’re going to nonetheless be higher off than these on decrease incomes.

Thirdly, I wished to point out that we may resolve the issues that this under-taxation of wealth offers rise to, not by creating some grand new schemes like a wealth tax or land worth taxation or the rest, which will probably be extremely sophisticated to place in place, to barter, and even to handle sooner or later, however just by altering the present guidelines inside our tax system, the place they mainly present huge subsidies to these with wealth.

Once more, I feel I’ve proven that. In thirty separate suggestions within the report, I define an entire vary of adjustments to our tax system:

– to earnings tax
– to nationwide insurance coverage
– to worth added tax
– to company tax
– to inheritance tax,
– and to capital positive factors tax,
– in addition to to the UK out system as an entire,
– plus one or two different adjustments which is able to, the truth is, scale back the taxes paid by the rich at current as a result of they’re unfair.

Now, put all that collectively, and I got here up with the Taxing Wealth Report. It is a huge doc. It is 126,000 phrases in all. However there are summaries which can be found. The report as an entire means that we are able to deal with the unfairness contained in the UK tax system by making some easy adjustments to it.

Let me show what these easy adjustments may be. For instance, if we charged capital positive factors – that is the revenue folks make on promoting belongings – to tax on the similar price as earnings tax within the UK we may elevate one other £12bn kilos of tax a yr

If we charged a VAT on the availability of monetary companies to folks on this nation – and naturally, monetary companies of the kind that I am describing are virtually totally consumed by these with wealth – then we may elevate £8.7 billion of additional tax a yr.

If we utilized the nationwide insurance coverage that’s made on folks’s earnings proper throughout the board on all incomes on the similar price then we may elevate perhaps £10bn kilos of additional tax a yr, having allowed for among the latest cuts that Jeremy Hunt has put in place.

If we have been to scale back the subsidies to financial savings within the UK, specifically the subsidy that’s given to the pension contributions made by those that are increased price taxpayers within the UK every year, in order that they solely received tax aid on the similar price as folks on fundamental price earnings tax, then we may save £14.5 billion kilos a yr of cash that’s spent by the federal government to make the rich wealthier, which is mindless in any respect.

And we may make one closing change in these huge quantity adjustments that I am noting right here. If we charged the equal of nationwide insurance coverage on funding earnings – that is from dividends, rents and curiosity plus funds from trusts and capital positive factors – if we charged the equal of nationwide insurance coverage on all of these sources of earnings at 15 per cent – which remains to be decrease than the mixed price of nationwide insurance coverage paid on earnings once you put collectively the workers and the employers’ price of nationwide insurance coverage – then we may elevate £18 billion kilos a yr.

I hope you are starting to get a really feel for what I am saying on this report. By merely eradicating the anomalies throughout the tax system by smoothing off the tough edges which make it very unfair at current, we may remodel the tax system and make it truthful.

And we may make this nation a fairer place by offering individuals who work for the general public companies with the pay rises that they deserve.

We may correctly fund schooling.

And we may correctly fund social care and the NHS.

We may even carry the water firms again into public possession and fund the required transitions in funding which might be obligatory in order that we have now clear water and seashores sooner or later.

And we may, if we made the adjustments that I suggest to pensions and ISAs – the place I recommend that the cash that’s invested with the advantage of tax aid must be used for public profit itself – in different phrases, that tax aid ought to end in some achieve to society and never only a achieve to those that are saving – then we may elevate as much as a £100 billion to fund the local weather change transition.

Now, the truth is, the overall numbers that I’m speaking about – £92bn of additional tax and £100bn for funding – are larger than any authorities may probably wish to spend at current, or may realistically spend, as a result of there aren’t the sources for that amount of cash to be spent upon within the UK financial system with out creating inflation.

So what does the Taxing Wealth Report actually do? It supplies politicians who need to reply that query that journalists all the time ask of them – which is “How are you going to pay for it?” at any time when any person’s received a good suggestion – with an entire vary of choices that they’ll select from to recommend how they’ll certainly pay for the adjustments that we have to make our society fairer.

We needn’t do all of the adjustments on this report back to nonetheless have an enormous affect upon our effectively being. Some will do.

That is why I feel this report is essential. That is why I hope you’ll learn it. And that is why I hope you’ll observe this sequence of movies, that are going to elucidate a few of these adjustments in additional element with the intention to see simply how truthful they’re, and the way it’s true that the rich in our society ought to pay extra to make it possible for all of us, the rich included, have a future that we are able to depend on.