Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds appears to have killed off the left’s hopes for a wealth tax, branding the idea “daft”. Rumours have been swirling in Westminster for weeks about whether Rachel Reeves will hike taxes on Britain’s wealthiest, despite them fleeing the country in record numbers.
The Chancellor needs to finds millions to fill a new fiscal black hole of her own creation, thanks to a number of costly u-turns and sluggish economic growth. Left-wing MPs had been demanding a wealth tax to plug the gap, including Corbynite Richard Burgon who delivered a petition to No. 10 this week backed by 80,000 Britons, calling for a 2% tax on assets valued at over £10 million. He claimed this would raise £24 billion per year, despite counterclaims from tax experts.
Today Mr Reynolds told his left-wing colleagues to “get serious”, as he poured cold water on the clarion call.
Speaking to GB News, Mr Reynolds ridiculed the policy proposal, pointing out that Ms Reeves has already increased taxes on wealth, including private jets, private schools, inheritance tax and capital gains tax.
He explained: “But the idea there’s a magic wealth tax, some sort of levy… [One] like that doesn’t exist anywhere in the world.
“Switzerland has a levy, but they don’t have capital gains or inheritance tax.
“There’s no kind of magic [tax]. We’re not going to do anything daft like that.
“And I say to people: ‘Be serious about this.’ The idea you can just levy everyone… What if your wealth was not in your bank account, [what if it was] in fine wine or art?
“How would we tax that? This is why this doesn’t exist.
“There’s a lot of populism out about this, and I’m frustrated to see it. I see colleagues sometimes say this in Parliament and I say: ‘Come on, get serious, get serious.'”
This week, Tax Policy Associates, led by Labour-aligned expert Dan Neidle, published a new report claiming that a wealth tax could knock between 2 and 5% off Britain’s GDP, and wouldn’t see any new revenue into the exchequer before 2029.
Since 1990, the number of countries levying wealth taxes has plunged from 12 to 3, namely Spain, Norway, and Switzerland.
However these three countries don’t have inheritance tax, unlike Britain.