Whack the wealthy?

As reference 1 points out, at a time when the government is short of cash, whacking the wealthy - with the top 1% having as much wealth as the bottom 50% - looks like an attractive option to us lefties, many of whom do not have all that much in the way of wealth to whack.

But I have been impressed, reading reference 1, how tricky this would be in practise, that the amount of money raised is unlikely to be worth the political storm involved. That no-one much else has gone down this road in a big way. That whacking the very people good at making wealth is a little perverse.

My own take is that it is a pity governments have not succeeded in persuading the population at large that their private spending has got to take a hit so that public spending can go up. Less foreign holidays and more hospitals. And, sadly, more bombs. Success would mean that one could simply raise income tax or VAT.

Instead, governments are reduced to fiddling about at the edges, with the long tail visible in the chart above and in the Excel workbooks to be found at reference 2, a chunk from one of which is snapped above. Note the column headings, which go all the way to AU, a total of near fifty columns. Which must amount to a prodigious volume of tax codes - and a prodigious volume of work for tax lawyers and tax accountants. Work which might otherwise go towards building hospitals...

All of which leaves me thinking that while whacking the wealthy is attractive - and excess wealth is unattractive in itself, it is not a good thing for lots of rich people to be flaunting their money about - it is unlikely to raise a significant amount of money for public spending any time soon.

PS: the letter above has just arrived in my email, presumably something to do with contactless payments not being an option in the M&S store at Epsom yesterday morning and a good number of the self-checkout machines being out of action. I had thought that the ladies managing them looked a bit flustered. 

We are not told whether it was error, blunder or crime; maybe that will come. But I do wish that letters of this sort were headed 'dear customer' or something like that. I find all this fake chumminess rather offensive.

References

Reference 1: The problem with wealth taxes: Taxing the rich is a tantalising prospect for the cash-strapped UK government — but imposing a levy that is both fair and effective is fraught with difficulty - Philip Coggan, Financial Times - 2025.

Reference 2: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/hmrc-tax-and-nics-receipts-for-the-uk. HMRC tax receipts and National Insurance contributions for the UK: Summary of HM Revenue and Customs' tax receipts, National Insurance contributions (NICs), and expenditure for the UK - HM Revenue & Customs - 2013-2025. Lots of data.

Reference 3: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-8513/. Tax statistics: an overview: This briefing provides an overview of tax statistics, including recent trends, forecasts, and distribution of taxpayer - House of Commons Library - 2025. Accessible overview.