He’s talking about taxing the asset or the income derived from the asset. Not the location of the owner. This’d stop overseas and offshore avoiding tax.
Yea lets pay taxes on unrealized gains and then let the market drop 40%. 😂 I'm SURE the government will give me my tax money back when I "give them too much" of unrealized gains lol. Do you hear what you're saying? That's like paying money for a product you might buy in the future.
@@ciscocomputertech happens all the time to ordinary folk when they pay emergency tax.. if rich folk get overtaxed they can do the same as everyone lese and apply for a rebate . If there is real unceeratinty about what the profit will be they can ask for tax to be deferred. Stop making excuses to keep a grossly unfair tax system that siphons off the country's wealth and leaves our Government unable to look after ordinary folk. The very people whose earnings bolster massive profits that never gets taxed.
I'm from Alberta and I have been advocating for a royalty on oil. As a georgist I'm in favor of taxing resources. People say the companies will leave. And go where? The oil is here.
@@davidradtke160 those royalties don’t put a dent in profits though, they are the bare minimum for Alaskan to feel they have enough skin in the game to allow their environment to be destroyed
they will go somewhere else, I think you overestimate how much profit there is extracting oil from tar sands in Alberta. It's far more labor expensive and depending on the price of crude, can even be produced at a loss.
never ever gonna happen. most politicians got whre they are because they are sponsored byt the very ultra ritch. 99% politicians are puppets. the remaining 1% of honest rare ones usually end up very fast for various reasons.
Labour creates 100% of the value, while capital serves as a parasitic class that we have no real need for and to be honest with you -it shouldn’t really exist
Gary simplified voting for the foreseeable future. Top priorities are tax on the super rich and proportional representation. Also less privatisation and sell-offs of services by gov and councils and more community wealth building.
The cultural problem there is that you've made incentive-following the highest moral good. If something else (literally anything else!) were considered morally valuable, then you would have people conflicted between their morals and their incentives, leading to more varied results. This would result in people existing who care less about money than they do about running a country well. Then your only problem is how to select those people into power.
@bramvanduijn8086 i dont think things were originally set up to make those in power stay there indefinitely. It was meant to be a temporary stay, and then they go back to being among other civilians. Like the president.
As an extra ingredient: Many small farms are being bought by corporate entities solely for the carbon credits. The farms cease to have any relevance to the communities they are surrounded by.
Where small farming is destroyed, the people go extinct. Look at communities with most stable birth rates. It's where kids are useful as farm hands like the Amish. What's killing the modernized countries is infrastructure like schools and hospitals all centralized in the city, with cutoff public transport to the regions and the rich buying all the lands and having all automated streamlined labor, making communities, interactions obsolete, nature polluted and food monopolized.
Land Value Tax was proposed in England but shut down because of rich corrupt lobbyists. We need it back. Edit: Lot of people in the comments don't understand land value tax. Unlike property tax it doesn't increase when you use the land properly like building things on it. The people it hurts the most are greedy rich asset owners that buy land and sit on it. Also it will greatly reduce property values so regular home owners would pay less than they do on property tax while benefiting from a great environment. Check out Georgism if you want to know more
@@shivinpokemon indeed. But land values aren’t the main issue. It’s all assets like a mate of mine owns 50 or so council homes yet his dad was the richest man in the UK at one time. He shouldn’t have the right to buy council houses and rent back to the original buyers kids. Also shares and other assets.
@@davidradtke160 There is, it's local gov and it generally works out to be 1-0.5% of a properties value a year. Businesses pay something similar based of sq/ft and it's a lot more. Makes small physical retail generally not worth it.
Among other things, I love the open bottle of dishwasher in the background. Fits in with his generally unpretentious tone and the message. I do believe taxing the rich is not quite as complex as the rich would have us believe.
Many assets, particularly land and property are owned by the Royal family and aristocracy which is why they are not highly taxed and exemptions are available to ensure they can evade inheritance taxes.
After Diana's death the Queen offered to pay tax on income from royal estates. The Royal Family are not the big problem. Tax avoidance and evasion are.
@@MrB1967 - ‘we’ would need to pay their maintenance costs whether we had a Royal Family or not. If Britain became a republic and the RF got kicked out, then those palaces will either need to be maintained or knocked down. Do you want to knock down historic palaces? Most European countries have kept their old palaces even though they are now republics.
I don’t even think it’s a new message from Gary. It’s just he has to keep banging the drum because the governments aren’t listening. Keep up the excellent work Gary! If I could form an independent government, 100000% you would be first choice for chancellor.
Teaching people this knowledge is more valuable than any shiny metal. Thanks Gary for showing us how simple this uncomplicated stuff actually is. Finance isn't physics, we make the laws. If the renting classes are shown a fair path out of this modern feudalism then they must demand a better way from their political elites. I think the Lords and Landlords like to make us think this stuff is complicated. It really isn't. If the owners, sitting in places like the British Virgin Islands or Dubai or the Isle of Man, decide to offload a few assets on the actual island of Britain maybe the locals would be much better off and could afford the basics like shelter. The status quo doesn't work. Your solution is easily doable and it's hiding under our noses in plain sight. I bet you that the world will just keep on turning. Ireland is the same. Average rent in Dublin is €2,128 per month. So you have to hand over €25k of your wealth each year after tax just to not be homeless. That's just nuts. Any alternative to that would be worth trying. What part of the planet do those who govern us live on? I'm guessing it's nice and sunny all year round wherever it is.
Nearly all assets in UK belongs to the Crown. Read how fee simple works in freehold property which was created since Norman times and most land and property especially in London is all leasehold. You cannot actually own anything in UK.
Asset taxation is such a smart way, it could also potentially turn living spaces back into commodities! Why should you own 15 homes as assets, those should be commodities!
Don’t be a dummy. There is nothing wrong with owning properties. Most people don’t earn enough to buy a house, so they can either rent from the Council or from a private landlord. Many councils have been crap landlords: they had properties on their books that they didn’t even know about. Squatters eventually ended up owning them.
@@trauty666 If you're making 30k a year from working, then you're not paying capital gains tax. Don't listen to the rich when they say a tax applies to you, they're lying to you about what a capital gains tax is.
@@28pbtkh23 You're using the wrong word. We're talking about assets, not properties. Housing and car are both properties, but housing is currently an asset while a car is a commodity. The problem with assets is that the become more expensive every year, and that messes up the next generation of house owners.
The argument i hear more often is that doing this will cause businesses and investment to leave the UK. Businesses will set up and create jobs in other countries which have nore favourable tax policies towards big corporations and wealthy individuals. This will (they say) have a negative effect on the economy. I don't know if anyone's really tested this or not, however there are countries with high taxes that don't seem to struggle (e.g. Scandinavian ones), so there must more more to it than that.
Yeah, it's the argument the rich put forward. But then, they would, wouldn't they? Historical data shows us it's a pile of carp. Some do, but they would anyway. Like Dyson and Jim Ratcliffe. It was understandable in Ratcliffe's case, he was down to his last £17.5 billion at the time.
There are already many places way better for taxation than the UK/EU in fact, but usually those places have other issues(safety, uncertain future, totalitarian regimes,...)
But Britain is a large market, and he seems to be talking specifically about assets that are for some good reason located jn Britain ( say rentals, shops, land, resources..) those businesses aren't wizards that hold secret magic. If a big company selling baked goods, electronics or mining coal or whatever thinks taxes make it not worth it - there will be someone else to fill the gap..
And if they did sell their assets and move abroad, the prices of these assets would drop, which would make life easier for the masses. Cheaper rents, properties, etc. This would put less wage rise pressure on companies, and so make it a better place to invest for manufacturing.
@@jagolago-bob And also likely a better place for (local) competition. More people could run their own businesses and make enough to live off them, which might as well lead to higher wages as the available work force might become smaller (due to more people doing their own thing) and demand a bigger cut if the business wants to grow. It's no utopia or anything, juat taking some off the pressure off.
@@ChrisMorris-Oldmanwithers yeah they just talk rubbish because they are protecting themselves. What about the duke of Westminster? Is he going to move Mayfair and Belgravia to Dubai! Of course not. Successive governments have just given him loads of loopholes so he pays next to nothing.
They already know this , all politicians already know this. They won’t do it because they are in that same club and they are being paid via “ gifts “ or “ campaign support “ to not do it.
I've tried this argument with several friends, and the counter has always been that people will then leave the country. Leaving their assets behind supposedly. I can see another potential counter, creating intermediaries to hold the assets instead of yourself. (Talking about a loophole that shouldn't exist anywhere). As always, everything is about implementation.
OK, so everyone leaves without their assets. They either: 1. Sell their assets for the same amount or more, in which case you tax the new owner for the same amount or more and nothing has changed. 2. Sell their assets for less, in which case the government gets in slightly less taxes and someone like you can now more easily afford to buy them, so you finally get to own that house or start that bakery you always wanted to start. If 1 keeps happening, then the government can pay off all their debt and lower taxes for everyone. If 2 keeps happening, the prices of all taxed assets drop and drop and drop, and eventually everyone can own an asset if they want to and the government is no worse off than they were before taxing assets.
I was re-watching the 2007 BBC version of Robin Hood, and it has never been more on the nose. Nottingham may be smaller, but the strategies of the Sheriff and Prince John... I mean... It's worth a look for seeing the run around more clearly. I'd love to hear what other people think about it.
yep, the bottom line is that they only get away with avoiding tax because the people making the rules up are in the same club. It is not because they will leave. If the tax rules are altered so they pay their fair share on incime from assets physically in Britain, its entirely up to them to do the sums and work out if it's better to pay the tax or unload the assets to avoid tax.. If they all do that they'll probably loose money anyway, they'll actually be causing a glut of overpriced assets and the assets will devalue. It would be good as that would mean the next owner can charge less rent etc.
They can leave but they cannot take the physical assets with them. They need to sell it and turn to cash and leave. Ultra rich are willing to be tax than move to another less safe country. If the bring their money to the new country. The new country will experience assets inflation. The rich don't keep a lot of cash coz cash lose to inflation. They need to buy real assets.
Sure but who will buy anything british or in britain if the government starts acting like the communist party in China? This is exactly why I've never bought companies or property there but have both in the US and UK
How much overseas money is invested in the UK each year as new money coming in? I can see a lot of that going elsewhere but there is already a lot of wealth invested here that could be caught in such a tax on assets
Totally agree, Tax on high asset wealth is the key to start to tackle inequality. If we keep taxes sensible on wages, workers keep more in their pockets and we can attract talent too in the higher wage brackets too. Those making massive sums purely on their assets are also an easy target for Taxation. They can’t actually take their assets with them!
Why do people think that the way to tackle inequality is to tax people who’ve earned it and give it to those that haven’t. Everyone should have a safety net, paid for by the State through taxes, but inequality? When does it stop being unequal? When everyone has exactly the same and then you’re in a truly communist state.
How 'high' is high? I might own as much as a thousand millionth of foreign bank, though I doubt it is as much as that. Nevertheless any income from it is because I own that amount. And it is already taxed. But the problem of finding very small amounts will inevitably come up from those who have much more. They might even buy a television station to push their point. With the power they still have.
The question is, do you want to attract talented people or people who haven't worked a day in their life? Which group will make your area better? I think a talented hardworking person adds more to a place than a passive wealthy layabout. So tax the talented hardworking people less and tax the passive wealthy layabouts more.
That doesn’t account for trust structures, tax loopholes, corruption, non-profits, tax havens, tax deferrals, so many laws that circumvent paying tax that the rich can utilise by having lawyers and accountants on retainer. So if the tax office wishes to go after them, there is so many resources needing to be allocated to get the tax dollars from the rich. Government learned it is cheaper and faster to go after people in a lower tax bracket. Capitalism, rules for thee and not for the rich. Also, those rich/large corporations get tax breaks and socialist structure of bailing out large corporations.
Suggest that we use the same tax accountants to chase up our tax money by offering them a big slice of the proceeds ie no win no fee Allowing Starbucks etc to book profits overseas when those profits are earned in the UK is a loophole which can be plugged with the right laws.Starbucks uses goodwill rules to say that its coffee beans are part of its intellectual property because they are roasted using a process held by its Swiss subsidiary.(nb unlikely that anyone roasts beans in Switzerland as one of the world's most expensive labour markets!) Answer: put a cap on how much value can be attributed to a foreign subsidiary.Starbucks recently 'volunteered' to pay a piddling sum of tax on its profits. Ditto Apple,Google etc.(note how many US companies are screwing us) .Individual tax is another story but Rachel Reeves will have to unveil her plans to close offshore trust loopholes including death duty on the richest estates.
And the demand elasticity of those assets/goods/services, determines the amount of your proposed tax which will be passed along to the end-user/customer.
The new owner gets taxed. If it's real estate and they just dump it, then at least local people get a better deal on housing and commercial real estate on the new lower prices. And the new owner pays the local taxes.
Isn't the no #1 way to avoid taxes using off-shore intellectual property? They put a patent, trademark or even a recipe in the Cayman Islands and then the onshore business pays it through the nose. The rules on this are enshrined in international treaties, so they're not easy to change.
Love the channel Gary, keep up the great work. Obviously would be immense if the government was able to take some of this and re-distribute. I'm curious if you think there'd be some increase in prices for people as these super-rich collectively then try to put their prices up to account for some of the lost income. If so, perhaps good to offset with reductions in taxes that impact people who are worse off?
Taxing wealth is a totally different topic from taxing income. The challenge is that the structure of a limited liability company allows it to be owned in a manner that allows the true owners to evade tax and it ends up being called tax avoidance, doesn’t make sense right? . I mean as long as tax avoidance is a thing, forget about taxing the rich. There are so many ways for the rich to legally evade tax and they simply keep using it. An example they widely use is Art work. I don’t want to dive into how they use it.
Yeah but that only works because the income is taxed created by the asset, not the asset itself. If you avoid a tax on the asset it gets confiscated and sold to cover the tax. Happens with houses in the US all the time.
@@davidradtke160 Asset / wealth taxes barely exist for the rich. Inheritance tax is avoided by selling all assets worth £100m to the benefactor for £1 at the time of inheritance. How can you ever really tax such an asset? If you want to be rich and pay £0 to nothing in income and wealth taxes, it’s totally possible. It’s not even up for debate.
we have wealth tax in Switzerland and it's super simple. Every year we tally what you own and you pay 0.5% of that value in tax. It's way easier to tell how many shares you own than to tell how much income you generated by selling them. You pay it every year and you can't avoid it by the shenanigans you mentioned earlier.
holding assets via an LLC doesn't matter because now your net worth simply includes the value of the LLC. You repackaged the asset, but the value stayed the same, so the tax bill stays the same. Gifting your assets to your children doesn't matter, now they pay wealth tax in your stead, every year.
The only real problem are family offices and wealth held by individuals/corporations abroad. For family offices you can simply let them pay wealth tax like a normal person. For wealth held by individuals/corporations abroad you can simply tax it at source, which is the point of his video.
I see what you're saying, but it doesn't avoid the biggest problem with "Tax the Rich" as a solution to inequality. If you tax the owners, as long as they own everything, they can just raise prices, raise rents, lower wages, etc. because they control who gets paid and what we pay. The real problem is 1) the inequality of ownership, but more importantly 2) the lack of democratic decision making when it comes to Capital. As long as owners can run their companies as dictatorships, without input from the workers (in decisions about prices, wages, pollution, etc.) they will just undercut, ignore, or undo whatever tax system we place on them. This is why the Welfare States established after the Great Depression were eventually overran by Thatcherism and Reaganism. The owners still owned everything, and decided they didnt like paying the taxes anymore. So they got rid of the taxes and the welfare states they were funding. The problem lies in who makes decisions about the management of property? Will it be an unelected group of owners? Or a consensus among everyone affected by those decisions? Democracy within the economy, within each business. That's what we need. Taxation alone won't do it.
Disagree with starting comment. Thatcher the thief stole so much from so many. She started the ridiculous house prices and funnelled our wealth to the ruthless rich. Water bills are between 30% to 50% paying debt which the privatised water companies took out and gave a lot of it to shareholders. It looks like a debt scam to many people.
This can only really be achieved by top down solution meaning that the large economies need to implement such taxes, as the smaller the economy the larger the probability of having capital flight in the short run
After The Poll Tax, In 1990/91 The UK government had its local councils drive around, look at houses and guess the value and value bands they should be in!!!! And ever since then each year the houses stay in their bands but the value has gone up by a small percentage, nothing like the price increases houses have actually had since then!!! But that would hit everyone and the rich would have loop holes, like OFF SHORE ACCOUNTS to not pay tax...and peddle the tropes of foreigners making everything difficult and the people would fall for it.
That's part of the point of the video. Offshore accounts and trusts should be made liable for profits on property in the UK. If they don't pay, they lose their assets in the UK. Many so-called offshore jurisdictions actually belong to the UK. Our governments always use the excuse that they can't do anything about the tax havens because they are independent countries, but they aren't. They don't want to stop them.
@@jagolago-bob why do you think the rich wanted out if EU? And even told the poor it was so the poor don't get poorer!? The EU wanted/wants to close down off shore tax havens. Good luck with what you propose but more chance of Hell freezing over...#takebackcontrol...my arse.
How does the money they make from assets get into those off shore accounts? At some point it should move from the asset to the account, yeah? That's the point where you tax.
The only real problem with this, is how much of the total assets in existence now are intellectual property, not physical goods. Physical assets are very hard to move so easier to tax. The intellectual property asset is harder to tax. It have to be a tax on revenue from intellectual property, and you’d have to not have deductions for “costs”, because you can invent fake ones fairly easily, by moving intellectual property overseas, and using that property to generate a cost.
OK, so all videogames and music (etc.) will be owned off shore. They either sell the music here for an affordable price, or they lose the entire market or make your own music. (Check out the Creative Commons licenses for that) Or let's say they have a patent for a gadget, they can either sell you the right to make that gadget, or they can sell you the gadget. Either way you get the gadget. If they refuse to sell you any gadgets and you get completely blockaded for all intellectual property, then you are no longer benefitting from respecting intellectual property rights and your country would be better off just pirating and reverse-engineering everything.
These wealthy individuals tells governments how much tax they are happy to pay go above that too much and they do have the power to crash a country especially if there enough of them working together to force government to back down. Just imagine thousands of houses/industrial buildings going on sale all within weeks that would see property prices crash with Bank of England force to react. Those on help to buy will be hit the worse. The first group to sale up would most likely leave uk with a tidy profit but others may well see massive losses especially if they have mortgages on properties. You have strong morals on right and wrong sadly most millionaires/billionaires don’t they go where they can make more.
One of the most obvious issues we have is land or property tax in the uk is not actually directly connected to its value. If we had a flat % charge on all land ownership that would move the needle.
Makes sense from a technical perspective, but in reality the super-duper rich ppl are not owning anything. They are beneficiaries of trust and/or own their assets through multiple layers of shell companies!
Which is why the trusts etc. should be directly taxed, wherever they are. The assets are in the country. Who cares where the company or trust is based.
Does it matter? The assets exist physically and someone either pays the tax on those assets or the assets get seized. In which case, your shell companies now own nothing.
They tried high taxation in the 1970s. Britain was once an industrial powerhouse. Britain taxed its own citizen into oblivion, out of spite, envy and jealousy. The slogan of the day was "squeeze the rich until; the pips squeak". There was high inheritance tax, except it was a blunt instrument, because it destroyed capital to run businesses. Britain was one of the richest countries in the world. It lost its factories and industries. When you brainwash workers and tell them you are being exploited, this is what happens. They go on strike, get demotivated, as a result built poor quality cars. The management lost focus due to infighting, instead of keeping an eye on the Japanese and Germans. The rich are companies like Amazon. They were backed by huge American capital. By 2000, Amazon had lost $3billion, before turning a high profit. They are hurting a lot of small and medium and large businesses. How can the world compete with unfair capitalism?. This is the real problems to solve. Amazon's Jeff Bezos is worth $200billion. Of course, Gary thinks that the rich should pay more tax. Is Jeff Bezos going to pay UK income tax? Bezos is an American citizen. Britain missed out on the biggest tech boom, because the country did not have enough 'capital'. Businesses take years to grow. What Gary proposes, is to destroy what is left of the country. Who will pay these taxes on British assets? The bloke who owns that scrap metal yard, his land is worth £1million, so will be taxed to oblivion, forcing him to sell to pay the tax. Get rid of working class jobs in the process. Britain has treated its own citizens unfairly, it entices foreign investors to UK, with sweeteners, rather then supports its own citizens to grow the economy.
I love this guy, he's made something of himself when he shouldn't have regarding background, but he still sees the inequality that the systems we live by are creating, and are designed to create! We need to wake up, what we are paying for the luxury of owning "property" in 2024 is ludicrous, but, you own something s5o naturally as a human we're conditioned to believe we are better off, that's ours, but this guys literally just told us it's not! Where did it all go wrong?
Sounds so simple why won’t they do it? 🤷♀️. I’m with you there should be some kind of cap on wealth, a society that cares only about the 1% is no society at all.
Politicians get funded or favoured by the rich so when they get in power they call in the favours. Like all these gifts that were received by Starmer. Then will look after the donators and their wishes…
Hi Gary, recently discovered your Chanel. What I don't understand is, how you could tax the asset holders without simultaneously pushing investors out of the UK? They would obviously reroute their holding chains in a way to avoid the effect or avoid the country taxing the assets entirely. Am I missing something? So this should or could only be a solution if it's applied globally or at least pan-european.
Intellecual property can be registered anywhere. For example: Starbucks pays loyalties to an offshore subsidiary for the brandname "Frappocino", to avoid taxes.
Yes Gary but taxing the rich doesnt do anything in the real economy. You don't suddenly get more houses. Would taking mortgage stress off the proletariat increase real output or decrease it.
Yeah. The only trick is that they say that their company is in another country for tax purposes. If we don’t recognize that, and just look at what is in country, then I think the tax code could do it.
Unfortunately… 1. We choose not to tax these incomes fairly or effectively and 2. We provide numerous loopholes for these revenues to be “offshored” and hidden. Both problems could be solved with legislation, but we don’t have people who understand they’re being robbed blind or governments which will challenge the (wealth owning) Establishment and do it. 🤬
Ah a discussion about Wealth Tax - but without explaining how it could be roled out in the UK, the rates and scope of any regime, avoidance and evasion.
The assets have left the UK. The reason is that they know about being bailed in. They put their assets off shore. Then when the UK government tries to lay their hands on them, they need to get a foreign court to agree to their seizure. Court says, who owns the assets? UK gov says, oh its a Bahamas company. Case dismissed.
My feeling about this is that while Gary is absolutely correct about this, it's just an inherently unrealistic expectation to imagine that the political class that makes up the majority of our "elected representatives" would EVER consent willingly to this kind of taxation, being as it is that THEY THEMSELVES either make up part of the asset owning class in question or are materially beholden to thier interests through corruption or influence networks. Implementing a fairer, more equal tax policy would *directly* target thier material interests, so WHY would they EVER allow it to happen? Why??? Because it's a good idea for a nicer society? Because the alternative is rampant inequality? They. Don't. Care! And never will. They LIKE inequality. They LIKE poverty and the collapse of the public sphere - because a) wealth buys them security from all of the negative consequences of these things and b) to them those things simply mean that *what they consider thier property* is safely out of the hands of the undeserving masses. Class warfare is an inevitable necessity of tackling social INequality because social Equality is a very real material *threat* to the ruling class. As long as they control society's political institutions, they will oppose it VIOLENTLY (and with the full support of the state) at every opportunity!
That's not the problem, the issue comes when you need to create a tax system that reaches the biggest companies but at the same time prevents that extra tax to be immediately transferred to prices, otherwise is the middle class who pay for those taxes in the end. This is why tax the overall wealth is considered better for equality more than taxation of the assets, which are directly related to the chain of production of the companies. Unfortunately, in a world full of huge oligopolies, we did not discovered yet a method to tax the assets and protect the prices at the same time.
It's like that everywhere. That's why it's so bad and that's why there are so many poor people. The money stays in the hands of the rich. That's a big problem. It's time for these people to contribute their share financially to society.
So how would this work? Would you tax the money generated by the asset in Britain( or any other country) namely the return rich people get from these assets or how can I imagine the process?
the richest may be the easiest technically to tax, but practically they are the hardest. The people making the rules and deciding on the tax are these very same richest people, or are owned by the same people.
I onow there are solutions, but my question is if this will ever be fixed? Seems we've been running on the same hamster wheel for centuries and every once in a while we step on the sharp, broken part of the wheel and society suffers. This never ends. We're never going to be free. 99.9% of the world will continue to suffer for the sake of the 0.01%.
It has been solved several times already. In the 1950's USA income taxes were as high as 90% for the richest people, that worked. The French guillotines also worked quite well. A lot of collateral damage though. Then there's the Zapatistas in Mexico, Mondragon in Spain, and the AANES in Syria. All examples of large organisations that are a lot more equal. Not to mention the tens if not hundreds of thousands of smaller cooperatives.
Property Tax now. Set high enough to replace stamp duty and council tax completely. Create a greater incentive to invest in productive businesses instead of Victorian houses.
@@oyster3403 Not how it works, 'Booglesoft' HQ doesn't generate the wealth, it's the people inside. Chasing out 'Boogles'' partners and associates makes that empty building worth alomost zero. Lefties always fall into this trap as you don't believe in the value of labour outside blue collar.
@@oyster3403 They don't leave assets, they sell them. If the new assets attracts some new punative tax, that crashes the value down. The new calibre of owner has less wealth and overall pays less even if they manage to pay your new tax. If you some how think prime city locations are ordained, look at 1970s NYC
@@bramvanduijn8086The same way the threat of a sugar tax pretty much caused every sweet drink/snack to be filled with artificial sweeteners before anything passed. The news isn't just followed by lefty schemers.
So many loopholes with this. Some heavily indebted shell holding owns all a companies assets and leases it to the actual companies.....the rich don't pay tax because they have better accountants.
Why would the small owners be in trouble? What kind of messed up loan did they get that payments go up when value goes down? What kind of moron signs such a contract?
He’s talking about taxing the asset or the income derived from the asset. Not the location of the owner. This’d stop overseas and offshore avoiding tax.
Yea lets pay taxes on unrealized gains and then let the market drop 40%. 😂 I'm SURE the government will give me my tax money back when I "give them too much" of unrealized gains lol. Do you hear what you're saying? That's like paying money for a product you might buy in the future.
Seriously! If they can leverage assets to buy Twitter and spy on folks then they can at least give a percentage back to the public
@@ciscocomputertech You don't have to tax unrealised gains. You can tax the loans that they take out against their assets.
@@ciscocomputertechyou mean like the NHS???? 😲😬🤫
@@ciscocomputertech happens all the time to ordinary folk when they pay emergency tax.. if rich folk get overtaxed they can do the same as everyone lese and apply for a rebate . If there is real unceeratinty about what the profit will be they can ask for tax to be deferred. Stop making excuses to keep a grossly unfair tax system that siphons off the country's wealth and leaves our Government unable to look after ordinary folk. The very people whose earnings bolster massive profits that never gets taxed.
I'm from Alberta and I have been advocating for a royalty on oil. As a georgist I'm in favor of taxing resources. People say the companies will leave. And go where? The oil is here.
Lots of countries already have that…hell Alaska pays every Alaskan money every year from oil revenue.
@@davidradtke160 those royalties don’t put a dent in profits though, they are the bare minimum for Alaskan to feel they have enough skin in the game to allow their environment to be destroyed
@@davidradtke160
Alaska isn't even a country.
they will go somewhere else, I think you overestimate how much profit there is extracting oil from tar sands in Alberta. It's far more labor expensive and depending on the price of crude, can even be produced at a loss.
@vinceslapchopper I worked in o&g in alberta for a few years. I have seen how wasteful they are and how much money is in it. Margins aren't thin.
This is why Henry George got it right. We should tax the land, not labor or capital. You can’t hide your land in the Caiman Islands.
never ever gonna happen. most politicians got whre they are because they are sponsored byt the very ultra ritch. 99% politicians are puppets. the remaining 1% of honest rare ones usually end up very fast for various reasons.
Labour creates 100% of the value, while capital serves as a parasitic class that we have no real need for and to be honest with you -it shouldn’t really exist
you can though. look up who owns land in the uk, a lot of it can be traced to holding companies based in Lichtenstein or somewhere similar.
@@randompianist8359 That's fine, as a country you issue the tax, if they don't pay you seize the asset until the produce the $$
Is this channel just about increasing taxes for everyone. That’s bit the way forward. Dubai is rich because it has 0%
Gary simplified voting for the foreseeable future. Top priorities are tax on the super rich and proportional representation. Also less privatisation and sell-offs of services by gov and councils and more community wealth building.
Yes please 🙏
Politicians are some of those rich people who would be taxed. There is no incentive for them to change the rules.
And therein lies the real problem!
The cultural problem there is that you've made incentive-following the highest moral good. If something else (literally anything else!) were considered morally valuable, then you would have people conflicted between their morals and their incentives, leading to more varied results. This would result in people existing who care less about money than they do about running a country well. Then your only problem is how to select those people into power.
Then , and this might be hard to understand, vote other people in
@bramvanduijn8086 i dont think things were originally set up to make those in power stay there indefinitely. It was meant to be a temporary stay, and then they go back to being among other civilians. Like the president.
Why is this channel not massive? Cuts through the lies we are fed daily by the likes of the Mail and the Express- it’s simple and clear.
That's why it's not massive. People do not like simple truth
💯
Not to mention politicians who keep making out taxing the asset-rich is difficult and problematic. It's infuriating.
As an extra ingredient: Many small farms are being bought by corporate entities solely for the carbon credits. The farms cease to have any relevance to the communities they are surrounded by.
Carbon credits is a scam.
Very few if any will benefit from it. And certainly not the environment.
Where small farming is destroyed, the people go extinct. Look at communities with most stable birth rates. It's where kids are useful as farm hands like the Amish. What's killing the modernized countries is infrastructure like schools and hospitals all centralized in the city, with cutoff public transport to the regions and the rich buying all the lands and having all automated streamlined labor, making communities, interactions obsolete, nature polluted and food monopolized.
Land Value Tax was proposed in England but shut down because of rich corrupt lobbyists. We need it back.
Edit: Lot of people in the comments don't understand land value tax. Unlike property tax it doesn't increase when you use the land properly like building things on it. The people it hurts the most are greedy rich asset owners that buy land and sit on it. Also it will greatly reduce property values so regular home owners would pay less than they do on property tax while benefiting from a great environment.
Check out Georgism if you want to know more
Wait England doesn’t have property taxes? Like home owners don’t pay property taxes to the lock government? Or you just mean there is no national tax?
@@davidradtke160 we have council tax but it’s like 80 a month there’s different bands but it’s not too much
@@shivinpokemon indeed. But land values aren’t the main issue. It’s all assets like a mate of mine owns 50 or so council homes yet his dad was the richest man in the UK at one time. He shouldn’t have the right to buy council houses and rent back to the original buyers kids. Also shares and other assets.
No it was shut down because ww1 started, then it never happened
@@davidradtke160 There is, it's local gov and it generally works out to be 1-0.5% of a properties value a year.
Businesses pay something similar based of sq/ft and it's a lot more. Makes small physical retail generally not worth it.
Among other things, I love the open bottle of dishwasher in the background. Fits in with his generally unpretentious tone and the message.
I do believe taxing the rich is not quite as complex as the rich would have us believe.
Fairy liquid too, our national brand
@victoriafielding2478 please take a look at the Fairy Liquid label. It is clearly marked 'harmful to aquatic life'. 😢
Many assets, particularly land and property are owned by the Royal family and aristocracy which is why they are not highly taxed and exemptions are available to ensure they can evade inheritance taxes.
Most royal family palaces are owned by the State {since George lll}.
@jdferris4 so we pay their upkeep costs🤔
After Diana's death the Queen offered to pay tax on income from royal estates. The Royal Family are not the big problem. Tax avoidance and evasion are.
@@MrB1967 - ‘we’ would need to pay their maintenance costs whether we had a Royal Family or not. If Britain became a republic and the RF got kicked out, then those palaces will either need to be maintained or knocked down. Do you want to knock down historic palaces? Most European countries have kept their old palaces even though they are now republics.
@28pbtkh23 who said anything about knocking down old palaces?
I like this new message from you Gary - it feels more solution driven!
I don’t even think it’s a new message from Gary. It’s just he has to keep banging the drum because the governments aren’t listening.
Keep up the excellent work Gary!
If I could form an independent government, 100000% you would be first choice for chancellor.
For those who thinks rich people won't pay asset taxes... try avoiding paying your proterty tax on your house and see how it works out.
Teaching people this knowledge is more valuable than any shiny metal. Thanks Gary for showing us how simple this uncomplicated stuff actually is. Finance isn't physics, we make the laws. If the renting classes are shown a fair path out of this modern feudalism then they must demand a better way from their political elites.
I think the Lords and Landlords like to make us think this stuff is complicated. It really isn't. If the owners, sitting in places like the British Virgin Islands or Dubai or the Isle of Man, decide to offload a few assets on the actual island of Britain maybe the locals would be much better off and could afford the basics like shelter. The status quo doesn't work. Your solution is easily doable and it's hiding under our noses in plain sight. I bet you that the world will just keep on turning.
Ireland is the same. Average rent in Dublin is €2,128 per month. So you have to hand over €25k of your wealth each year after tax just to not be homeless. That's just nuts. Any alternative to that would be worth trying. What part of the planet do those who govern us live on? I'm guessing it's nice and sunny all year round wherever it is.
Nearly all assets in UK belongs to the Crown. Read how fee simple works in freehold property which was created since Norman times and most land and property especially in London is all leasehold. You cannot actually own anything in UK.
Great interview last night Gary .. hope you had a decent birthday mate, best wishes. 🙏🏼
Asset taxation is such a smart way, it could also potentially turn living spaces back into commodities! Why should you own 15 homes as assets, those should be commodities!
and meantime they are raising capital gain tax soon. i am por working class person 30k per annum and they want tax me more...
Don’t be a dummy. There is nothing wrong with owning properties. Most people don’t earn enough to buy a house, so they can either rent from the Council or from a private landlord. Many councils have been crap landlords: they had properties on their books that they didn’t even know about. Squatters eventually ended up owning them.
@@trauty666 If you're making 30k a year from working, then you're not paying capital gains tax. Don't listen to the rich when they say a tax applies to you, they're lying to you about what a capital gains tax is.
@@28pbtkh23 You're using the wrong word. We're talking about assets, not properties. Housing and car are both properties, but housing is currently an asset while a car is a commodity. The problem with assets is that the become more expensive every year, and that messes up the next generation of house owners.
Go Gary. Hopefully more people will get on board. 👍
The argument i hear more often is that doing this will cause businesses and investment to leave the UK. Businesses will set up and create jobs in other countries which have nore favourable tax policies towards big corporations and wealthy individuals. This will (they say) have a negative effect on the economy. I don't know if anyone's really tested this or not, however there are countries with high taxes that don't seem to struggle (e.g. Scandinavian ones), so there must more more to it than that.
Yeah, it's the argument the rich put forward. But then, they would, wouldn't they? Historical data shows us it's a pile of carp. Some do, but they would anyway. Like Dyson and Jim Ratcliffe. It was understandable in Ratcliffe's case, he was down to his last £17.5 billion at the time.
There are already many places way better for taxation than the UK/EU in fact, but usually those places have other issues(safety, uncertain future, totalitarian regimes,...)
But Britain is a large market, and he seems to be talking specifically about assets that are for some good reason located jn Britain ( say rentals, shops, land, resources..) those businesses aren't wizards that hold secret magic. If a big company selling baked goods, electronics or mining coal or whatever thinks taxes make it not worth it - there will be someone else to fill the gap..
And if they did sell their assets and move abroad, the prices of these assets would drop, which would make life easier for the masses. Cheaper rents, properties, etc.
This would put less wage rise pressure on companies, and so make it a better place to invest for manufacturing.
@@jagolago-bob And also likely a better place for (local) competition. More people could run their own businesses and make enough to live off them, which might as well lead to higher wages as the available work force might become smaller (due to more people doing their own thing) and demand a bigger cut if the business wants to grow. It's no utopia or anything, juat taking some off the pressure off.
This channel is one of the best I've come across. Simply brilliant! Thank you!
Please can you tell Keir Stammer and Rachael Reeves this?
We just constantly hear ' you can't tax the rich... They'll leave!'
@@ChrisMorris-Oldmanwithers yeah they just talk rubbish because they are protecting themselves. What about the duke of Westminster? Is he going to move Mayfair and Belgravia to Dubai! Of course not. Successive governments have just given him loads of loopholes so he pays next to nothing.
@ChrisMorris-Oldmanwithers They can leave but their physical assets can't.
They already know this , all politicians already know this. They won’t do it because they are in that same club and they are being paid via “ gifts “ or “ campaign support “ to not do it.
They know this already. The Tories knew this too. Only they had a vested interest NOT to tax the rich.
I've tried this argument with several friends, and the counter has always been that people will then leave the country. Leaving their assets behind supposedly.
I can see another potential counter, creating intermediaries to hold the assets instead of yourself. (Talking about a loophole that shouldn't exist anywhere).
As always, everything is about implementation.
OK, so everyone leaves without their assets. They either:
1. Sell their assets for the same amount or more, in which case you tax the new owner for the same amount or more and nothing has changed.
2. Sell their assets for less, in which case the government gets in slightly less taxes and someone like you can now more easily afford to buy them, so you finally get to own that house or start that bakery you always wanted to start.
If 1 keeps happening, then the government can pay off all their debt and lower taxes for everyone.
If 2 keeps happening, the prices of all taxed assets drop and drop and drop, and eventually everyone can own an asset if they want to and the government is no worse off than they were before taxing assets.
"We're paying more taxes than anyone in History."
"Um. We'd like to remind you that you literally write *ALL* of those taxes off."
Nice to hear some solutions
I was re-watching the 2007 BBC version of Robin Hood, and it has never been more on the nose. Nottingham may be smaller, but the strategies of the Sheriff and Prince John... I mean... It's worth a look for seeing the run around more clearly. I'd love to hear what other people think about it.
So is this the answer to the argument "but they'll leave the country if you try to tax them".?
yep, the bottom line is that they only get away with avoiding tax because the people making the rules up are in the same club. It is not because they will leave.
If the tax rules are altered so they pay their fair share on incime from assets physically in Britain, its entirely up to them to do the sums and work out if it's better to pay the tax or unload the assets to avoid tax.. If they all do that they'll probably loose money anyway, they'll actually be causing a glut of overpriced assets and the assets will devalue.
It would be good as that would mean the next owner can charge less rent etc.
They can leave but they cannot take the physical assets with them. They need to sell it and turn to cash and leave. Ultra rich are willing to be tax than move to another less safe country. If the bring their money to the new country. The new country will experience assets inflation. The rich don't keep a lot of cash coz cash lose to inflation. They need to buy real assets.
Sure but who will buy anything british or in britain if the government starts acting like the communist party in China? This is exactly why I've never bought companies or property there but have both in the US and UK
Yeah he talks about it in different videos but basically just tax their assets and the money they make.
How much overseas money is invested in the UK each year as new money coming in? I can see a lot of that going elsewhere but there is already a lot of wealth invested here that could be caught in such a tax on assets
Totally agree, Tax on high asset wealth is the key to start to tackle inequality.
If we keep taxes sensible on wages, workers keep more in their pockets and we can attract talent too in the higher wage brackets too.
Those making massive sums purely on their assets are also an easy target for Taxation. They can’t actually take their assets with them!
Why do people think that the way to tackle inequality is to tax people who’ve earned it and give it to those that haven’t. Everyone should have a safety net, paid for by the State through taxes, but inequality? When does it stop being unequal? When everyone has exactly the same and then you’re in a truly communist state.
How 'high' is high?
I might own as much as a thousand millionth of foreign bank, though I doubt it is as much as that.
Nevertheless any income from it is because I own that amount.
And it is already taxed.
But the problem of finding very small amounts will inevitably come up from those who have much more. They might even buy a television station to push their point.
With the power they still have.
The question is, do you want to attract talented people or people who haven't worked a day in their life? Which group will make your area better? I think a talented hardworking person adds more to a place than a passive wealthy layabout. So tax the talented hardworking people less and tax the passive wealthy layabouts more.
That doesn’t account for trust structures, tax loopholes, corruption, non-profits, tax havens, tax deferrals, so many laws that circumvent paying tax that the rich can utilise by having lawyers and accountants on retainer. So if the tax office wishes to go after them, there is so many resources needing to be allocated to get the tax dollars from the rich. Government learned it is cheaper and faster to go after people in a lower tax bracket. Capitalism, rules for thee and not for the rich. Also, those rich/large corporations get tax breaks and socialist structure of bailing out large corporations.
Plus they get backhanders from the rich. You don’t bite the hand that feeds you. It’s corruption to scandalous levels and a global criminal mafia.
Suggest that we use the same tax accountants to chase up our tax money by offering them a big slice of the proceeds ie no win no fee Allowing Starbucks etc to book profits overseas when those profits are earned in the UK is a loophole which can be plugged with the right laws.Starbucks uses goodwill rules to say that its coffee beans are part of its intellectual property because they are roasted using a process held by its Swiss subsidiary.(nb unlikely that anyone roasts beans in Switzerland as one of the world's most expensive labour markets!) Answer: put a cap on how much value can be attributed to a foreign subsidiary.Starbucks recently 'volunteered' to pay a piddling sum of tax on its profits. Ditto Apple,Google etc.(note how many US companies are screwing us) .Individual tax is another story but Rachel Reeves will have to unveil her plans to close offshore trust loopholes including death duty on the richest estates.
So what you're saying is that we shouldn't take the first step on this journey, because the journey has more than one step?
And the demand elasticity of those assets/goods/services, determines the amount of your proposed tax which will be passed along to the end-user/customer.
I agree with the message, but you need to make it even clearer that the assets font disappear when rich people sell the assets and move.
The assets still remain in the country. If they want to leave, the doors are open.
How does selling an asset make the asset disappear? I can hardly wait for the explanation.
The new owner gets taxed. If it's real estate and they just dump it, then at least local people get a better deal on housing and commercial real estate on the new lower prices. And the new owner pays the local taxes.
That’s why In Ireland commercial property is much higher taxed than residential I assume it’s the same in Britain
Thank you for this video 🎉 and happy new year!
Isn't the no #1 way to avoid taxes using off-shore intellectual property? They put a patent, trademark or even a recipe in the Cayman Islands and then the onshore business pays it through the nose. The rules on this are enshrined in international treaties, so they're not easy to change.
I love this perspective
Love the channel Gary, keep up the great work. Obviously would be immense if the government was able to take some of this and re-distribute. I'm curious if you think there'd be some increase in prices for people as these super-rich collectively then try to put their prices up to account for some of the lost income. If so, perhaps good to offset with reductions in taxes that impact people who are worse off?
Excellent. Govs must implement this Rule sharpish.....
Property taxes already exist in most countries.
And every year wealth inequality increases those property taxes need to be increased.
@bramvanduijn8086 property taxes are a percentage. They already do increase.
They pay enough tax you only want change to better yourself
Taxing wealth is a totally different topic from taxing income. The challenge is that the structure of a limited liability company allows it to be owned in a manner that allows the true owners to evade tax and it ends up being called tax avoidance, doesn’t make sense right? . I mean as long as tax avoidance is a thing, forget about taxing the rich. There are so many ways for the rich to legally evade tax and they simply keep using it. An example they widely use is Art work. I don’t want to dive into how they use it.
Yeah but that only works because the income is taxed created by the asset, not the asset itself. If you avoid a tax on the asset it gets confiscated and sold to cover the tax. Happens with houses in the US all the time.
@@davidradtke160 Asset / wealth taxes barely exist for the rich. Inheritance tax is avoided by selling all assets worth £100m to the benefactor for £1 at the time of inheritance. How can you ever really tax such an asset? If you want to be rich and pay £0 to nothing in income and wealth taxes, it’s totally possible. It’s not even up for debate.
we have wealth tax in Switzerland and it's super simple. Every year we tally what you own and you pay 0.5% of that value in tax. It's way easier to tell how many shares you own than to tell how much income you generated by selling them. You pay it every year and you can't avoid it by the shenanigans you mentioned earlier.
holding assets via an LLC doesn't matter because now your net worth simply includes the value of the LLC. You repackaged the asset, but the value stayed the same, so the tax bill stays the same. Gifting your assets to your children doesn't matter, now they pay wealth tax in your stead, every year.
The only real problem are family offices and wealth held by individuals/corporations abroad. For family offices you can simply let them pay wealth tax like a normal person. For wealth held by individuals/corporations abroad you can simply tax it at source, which is the point of his video.
I see what you're saying, but it doesn't avoid the biggest problem with "Tax the Rich" as a solution to inequality. If you tax the owners, as long as they own everything, they can just raise prices, raise rents, lower wages, etc. because they control who gets paid and what we pay.
The real problem is 1) the inequality of ownership, but more importantly 2) the lack of democratic decision making when it comes to Capital. As long as owners can run their companies as dictatorships, without input from the workers (in decisions about prices, wages, pollution, etc.) they will just undercut, ignore, or undo whatever tax system we place on them.
This is why the Welfare States established after the Great Depression were eventually overran by Thatcherism and Reaganism. The owners still owned everything, and decided they didnt like paying the taxes anymore. So they got rid of the taxes and the welfare states they were funding.
The problem lies in who makes decisions about the management of property? Will it be an unelected group of owners? Or a consensus among everyone affected by those decisions? Democracy within the economy, within each business. That's what we need. Taxation alone won't do it.
Cooperatives and unions are the words!
High time for democracy in the economy!
If you raise something for example rent then it would be an admission it’s worth more and thus you have to pay more tax
Doesn’t make any difference , when they avoid paying tax in the first place they don’t pass that saving on to you anyway.
Disagree with starting comment. Thatcher the thief stole so much from so many. She started the ridiculous house prices and funnelled our wealth to the ruthless rich.
Water bills are between 30% to 50% paying debt which the privatised water companies took out and gave a lot of it to shareholders. It looks like a debt scam to many people.
This is so self evident that I'm amazed everyone doesn't understand it.
This can only really be achieved by top down solution meaning that the large economies need to implement such taxes, as the smaller the economy the larger the probability of having capital flight in the short run
good shit Gary
We need a proper land registry showing the ultimate owner of every property. Not a shell company within a shell company registered in the Caymans.
After The Poll Tax, In 1990/91 The UK government had its local councils drive around, look at houses and guess the value and value bands they should be in!!!! And ever since then each year the houses stay in their bands but the value has gone up by a small percentage, nothing like the price increases houses have actually had since then!!! But that would hit everyone and the rich would have loop holes, like OFF SHORE ACCOUNTS to not pay tax...and peddle the tropes of foreigners making everything difficult and the people would fall for it.
That's part of the point of the video. Offshore accounts and trusts should be made liable for profits on property in the UK.
If they don't pay, they lose their assets in the UK.
Many so-called offshore jurisdictions actually belong to the UK. Our governments always use the excuse that they can't do anything about the tax havens because they are independent countries, but they aren't.
They don't want to stop them.
@@jagolago-bob why do you think the rich wanted out if EU? And even told the poor it was so the poor don't get poorer!? The EU wanted/wants to close down off shore tax havens. Good luck with what you propose but more chance of Hell freezing over...#takebackcontrol...my arse.
How does the money they make from assets get into those off shore accounts? At some point it should move from the asset to the account, yeah? That's the point where you tax.
@bramvanduijn8086 nice try in trying to get me to tell you have to AVOID tax. Sometimes it's best not to say everything.
The only real problem with this, is how much of the total assets in existence now are intellectual property, not physical goods. Physical assets are very hard to move so easier to tax. The intellectual property asset is harder to tax. It have to be a tax on revenue from intellectual property, and you’d have to not have deductions for “costs”, because you can invent fake ones fairly easily, by moving intellectual property overseas, and using that property to generate a cost.
OK, so all videogames and music (etc.) will be owned off shore. They either sell the music here for an affordable price, or they lose the entire market or make your own music. (Check out the Creative Commons licenses for that)
Or let's say they have a patent for a gadget, they can either sell you the right to make that gadget, or they can sell you the gadget. Either way you get the gadget. If they refuse to sell you any gadgets and you get completely blockaded for all intellectual property, then you are no longer benefitting from respecting intellectual property rights and your country would be better off just pirating and reverse-engineering everything.
It can done by collecting sales tax and profit tax.
These wealthy individuals tells governments how much tax they are happy to pay go above that too much and they do have the power to crash a country especially if there enough of them working together to force government to back down. Just imagine thousands of houses/industrial buildings going on sale all within weeks that would see property prices crash with Bank of England force to react. Those on help to buy will be hit the worse. The first group to sale up would most likely leave uk with a tidy profit but others may well see massive losses especially if they have mortgages on properties. You have strong morals on right and wrong sadly most millionaires/billionaires don’t they go where they can make more.
One of the most obvious issues we have is land or property tax in the uk is not actually directly connected to its value. If we had a flat % charge on all land ownership that would move the needle.
The problem is that the rich want to keep all their money and do not want to lose it. They also have the power to dictate to government.
This should have more views than the Joe Rogan Podcast
Many wealth people dont put assets in their name. Does this make a difference to what Gary proposes?
Then tax the person or entity in whoever's name it is.
What about financial portfolios, which are more mobile? Exit tax on unrealized capital gains, maybe?
Makes sense from a technical perspective, but in reality the super-duper rich ppl are not owning anything. They are beneficiaries of trust and/or own their assets through multiple layers of shell companies!
Which is why the trusts etc. should be directly taxed, wherever they are. The assets are in the country. Who cares where the company or trust is based.
Does it matter? The assets exist physically and someone either pays the tax on those assets or the assets get seized. In which case, your shell companies now own nothing.
This is my answer to people who say that if we tax the rich they'll leave. Well leave then. 😊
They are.
They tried high taxation in the 1970s. Britain was once an industrial powerhouse. Britain taxed its own citizen into oblivion, out of spite, envy and jealousy. The slogan of the day was "squeeze the rich until; the pips squeak". There was high inheritance tax, except it was a blunt instrument, because it destroyed capital to run businesses.
Britain was one of the richest countries in the world. It lost its factories and industries. When you brainwash workers and tell them you are being exploited, this is what happens. They go on strike, get demotivated, as a result built poor quality cars. The management lost focus due to infighting, instead of keeping an eye on the Japanese and Germans.
The rich are companies like Amazon. They were backed by huge American capital. By 2000, Amazon had lost $3billion, before turning a high profit. They are hurting a lot of small and medium and large businesses. How can the world compete with unfair capitalism?. This is the real problems to solve.
Amazon's Jeff Bezos is worth $200billion. Of course, Gary thinks that the rich should pay more tax. Is Jeff Bezos going to pay UK income tax? Bezos is an American citizen.
Britain missed out on the biggest tech boom, because the country did not have enough 'capital'. Businesses take years to grow.
What Gary proposes, is to destroy what is left of the country.
Who will pay these taxes on British assets? The bloke who owns that scrap metal yard, his land is worth £1million, so will be taxed to oblivion, forcing him to sell to pay the tax. Get rid of working class jobs in the process.
Britain has treated its own citizens unfairly, it entices foreign investors to UK, with sweeteners, rather then supports its own citizens to grow the economy.
I love this guy, he's made something of himself when he shouldn't have regarding background, but he still sees the inequality that the systems we live by are creating, and are designed to create!
We need to wake up, what we are paying for the luxury of owning "property" in 2024 is ludicrous, but, you own something s5o naturally as a human we're conditioned to believe we are better off, that's ours, but this guys literally just told us it's not!
Where did it all go wrong?
@@ThomasHall-p1d Thatcher
Seems you are right.
Sounds so simple why won’t they do it? 🤷♀️. I’m with you there should be some kind of cap on wealth, a society that cares only about the 1% is no society at all.
Politicians get funded or favoured by the rich so when they get in power they call in the favours. Like all these gifts that were received by Starmer. Then will look after the donators and their wishes…
Hi Gary, recently discovered your Chanel. What I don't understand is, how you could tax the asset holders without simultaneously pushing investors out of the UK? They would obviously reroute their holding chains in a way to avoid the effect or avoid the country taxing the assets entirely. Am I missing something? So this should or could only be a solution if it's applied globally or at least pan-european.
Corporate taxes used to 70% in the US they are now at like 25-27% may be lower with the tax cuts and jobs act
The rich will always pass the tax to the consumer 🤦
Most assets aren't being consumed.
Intellecual property can be registered anywhere. For example: Starbucks pays loyalties to an offshore subsidiary for the brandname "Frappocino", to avoid taxes.
They'll still just pass any increases in tax down to the consumer or user of the asset though
Lots of assets are now intangible . How do you propose we tax those?
Which assets are intangible?
All are tangible from tax angle.
But does tax do any function other than keeping inflation in check? We don't use taxes for public spending.
Yes Gary but taxing the rich doesnt do anything in the real economy. You don't suddenly get more houses. Would taking mortgage stress off the proletariat increase real output or decrease it.
Yeah. The only trick is that they say that their company is in another country for tax purposes. If we don’t recognize that, and just look at what is in country, then I think the tax code could do it.
We're not talking about taxing companies. We're talking about taxing stores, factories, forests, buildings, and other forms of land.
An object tax, not subject tax.
It's called taxation at source and it's pretty common. The combination with a wealth tax is novel and I like the idea.
Unfortunately…
1. We choose not to tax these incomes fairly or effectively and
2. We provide numerous loopholes for these revenues to be “offshored” and hidden.
Both problems could be solved with legislation, but we don’t have people who understand they’re being robbed blind or governments which will challenge the (wealth owning) Establishment and do it.
🤬
Many assets are owned via debt, increase the tax enough to stop asset appreciation and the whole house of cards falls...
Income tax 2% on every dollar
Asset tax 2% of the value of the asset
Ah a discussion about Wealth Tax - but without explaining how it could be roled out in the UK, the rates and scope of any regime, avoidance and evasion.
It's a short.
Ok, please detiail exactly how? Sounds promising.
It's property taxes and it already exists.
@@JonSmith531 Just make them higher.
What about digital assets? How to tax Microsoft and Meta more.
Tax their server farms.
What do you think about land value tax and georgism?
800+ likes .... This needs 800k+ likes
Not when those assets are owned by a private company in the Cayman Islands
Why not? Tape the tax letter to the asset, do the same with a couple reminders, and then repossess for failure to pay taxes.
And when many investors decide to sell their assets, suddenly the supply increases relative to demand, i.e. their value decreases.👍
And everyone can now afford assets. Sounds like a win to me.
The assets have left the UK.
The reason is that they know about being bailed in. They put their assets off shore. Then when the UK government tries to lay their hands on them, they need to get a foreign court to agree to their seizure. Court says, who owns the assets? UK gov says, oh its a Bahamas company. Case dismissed.
My feeling about this is that while Gary is absolutely correct about this, it's just an inherently unrealistic expectation to imagine that the political class that makes up the majority of our "elected representatives" would EVER consent willingly to this kind of taxation, being as it is that THEY THEMSELVES either make up part of the asset owning class in question or are materially beholden to thier interests through corruption or influence networks.
Implementing a fairer, more equal tax policy would *directly* target thier material interests, so WHY would they EVER allow it to happen? Why??? Because it's a good idea for a nicer society? Because the alternative is rampant inequality? They. Don't. Care! And never will. They LIKE inequality. They LIKE poverty and the collapse of the public sphere - because a) wealth buys them security from all of the negative consequences of these things and b) to them those things simply mean that *what they consider thier property* is safely out of the hands of the undeserving masses.
Class warfare is an inevitable necessity of tackling social INequality because social Equality is a very real material *threat* to the ruling class.
As long as they control society's political institutions, they will oppose it VIOLENTLY (and with the full support of the state) at every opportunity!
That's not the problem, the issue comes when you need to create a tax system that reaches the biggest companies but at the same time prevents that extra tax to be immediately transferred to prices, otherwise is the middle class who pay for those taxes in the end. This is why tax the overall wealth is considered better for equality more than taxation of the assets, which are directly related to the chain of production of the companies. Unfortunately, in a world full of huge oligopolies, we did not discovered yet a method to tax the assets and protect the prices at the same time.
Never thought of it that way
And why they are still do not do it: countries are in competition with each other for foreign investment.
Problem is, these are not persons, but persons BEHIND companies.
That's why they tax the poorer most & not the rich & especially not the super rich who's money is in offshore 'tax havens'.
I agree with this, and I'm a landlord from a working class background.
It's like that everywhere. That's why it's so bad and that's why there are so many poor people. The money stays in the hands of the rich. That's a big problem. It's time for these people to contribute their share financially to society.
I don't believe this. Labour are about to try it. The office budget responsibility jus released a report saying the tax intake would reduce....
So glad you are talking about this. Australian tax their citizens and corporations don't pay tax
So how would this work? Would you tax the money generated by the asset in Britain( or any other country) namely the return rich people get from these assets or how can I imagine the process?
the richest may be the easiest technically to tax, but practically they are the hardest. The people making the rules and deciding on the tax are these very same richest people, or are owned by the same people.
I onow there are solutions, but my question is if this will ever be fixed? Seems we've been running on the same hamster wheel for centuries and every once in a while we step on the sharp, broken part of the wheel and society suffers.
This never ends. We're never going to be free. 99.9% of the world will continue to suffer for the sake of the 0.01%.
It has been solved several times already. In the 1950's USA income taxes were as high as 90% for the richest people, that worked. The French guillotines also worked quite well. A lot of collateral damage though. Then there's the Zapatistas in Mexico, Mondragon in Spain, and the AANES in Syria. All examples of large organisations that are a lot more equal. Not to mention the tens if not hundreds of thousands of smaller cooperatives.
The problem with taxing the rich is the government will waste it.
How is that a problem? The point is to reduce the wealth gap.
Compare Singapore with Venezuela. Where would you rather live?
Property Tax now. Set high enough to replace stamp duty and council tax completely. Create a greater incentive to invest in productive businesses instead of Victorian houses.
How would we stop the rich from increasing rents/other prices?
It's people like you that has just caused the largest movement of millionaires from the UK to Dubai. Well done champ.
@@Ozzybob-ts7yj excellent - now tax the assets they left behind.
@@oyster3403 Not how it works, 'Booglesoft' HQ doesn't generate the wealth, it's the people inside.
Chasing out 'Boogles'' partners and associates makes that empty building worth alomost zero.
Lefties always fall into this trap as you don't believe in the value of labour outside blue collar.
But... he didn't manage to raise the taxes? That makes no sense. Why would they leave when taxes aren't going up?
@@oyster3403 They don't leave assets, they sell them.
If the new assets attracts some new punative tax, that crashes the value down. The new calibre of owner has less wealth and overall pays less even if they manage to pay your new tax.
If you some how think prime city locations are ordained, look at 1970s NYC
@@bramvanduijn8086The same way the threat of a sugar tax pretty much caused every sweet drink/snack to be filled with artificial sweeteners before anything passed.
The news isn't just followed by lefty schemers.
So many loopholes with this. Some heavily indebted shell holding owns all a companies assets and leases it to the actual companies.....the rich don't pay tax because they have better accountants.
I actually think single fathers are the easiest people to tax😞
🫂🍪
Someone bring this man some sleeves
Will this not cause asset prices to fall extremely fast putting a lot of small owners in trouble?
The only ones in trouble would be buy to letters surely. Ordinary homeowners would be largely OK
Why would the small owners be in trouble? What kind of messed up loan did they get that payments go up when value goes down? What kind of moron signs such a contract?
This is one of the best pages I’ve ever seen