Jonathan Liew’s article (Won’t somebody please think of Britain’s poor £2m homeowners? Oh, wait – everyone already is, 2 November) entirely misses the point that underlies the spate of criticism against the “mansion tax”. While wealth disparity is no doubt an issue that needs to be addressed, this tax is a spiteful assault on hard-working taxpayers who already pay an enormous proportion of their salary to the Treasury to support a woefully mismanaged public sector and welfare state. Those who support the tax seem to be driven by a simple ideology that we need to “bash the rich” to create equality.
In the real world, this tax penalises hard-working families who have made difficult choices and made huge sacrifices to get to where they are. I come from a working-class background, I worked hard at school and achieved good grades, I worked part-time jobs, paid my own way through university and chose a profession that pays well, relocating to London and making sacrifices to earn good money – spending 18 hours a day in the office – and I chose to buy property and invest in it. I did not enjoy annual holidays or a defined-benefit pension that others enjoy.
