Time for a wealth tax

Gordon Brown’s abolition of the 10p income tax band in his last budget as chancellor will cost me about £4.50 a week in the current tax year. Allowing for the fact that he also cut the 22p basic rate by 2p, I’ll be down by about 90p a week net. I’d rather have that money than not, but as 90p won’t even buy me a bendy bus ticket from one end of the Holloway Road to the other, it’s not going to burn too big a hole in my pocket. (Single people on the lowest incomes, who’ll lose the full £4.50 a week net, are entitled to feel considerably more aggrieved, of course.)

Brown saved a little under £9 billion a year by getting rid of the 10p tax band – which just happens to be roughly the cost of taking 2p off the basic rate of income tax. This also happens to be roughly half the amount by which the net worth of British (dollar) billionaires rose during 2007. According to Forbes magazine, the 29 British billionaires (up from 24 the year before) increased their wealth by 48 per cent during the year to £40.4 billion.

Never mind the arguments over a 10p tax band: isn't it time we had a 10 per cent wealth tax?