Comment by Earw0rm
1 day ago
The super rich aren't the problem. 200 families is too few to have any meaningful effect on the housing market.
By all means tax them til their eyes bleed, but it'll mostly just make people feel better rather than being a useful contribution to public finances.
They own a lot of UK property and land, both directly and through trusts. And given the statistic that the top 50 families control half of the UK’s total wealth, I’m not sure how you can say it wouldn’t have an impact on either tax revenues or property prices. A land tax of 0.1% would have a staggering impact on tax revenues.
It might affect agricultural land prices. Indeed that's at the heart of the farming IHT controversy (farming land is effectively overpriced relative to its business or utility value, because of its previously far too generous IHT treatment). It won't affect the price of houses, because it's not 200 rich families hogging the supply.
50 families controlling half the country's wealth is a bit of a stretch. The top 50 individuals have an average net worth of maybe $4-5Bn, giving a total wealth of $250Bn. Half the country's _land_ seems more likely?
Meanwhile there are literally millions of £1M+ houses owned by relatively ordinary people, millions of Boomers and some older GenX with at least £0.5m in their pension funds, and so on.
Land tax of 0.1% would be a good thing, but it'd be equivalent to putting about a third on council tax (£1k/year on a £1m home, currently council tax is about £3k in that bracket I think?). A useful step certainly but not revolutionary.