Not the same - a bank needs it to be roughly right across a portfolio of loans, I need it to be exactly right for me.

Property tax etc is an understood part of owing a property- an intrinsically valuable thing. I’m strongly in favour of land tax - it encourages the productive use of land. I can’t live in shares, and I can’t eat them. At some point I may make some actual money from them and at that point I should pay tax. I should not be taxed now on possible future gains, anymore than I should be taxed now on a possible pay raise if I get a promotion.

Fairer and more effective tax is essential- and to advocate for it effectively a grasp of the basics is essential. Otherwise you’re counter productive. I feel I’ve made my points and shall withdraw

I’m in favour of tax and rich folk paying more, but a naive imagining that a simple wealth tax is the answer just isn’t helpful. I’m against wealth taxes because they’re crap taxes - they’re easy to avoid, easy to get caught in by accident if you’re not employing an expensive accountant, and therefore a rubbish way of raising money

Something can be legally liquid, but not practically liquid. Like a house. For example the Board of the company could give me permission to sell, but why would they?

That’s my point - I’m not making any profit from my ownership of the shares. If I were I’d pay tax on it. All I have a bit of paper which might be worth some real cash in the future. It would become a liability if I had to pay a simple wealth tax on it.

If I use the shares as collateral on a loan and they come good then I have to sell the shares to repay the loan (and pay tax on the sale). If they don’t then I suppose the loan company takes a loss, they’ll have factored that in on to the interest I pay. So probably won’t be so low interest

I completely agree on the economy but and happily pay all the tax I should. But ‘wealth’ is not a simple concept- it comes in many forms, it’s not just a pile of bags of cash with a fat bloke in a top hat sitting on. Even measuring it is hard. So taxing it is really hard and inefficient, which is completely glossed over in these kinds of campaigns

And that creates a loophole that is trivially easy to exploit, which is the problem. I simply wrap up any asset I want to hold onto into a fund or trust that stops me doing the above…

Also require greater transparency around money movement and proper auditing. Governments need to spend more on auditing.

Trickle down is complete BS and the many ways to avoid wealth taxes are part of the problem with them. You need to properly tax income and capital gains and close as many of the loopholes around each as possible. Then add a proper estate tax as well to reduce inter generational wealth

Of the counter-productive effects? I have a bunch of shares in a private company that I was given for good performance and retention. At the latest share price from the latest funding round they’re worth more than enough to put me in the 0.5%. However, they’re not liquid - I can’t sell them unless the company floats or is bought. Under a simple wealth tax I’d have to pay many thousands of pounds of tax on them every year despite them having no realisable value. Just because something is an asset with a nominal value doesn’t mean it’s liquid or generating income. Obviously when (if) I sell the shares I’ll pay capital gains, or if they generate a dividend, income tax.

Wealth taxes are rarely efficient and create all sorts of weird and counter productive effects. Better to properly tax income and capital gains.

Because it’s reassigning someone’s gender - e.g. making a female body look more like a man’s. We don’t have the technology to change someone’s biological sex, but we can help them by giving them a body that more closely resembles their gender identity.

It’s not difficult to turn off.

The debt sucks. A progressive graduate tax would probably have been better - then you couldn’t just avoid it by having rich parents, or avoid the interest by paying it off quick by going into banking. But, you know, tax…

The great British public utter failing to understand coalition politics - if you want the Lib Dem’s to have to make less compromises the key is to vote in more Lib Dems… not less. Of course a government that is mostly Conservative is going to do mostly Conservative things. But it also did some Lib Dem things, which is better than no Lib Dem things! The idea that ‘Vote Conservative and be fucked’ is more compelling than ‘Vote Lib Dem and be a bit less fucked’ goes a long way to explaining the mess this country is in.

What’s wrong with voting Lib Dem?

It doesn’t.

That’s actually quite a good idea

You’re right about the slash by Brown in 2008 - it was 40% under Lawson (Conservative) - that should be revisited

From a tax perspective it’s not the same - not least because it’s hard to pin down when the money was earned- if you bought shares 10 years ago, and their value increased 8 years ago and then you held them for 8 years before selling this year when do you say the gain was? If you paying a low rate of income tax 8 years ago should you pay that on the gain? You can say 20% is too low, but you can’t treat it like earned income.

Likewise you do earn it in a sense (if everything is working right) - you give up the ability to access that cash and accept you might make a loss

If you’re just objecting to the idea you can use money to make money - Ok, but that seems to be an intrinsic property of money and there’s not much to be done about it.

It’s not - he paid capital gains tax on a capital gain.

Misleading headline, bad Guardian. He paid income tax on income, and capital gains tax on a capital gains. Capital Gains tax is a flat rate (20%) the same as the basic rate of income tax. And you put your money in the US economy. Because it’s doing better than the UK one. No thanks to either government!