Go on then, i'll bite

If you actually listened to his content, you'd know that Gary is broadly advocating something like the Zucman tax.

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Very high level summary. A 2% annual "tax of last resort" on the wealth of dollar billionaires (with a variant also raised that would cover those with wealth in excess of 100m). Lot's of detail and debate around how it works, whether exit taxes could avoid flight, blah blah. But that's the idea.

The purpose of the tax is basically to address a cohort of individuals with the ability to pay close to zero income/capital gains tax at all, ever. The strategies adopted are entirely legal - I dont need to tell you what they are - but the end result is extraordinarily wealthy people accumulating ever more extraordinary levels of wealth and yet facing incredibly low marginal rates of tax - reporting no income and almost never selling assets, hence never triggering any tax liability.

Zucman reckons the billionaire version would affect 3,000 people globally, although the number of billionaires is growing rapidly. If the billionaires could demonstrate payment of more than 2% already, they wouldnt pay anything extra. He reckons it would raise 200-250 bn, with the 100mn wealth threshold version raising another 100 to 140 bn.

I dont get why anyone would s**t the bed about something like that as a proposal? It's not the politics of envy, its not punitive....it's just "come on man, you've had it amazingly good for a long time, but now you need to cough up too, at a fraction of the rate faced by almost everyone else".

For example.....I grew up in a council house on the Tuckswood estate and have inherited f**k all other than a a few kind words and best wishes. The marginal rate of tax I pay on income is 47%. Despite this rate, which you might call punitive, somehow I still manage to get up and drag myself into the office to earn my wage and bonus. If people far more wealthy than me - wealthy beyond most people's wildest dreams - are asked to stump up an annual 2% on wealth is that such a big deal? Not only does that seem "fair" to me (at least more fair), if anything it feels like not enough. Is something like that likely to destroy the incentive for enterprise and innovation? I just dont see it. Average long run world stock market returns are 8-10%, so most billionaires will continue to pile up even more wealth even if they did have to pay this.

I know I'm going to regret it, but I am genuinely interested in exactly what it is that you Telegraph readers actually hate about a proposal along these lines? I'm willing to bet that it wont change the tax affairs of you or a single one of your clients.

(Full disclosure - if Burnham does proceed with some sort of wealth tax and proposes something f**king stupid, I reserve the right to say that I think it's wrong and a pile of s**t. Contrary to what you might believe, I am not Che Guevara.)

Posted By: Under soil heating, Jun 24, 13:23:06