Aditya Chakrabortty claims that wealth tax proposals are a “pantomime of pseudo-radicalism” (What does the left want? A wealth tax. What will that accomplish? Very little, 20 November). He notes that the Wealth Tax Commission in 2020 estimated that an annual wealth tax of 1.12% on assets over £10m could bring in £10bn a year, describing it as “handy, but in Whitehall terms hardly life-changing”. This amount is far from trivial. Earlier this year, our government was trying to push through cuts to disability benefits that would have plunged hundreds of thousands into poverty to save half that. Although a backlash stopped them, Rachel Reeves has said that she can’t “leave welfare untouched” and is still considering how to claw billions from the most vulnerable. These amounts are completely life-changing to the people at the sharp end.
Although the annual wealth tax is leading the headlines, it’s not proposed in isolation. Groups like Tax Justice UK estimate that new taxes on wealth and pollution could raise up to £60bn a year. These funds should be used to redistribute wealth from the richest to the rest of us: investing in co-ops, taking assets back into public ownership and building council homes.
