SIPP Wealth Tax?

torrence

It was a YouGov poll. The majority was in favour of wealth tax on assets over that amount excluding main home (my OP suggested own home equity was counted which is wrong). So all assets including pension savings over £750,000.

The poll may or may not have been prompted by polical party policy but whatever it will be picked up and its interesting the level at which it was considered to be wealthly.

dunstonh

If you save into a SIPP whatever is in the SIPP an easy target for valuing based on assets.

I assume you mean all pensions and not just a SIPP. 

There is already a wealth tax on pensions.  It is called the lifetime allowance.

Thrugelmir

torrence said:

It was a YouGov poll. The majority was in favour of wealth tax on assets over that amount excluding main home (my OP suggested own home equity was counted which is wrong). So all assets including pension savings over £750,000.

The poll may or may not have been prompted by polical party policy but whatever it will be picked up and its interesting the level at which it was considered to be wealthly.

Why exclude the main home? Other than it panders to London socialists of course. 

kinger101

torrence said:

It was a YouGov poll. The majority was in favour of wealth tax on assets over that amount excluding main home (my OP suggested own home equity was counted which is wrong). So all assets including pension savings over £750,000.

The poll may or may not have been prompted by polical party policy but whatever it will be picked up and its interesting the level at which it was considered to be wealthly.

Such polls are pretty meaningless in a parliamentary democracy.  Chancellors know this raises practically no tax and shadow chancellors who suggest such policies remain in opposition.  Wealth is easier to shelter than income, even if it means leaving the country.  People have a tendency to think someone else should pay for everything.  Particularly all the fake socialists from the Corbyn era who were so concerned about poverty and the NHS that their solution was to vote for a party who wouldn't raise their taxes.  The illusion of caring costs nothing.

Rant over.  Perhaps I shouldn't have had that third glass of wine.

Apodemus

Seems to me that there is a natural pecking order that the public might see as fair game for tax rises.  So, for example, high incomes are more likely to be taxed than pension savings.  Of course the two are not mutually exclusive and a Government could possibly decide that taxes (including the portion that we call NI) be applied more equally between those in employment and those in receipt of pensions.  Plenty of tweaks in there that Governments of any hue could probably sell to the public and weather any outcry from those affected more easily than any raid on pension pots.

For example, if they were to announce that employee NI contributions were to reduce to 10% but a new hypothecated NHS tax of 2% was to be created, applicable to both employment and pension incomes (subject to the usual thresholds) would there be rioting in the streets?

[Deleted User]

Sounds like a clone of the Spanish wealth tax, 700k euros per person with a relief for main residency (but capped at 300k) on all worldwide assets. A couple jointly opening a house have then 2m in allowances. 

EthicsGradient

The question explicitly excluded pension savings:

Thinking about after the Coronavirus pandemic, to what extent, if at all, would you support or oppose the government introducing the following permanent measures? A tax on wealth where individuals are taxed a percentage of their net worth over £750,000, excluding any personal pension savings and their main home.

https://docs.cdn.yougov.com/p54plx0gh9/NEON_PostCovidPolicy_200508_w4.pdf

Ceme3000

Where the question is along the lines of "Should the wealthy pay more tax to compensate for the Coronovirus expenditure, than us poorer people"  then I suspect more would indeed agree.

Thrugelmir

The recent programmes on Monaco suggest that those worth taxing have long since left the country. 

bowlhead99

Ceme3000 said:

Where the question is along the lines of "Should the wealthy pay more tax to compensate for the Coronovirus expenditure, than us poorer people"  then I suspect more would indeed agree.

I expect that's true.

Of course, if the question being asked of the populace was simplified to say 'should the people with the most wealth or income pay the most tax', and the populace said 'yes', the government response to the consultation could be 'great, they already do, so there's no need for a new tax'.

Most UK tax is paid by a minority of richer people and if you asked people to vote on whether 'those few rich people should pay more tax' so that 'loads of us poorer people could pay less tax', it is the sort of thing that would have the popular vote easily fall in favour of the majority of people who are not wealthy, rich or super-rich. Of course, it's not necessarily 'fair' on the wealthiest 5% to have a 'put your hands up if you agree, one vote each, majority wins' poll on whether we collectively think that those particular 5% of the people in the room should pay for something so that the other 95% don't have to.