Change the tax brackets. There are too few brackets, too great a jump for those not earning strongly, and not enough graduation in the brackets to tax those that earn absurd amounts a fair cut.
Personal Allowance
Up to £12,570
0%
Basic rate
£12,571 to £50,270
20%
Higher rate
£50,271 to £125,140
40%
Additional rate
over £125,140
45%
Top marginal rate from 1940 to 1960 was between 80% to 90%, and only dropped below 50% in the 1980s. This has been perpetually dropping ever since.
The NHS was founded in 1948 in thanks to that top marginal tax.
There is so much talk about how great Britain was in the past yet no acknowledgement about how that greatness was funded. Conservatives in the UK after Regan shifted their tone on high marginal tax rates after presiding over and perpetuating them for something like 12 ministries. And without restoring them after the 2008 financial crisis, public finances have been in a death spiral ever since.
Earnings over £1,000,000 should be taxed at 90%. That’s how this country made itself great after the decimation in WW2, that’s how we can do it again.
Note that your chart is from the IRS for the USA, not the UK.
But Labour also got to power with a promise not to touch most taxes because they were terrified that promising to do anything big would give the Tories what they needed to dupe the electorate once more. So they adopted a meek strategy to get into power. Then people got mad that they weren’t radical once in power.
And while I support higher top rates of tax, I think you need to be very careful in what you promise from them: there ways to avoid paying taxes that are very hard to fix, especially in a world where such rates are unusual, and the tax base for these high marginal rates becomes very small very quickly: HMRC statistics say there are 26,000 taxpayers earning over £1M. If we guess they earn on average £2M each, your 90% marginal tax nets about £23bn a year. That’s a big chunk of change, and would absolutely make a difference (assuming you can collect it all) but… it’s also less than 2% of the UK budget. It’s not going to “fix poverty” in the two years which Labour is being criticised for not having achieved it in.
I would love for higher income and capital gains tax brackets to be electorally viable.
The problem is that without the explicit threat of the USSR, and the implicit threat to the rich that their options are high taxes or death, you’re not going to get that policy enacted anytime soon.
Fuck, just look at the sheer level of bad faith argument made against changes to equalise personal inheritance tax for agricultural business assets (aka farm land) to close a loophole abused by Bezos et al.
As I said, there is not easy path or singular option.
Change the tax brackets. There are too few brackets, too great a jump for those not earning strongly, and not enough graduation in the brackets to tax those that earn absurd amounts a fair cut.
Top marginal rate from 1940 to 1960 was between 80% to 90%, and only dropped below 50% in the 1980s. This has been perpetually dropping ever since.
The NHS was founded in 1948 in thanks to that top marginal tax.
There is so much talk about how great Britain was in the past yet no acknowledgement about how that greatness was funded. Conservatives in the UK after Regan shifted their tone on high marginal tax rates after presiding over and perpetuating them for something like 12 ministries. And without restoring them after the 2008 financial crisis, public finances have been in a death spiral ever since.
Earnings over £1,000,000 should be taxed at 90%. That’s how this country made itself great after the decimation in WW2, that’s how we can do it again.
Probably true.
Note that your chart is from the IRS for the USA, not the UK.
But Labour also got to power with a promise not to touch most taxes because they were terrified that promising to do anything big would give the Tories what they needed to dupe the electorate once more. So they adopted a meek strategy to get into power. Then people got mad that they weren’t radical once in power.
And while I support higher top rates of tax, I think you need to be very careful in what you promise from them: there ways to avoid paying taxes that are very hard to fix, especially in a world where such rates are unusual, and the tax base for these high marginal rates becomes very small very quickly: HMRC statistics say there are 26,000 taxpayers earning over £1M. If we guess they earn on average £2M each, your 90% marginal tax nets about £23bn a year. That’s a big chunk of change, and would absolutely make a difference (assuming you can collect it all) but… it’s also less than 2% of the UK budget. It’s not going to “fix poverty” in the two years which Labour is being criticised for not having achieved it in.
I would love for higher income and capital gains tax brackets to be electorally viable.
The problem is that without the explicit threat of the USSR, and the implicit threat to the rich that their options are high taxes or death, you’re not going to get that policy enacted anytime soon.
Fuck, just look at the sheer level of bad faith argument made against changes to equalise personal inheritance tax for agricultural business assets (aka farm land) to close a loophole abused by Bezos et al.
As I said, there is not easy path or singular option.