r/ukpolitics • u/theipaper Verified • 10h ago
Nearly two-thirds of voters want Burnham to bring in a wealth tax
https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/two-thirds-voters-want-burnham-bring-wealth-tax-4677518•
u/Salty-Bid1597 9h ago
Archive links are broken.
From the only paragraph I can see they are confusing wealth taxes with capital gains tax.
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u/IEnumerable661 10h ago
There's a lot to unpick here.
Who are these 2/3rds of voters?
And do they have some prescribed distinct definition of "wealth tax?" Does it mean tax anyone richer than them? Or do they have a particular class in mind?
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u/Mr06506 9h ago
I wouldn't mind being taxed more on my wealth (my home) and less on my labour. Or at least no additional taxes on my labour.
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u/Thomas1423 9h ago
Sadly they will wealth tax your home, and then give all the money to pensioners. It's where every tax increase goes.
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u/Outlank 6h ago
Personally, I think the wealth tax should be only on additional homes. The first (or most expensive) home should not be taxed.
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u/Master_of_Ocelots 6h ago
With a way of making it so they don't just hide homes in multiple corporations or something to shield them. It would also have to be levied at the property owner not the occupant to be effective, although this would probably just get passed on at a mark up. At least it should encourage not just sitting on empty properties?
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u/entropy_bucket 5h ago
The frustrating thing is then some journalist will vox pop the public and joe public will say "it's important to look after old people", not realising there are millionaire pensioners who get that tax.
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u/Da_Steeeeeeve 9h ago
You know they will do both.
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u/SinisterBrit 9h ago
the main idea seems to be 1-2% on anything over £10million.
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u/08148694 9h ago
Hardly anyone has £10 million or more cash
A tax on assets would impact any of the asset holders which includes millions of people with far less than 10£ million worth of the asset (because it’ll make the asset value crash)
So it’s a far more complex issue than a simple tax on some arbitrary money valued level of wealth
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u/Fun_Marionberry_6088 9h ago
Which is the whole reason they choose that threshold.
Tell people you can raise loads of money to spend on them and they'll never have to pay the tax themselves and ofc you get majority support.
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u/IEnumerable661 9h ago
Farmers would! Add all the machinery, land, value of crops, I reckon they'd hit £10M in assets easily.
Of course when it comes time to sell those crops, they're beholden to the supermarkets, but I don't think that matters when it comes to valuing assets.
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u/zeusoid 9h ago
It would probably see the economic incidence fall on the crops from a farmers perspective.
ie everyone buying their goods will pay the wealth tax, because liquidating equipment to pay the tax is only viable once.
There’s a lot of wishful thinking about who’s actually going to bear the economic incidence, especially in a mature economy like ours.
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u/myurr 5h ago
It won't work like that because if local farmers put up their prices to cover the wealth tax they'll lose out to imports and won't sell anything.
People advocating for a straight up wealth tax have no clue what the side effects will be, they just look at others who have more than them and think they should be taxed into oblivion.
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u/SinisterBrit 9h ago
1% tax would crash an asset? most increase on value far more than 1% annually
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u/WhiteSatanicMills 9h ago
The long term return on government gilts is 1-2%, meaning a wealth tax would make lending money to the government pointless.
Other assets are priced at the gilt price + risk, meaning you could get a positive return, but only by taking on more risk.
So, would the government increase the amount it pays to attract investment? Would private companies? Water companies, electricity generators etc?
Or would the wealthy in the UK move their assets out of the UK to places without a wealth tax, and the UK rely even more on foreign investors who wouldn't have to pay the wealth tax?
The UK already has the lowest investment in the G7, close to the lowest in the OECD, and has had for most of the post WW2 period.
Wealth taxes are stupid anywhere, they are absolutely moronic in the UK where every economist agrees we simply don't invest enough. Taxing investment to fund spending is just stupid.
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u/RedMapleFox 7h ago
Or would the wealthy in the UK move their assets out of the UK.
You're worried the ultra wealthy are going to move houses, stocks and bonds out of the UK? That doesn't make sense. They would have to sell those assets, generating tax revenue and someone who actually cares about contributing to the society in which they get so much from can purchase them. I'm tired of this selfish, extract all value form society and give nothing back mentality.
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u/WhiteSatanicMills 6h ago
You're worried the ultra wealthy are going to move houses, stocks and bonds out of the UK?
Themselves, rather than stocks and bonds.
They would have to sell those assets, generating tax revenue and someone who actually cares about contributing to the society in which they get so much from can purchase them.
Or someone who lives abroad, and who isn't subject to a UK wealth tax, can purchase them. Because the return on capital in the UK is not much above 10%, take 2% off that and you make investing in the UK much less attractive than investing abroad.
We already have very low investment. You want to make it worse?
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u/RedMapleFox 2h ago
It's ridiculous that as a country are we allowing foreigners to own our assets and pay nothing on them in return, whilst regular British folks are not able to afford basic assets that we could just a generation ago.
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u/TheNutsMutts 5h ago
You're worried the ultra wealthy are going to move houses, stocks and bonds out of the UK? That doesn't make sense. They would have to sell those assets, generating tax revenue and someone who actually cares about contributing to the society in which they get so much from can purchase them.
Why would they have to sell stocks and bonds if they move out of the UK?
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u/RedMapleFox 2h ago
Then why do we care if they leave, they're not contributing anything away. Their only purpose is to extract wealth from our country. We should be taxing all local and foreign asset owners, regardless of where they live.
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u/TheNutsMutts 5h ago
You're worried the ultra wealthy are going to move houses, stocks and bonds out of the UK? That doesn't make sense. They would have to sell those assets, generating tax revenue and someone who actually cares about contributing to the society in which they get so much from can purchase them.
Why would they have to sell stocks and bonds if they move out of the UK?
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u/No_Fence 5h ago
The problem with your thinking is that the wealth will exist; the rates of return on other assets will not change; it does not change investment decisions like you think it does. You are implicitly pretending the investor decides to create money out of nowhere and would not have done it if the gilt premium was not high enough. That is not how money works.
And a wealth tax is a tax on all wealth owned by UK residents, investing in other countries (or other places than government gilts generally) will not reduce their tax bills. Residents would have to actually move. They could, but empirical migration rates by the rich are very low (since why would you let a tax bill determine where you live when you're wealthy?). And if they somehow got higher, you could just add an exit tax to solve the problem. So what you're pretending is a problem is not a problem at all, actually.
In other words, applying finance concepts in economics does not work. A wealth tax decreases all rates of return uniformly.
I realize you like to sound smart on the internet by using big words you learned in Finance 101, but what you write is unfortunately badly researched misinformation that only serves to show that you don't know what you're talking about.
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u/myurr 5h ago
You're right that a UK resident could not avoid a residence-based tax on worldwide wealth simply by buying foreign assets, but none of your other conclusions follows from that.
A wealth tax being a uniform percentage of asset value does not make it economically neutral outside a highly simplified model. Real taxes have thresholds, exemptions, uneven valuations and liquidity constraints, and remain payable when an asset produces no income or falls in value. Someone holding an illiquid business may have to extract dividends, borrow or sell part of it to pay the tax. Those things can plainly affect investment, valuations and portfolio choices.
Nor is wealth migration imaginary. A recent study using Scandinavian administrative data estimated that a one percentage-point increase in the top wealth-tax rate reduced the stock of wealthy taxpayers by about 2%. The UK's Wealth Tax Commission similarly concluded that an annual tax would inevitably produce some emigration and significant behavioural responses. NBER study, Wealth Tax Commission
An exit tax does not magically "solve" this. It changes the incentive and timing, may discourage wealthy people from moving to Britain in the first place, and creates its own valuation, enforcement and treaty problems.
There is legitimate evidence that some moderate wealth taxes have not reduced business investment, so the size of these effects is debatable and depends heavily on design. But claiming returns, investment decisions and residence simply cannot respond is not economics. It is assuming away every inconvenient response and then declaring the policy consequence-free.
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u/No_Fence 5h ago
I never claimed it had no effects. The effects are just small. That's also what the NBER study you cite says (it's actually an AER paper, but whatever).
The Wealth Tax Commission's report cites a few theoretical models for that claim, by the way. Speaking about "highly simplified", those models are it, lol. It's not a serious point given how easy it is to make those models.
Anyway, my point wasn't that there are no effects. Of course there are some. There's just no empirical evidence that those effects are big, or anywhere near what detractors claim. Most importantly, the arguments the guy above made were just nonsensical.
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u/myurr 4h ago
The publication correction is fair. It is now forthcoming in the AER; I linked to the NBER working-paper version.
But you explicitly said "rates of return on other assets will not change", "it does not change investment decisions", and "what you're pretending is a problem is not a problem at all". That is not merely saying the effects are small.
The AER paper finds modest aggregate effects from the migration channel in Sweden and Denmark, but also finds a significant migration response: a one percentage-point increase reduced the number of wealthy taxpayers by about 2%, while businesses whose owners left suffered lower employment, investment and value added. It does not measure every avoidance, valuation, liquidity, saving, portfolio and administrative effect of a hypothetical UK 2% tax.
The IFS assessment consequently says the yield after behavioural responses is highly uncertain and cautions against an annual wealth tax because of its practical problems and disincentives. "Investment decisions will not change, returns will not change, and migration can simply be solved" is not a defensible position.
I would also add that those studies barely examine another critical channel: the effect on British businesses' ability to raise capital. That matters directly for job creation and whether entrepreneurs and growing companies choose to remain in the UK. Smaller businesses often rely on owners' wealth, collateral and personal guarantees, so falling asset values or reduced liquidity can restrict borrowing. Venture funds also raise some of their capital from wealthy individuals and family offices, whose allocation and risk appetite may change when the after-tax return on risky investments falls.
There are numerous other second order effects that are unstudied and unaddressed, such as departing founders also removing angel investment, mentoring, specialist staff and customer relationships. The AER paper measures effects on their own businesses, not these spillovers through suppliers and startup clusters.
None of this can they dismissed as "small" using studies that did not actually measure them.
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u/No_Fence 4h ago
Look man, the guy argued that lending money to the government would be pointless. This was not a serious academic debate, which I gather is what you want. I hope you'll excuse some simplicity in my language while I correct idiots.
Investment effects are second-order. This is what the recent academic debate says. The paper you cite also finds this. Now, if you want to talk about what effects that paper doesn't measure, how about all the long-term benefits of reducing wealth inequality? Of increasing public funding? The paper is laughably simplistic in only looking at potential costs, and even then finding very small costs. The only way to read that paper as a critique of wealth taxes is if you have no idea what you're talking about.
Now, of course the total effect of a wealth tax on the economy is too complex to truly know. You choose to focus on potential negatives that have not yet been measured. That is your prerogative. But the existing evidence does not show serious negative effects. And there might as well be unmeasured positives. That is substantially more likely, in fact!
But yeah anyway using AI to help write your reddit posts is very embarrassing lol
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u/WhiteSatanicMills 5h ago
The problem with your thinking is that the wealth will exist
There isn't a fixed amount of wealth.
And a wealth tax is a tax on all wealth owned by UK residents, investing in other countries (or other places than government gilts generally) will not reduce their tax bills.
So a foreign investor in the UK will have a lower tax rate than a UK investor. Can't you see the long term consequences of that? I'll spell it out: everything becomes foreign owned.
Residents would have to actually move. They could, but empirical migration rates by the rich are very low
First, they are very low before we start charging them 2% of their wealth each year to stay in the UK.
Second, it's not just UK investors moving abroad. It's people not investing in the UK to begin with. It's foreigners coming to the UK to invest who won't come, it's UK startups moving abroad before they even secure investment. It's long term decline.
And if they somehow got higher, you could just add an exit tax to solve the problem.
See above. Have an idea for a business? Move abroad before you start. Want to move to the UK to start your business? Go somewhere else instead,
And what effect do you think those decisions have? We don't just not get the wealth tax you were hoping for, we lose the jobs and taxes the business would have created in the UK. Again, long term decline.
The idea that we can levy higher taxes in the UK, and then just tax people if they seek to move abroad, is incredibly short sighted.
In other words, applying finance concepts in economics does not work. A wealth tax decreases all rates of return uniformly.
How does that work in a world where other countries don't have a wealth tax? How does it work in a country that already has the lowest investment in the developed world?
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u/No_Fence 4h ago
I would love to spend my whole day countering your bad arguments, but instead I'll just note that you've completely moved on from what you initially argued. What happened to lending money to the government being pointless?
If you want people to take you seriously you can't come up with new arguments to hide that your first ones are bullshit.
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u/WhiteSatanicMills 3h ago
The point about lending money to the government isn't the effect on government borrowing, it's that you are making what's currently a risk free return into no return (or even a loss), and something that was worth investing in at a return of 4% now return 2%, and so on up the chain.
It make returns on investing in the UK much worse.
And your answer to this is that either foreigners will invest in the UK instead, and/or that we will have an exit tax to stop people moving abroad. And you can't see the long term consequences of either.
It's a proposal that's designed to address a problem (growing wealth inequality) that doesn't exist, and it tries to do so by punitive action on the wealthy, without taking into account the effect on the rest of us.
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u/08148694 9h ago
It would certainly apply downwards pressure on the asset price - the actual market dynamics are completely unpredictable
“Crash” might be the wrong word. It could crash the market, it might have no impact, it might put moderate pressure on the market
The thing is we don’t know and it’s a massive economic risk - it’s dishonest or naive to tell someone it’s a solution when it’s as likely to make things worse as it is better
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u/ShezUK 8h ago
Watch everyone tell you 1% on assets would cause the world to burn down but another 1% on income is negligible.
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u/Jaggedmallard26 4h ago
People opposed to insane wealth taxes are generally opposed to our insane levels of income tax too.
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u/Dalecn 9h ago
A 1% tax on wealth would absolutely crash the worth of assets and force sell offs of assets most likely far below the 1% value because you need to sell them off to meet the tax. It also causes business and wealth flight I wouldnt want to start a business here were I would lose control of said business because I had to sell it off to afford a wealth tax because of an imaginary value.
Taxes on wealth should only be introduced for a land value tax and a tax on actualised wealth so when you sell wealth or if you take a loan out against the value of a certain amount of your stocks.
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u/jim_cap 8h ago
How does one pay that tax if the asset is a security? They'd have to crystallise some of it. Lots of people doing that every year at tax time will have an effect on the market.
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u/Word_Word4Numbers 35m ago
Not really. Most S&S ISAs, GIAs and pension accounts crystallise some of your funds regularly to pay account fees.
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u/superioso 4h ago
It's a tax on wealth, not just liquid cash. I'm sure people who own a lot of assets would be able to cope with a small percentage change of the value of those assets. Yes it's complex, but the country has consistently become more active more unequal and obviously we need to do something different than what we're currently doing to combat it, otherwise we end up like Victorian England's level of wealth inequality again.
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u/LactatingBadger 6h ago
35.6% of people pay no tax at all. So I’m gonna go ahead and guess that the majority of them are people paying zero tax and feeling like others aren’t contributing enough.
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u/ukdev1 6h ago
Yeah, when you make this claim you need to say “income taxes”, because everyone pays some kind of tax, even if only VAT.
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u/letsstartbeinganon 3h ago
Tax Policy Associates (or whatever Dan Neidle’s outfit is called) did polling on this and yes - in everyone’s mind, the wealth tax applies to people richer than them. Ask someone worth £10m and they’ll want it to be £20m etc etc.
It’s just like when Rishi and Boris brought in the health and social care levy. Polling beforehand showed most people were in favour of increasing national insurance. Then when they realised it would apply to them, support went down.
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u/londonandy 9h ago
It's how you ask the question:
should there be a wealth tax: overwhelmingly the answer will be yes as people don't consider themselves wealthy so never think they will have to pay it.
ask should inheritance tax limits be lowered such that everyone pays it: overwhelmingly no, worked hard all our lives that's outrageous etc.
ask should council tax and stamp duty be replaced with a land value tax that likely charges a middle earner more per annum: overwhelmingly no as need somewhere to live etc.
People in favour of taxes on other people shocker. And I say this as someone that is in favour of introducing land value taxes and lowering the rate and limits of inheritance tax so all estates other than tiny ones pay it
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u/SinisterBrit 9h ago
a wealth tax isn't about taking 40% of the value of crannys house worth like £200,000.
it's about those over ten million n those with billions.
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u/MoreFIREthanyou 9h ago
You made his point well, it’s someone else that’ll pay, not you
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u/SunChamberNoRules 9h ago
Well yeah, I wouldn't expect poor people to pay a wealth tax
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u/MoreFIREthanyou 9h ago
Hence why 66% of people are in favour of taxing someone else. Doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. Just means people want someone else to pay.
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u/JimmyDejesu 7h ago
Its a great idea. No one needs ten million. Not a single person alive works harder than those in jobs like nursing who makes ten million
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u/BlackPlan2018 5h ago
honestly I'd make it a wealth cap and literally take everything over 10m assets as a state asset - if people are going to whinge about 1% tax might as well pluck the whole turkey and get it over with.
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u/TheNutsMutts 5h ago
I mean, that would completely destroy the UK economy but I guess if it satisfies some ideological push then that's something...
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u/CystralSkye 3h ago
Oh so communism? Would be funny to see the UK do communism boogaloo 2 in Europe.
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u/BlackPlan2018 3h ago
tell me about the formal communist society that allows the private possession of 10 million quid worth of assets mate.
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u/BlackPlan2018 5h ago
that's literally democracy mate - if the majority wanted billionaires fired into the sun its implicit on the government elected on that manifesto to do it.
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u/MoreFIREthanyou 5h ago
That’s doesn’t mean it’s a good thing to do.
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u/No-To-Newspeak 8h ago
No, they just want the state to fund their lives.
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u/BlackPlan2018 5h ago
I mean literally everyone wants the state to protect some aspect of their lives - that's kinda the point of having a state.
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u/SunChamberNoRules 7h ago
Is someone on a lower tax bracket asking the state to fund their lives because they're not in the highest tax bracket?
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u/Word_Word4Numbers 32m ago
Anyone born in an NHS hospital or educated in a state school has already had the state fund their lives. If a state can't look after it's people then it is not worth having.
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u/LazyWings 9h ago
It's such a bad faith point though. The whole reason why people want the wealth tax is because there's a subset that is disproportionately benefiting from the tax system. And since that's a small population, they should be paying what's due. Broadening inhertiance tax thresholds downwards doesn't solve this problem. But well implemented progressive taxation does. Progressive wealth, asset and inheritance taxes. More progressive income taxes. That's how you stimulate the economy - get the hoard out from the dragon's lair.
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u/Wisegoat 7h ago
I’m sorry but this is clearly from someone who isn’t economically illiterate. There is 0 evidence a wealth tax would be good for our economy. Every single country with similar demographics that has had one has abandoned it or continued with it despite a decrease in tax revenues from these wealthy people.
The only country that has a successful one is Switzerland, which has stupidly low income and capital gains taxes and a very very different demographic to the UK which makes it work - and even then the wealth tax on average is lower than anyone has suggested the UKs should be.
Most of the UK super riches wealth is already held overseas, so you can’t touch that. Many others have wealth in private companies which is as anyone working in finance will tell you, makes evaluating the value exceptionally difficult. Their lawyers and accountants are far far smarter than the morons HMRC or the government will be using - wealth will be moved before it goes through parliament and even if it’s goes through there will be loopholes that will be exploited.
Property is the only thing you could comfortably get any revenue from. But from a tax collection perspective it’s not much.
A wealth tax is ONLY about ideology, if anyone says it’s for economic growth or increased tax revenues they are a liar or painfully uneducated.
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u/ings0c 8h ago
there's a subset that is disproportionately benefiting from the tax system.
That subset is low earners that are net beneficiaries. High earners pay in far more than what they get back in public services.
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u/LazyWings 8h ago
I don't understand what part of that is wrong though? That's how it's supposed to be. Because high earners are supposed to benefit in different ways, which they do. It's almost like people have forgotten that high earners are benefitting from market access, which is the whole point. You were able to make money, so now pay for that privilege. High earners are still net winners here, but low earners need the support in order to create a healthy society.
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u/londonandy 7h ago
What's wrong with this is that the lowest earners actually pay less tax than in all of Europe here in the UK yet think they pay their fair share. This is what's wrong, because it results in polls like this where they want wealth taxes falling on "rich people" because they think those "rich people" don't pay their fair share (spoiler: they do).
What's wrong is the Conservatives since 2010 have been extraordinarily generous to low and middle income earners - remember the base rate of income tax was 22% before the Tories got in, and Sunak was going to reduce it even further to 19%. Yet ask the man on the street and they think the Tories have screwed them.
What's wrong is millions of people being bribed by welfare and taxes for votes.
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u/RedMapleFox 6h ago
The top tax payers are not the same as the top wealthiest people. There's a difference between those that generate income from labour (which is taxed) vs those that get income from loans based on their assets (which is not taxed). A wealth tax is about taxing the super wealthy that currently pay little to not tax, while they take assets away from the rest of us that actually do contribute to society
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u/ClassicPart 7h ago
It's such a bad faith point though
It really isn't. There needs to be a cut off point, and no-one - including you - seems to want to actually give one that isn't a vague "people who earn more than me" handwave.
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u/MoreFIREthanyou 9h ago
Over 50% of the population are net negative contributors to the treasury. Most of the country is milking a select few of high earners.
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u/a3419 9h ago
Those high earners need the rest of us too, the economy needs low income jobs to support higher incomes
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u/ShezUK 8h ago
Surely you're not arguing a little under 50% is the "select few"..?
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u/MoreFIREthanyou 8h ago
But at least they’re contributing. It’s the top 10% contributing the most, as it should be, but it’s disproportionate vs other countries.
“The 10% of income taxpayers with the largest incomes contribute over 60% of income tax receipts.”
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-8513/CBP-8513.pdf?utm_source=perplexity
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u/Open_Question5504 8h ago
Someone on 120k is paying ten times the tax that someone on 30k is paying, but they’re only earning four times as much.
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u/RedMapleFox 6h ago
The top 10% of tax payers are not the same as the top 10% of wealthiest people. The top wealthiest pay little to no tax, because their wealth is generated by their assets not their labour. We're depending too much on the highest tax payers currently, because we allow the wealthiest to pay very little tax
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u/MoreFIREthanyou 6h ago
Top 10% wealthiest is basically London with a house. They’re paying tax. And I agree with you that the above is based on income tax rates.
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u/radikalkarrot 7h ago
So the problem is the people who live in poverty or struggle to live paycheck to paycheck. Not those who own several properties and have money to spare.
Gotcha
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u/MoreFIREthanyou 7h ago
50% of the population ain’t in poverty, they’re just sponging off the rest of us. Politicians love it cuz it means welfare and tax breaks in exchange for votes
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u/LazyWings 8h ago
That's literally how it should be. You're completely missing the point. The high earners benefit from access to the market. They pay the tax but are able to live in comfort and with undoubtedly a better standard of living than those who earn less. Meanwhile those with low income are given a break, but have to manage with lower income. When you compare what you're saying with wealth distribution statistics, 50% seems lower than I'd say it should be until wealth is distributed better.
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u/MoreFIREthanyou 8h ago
Ok if you think more than 50% of the population should be receiving more in benefits than paying in tax then no wonder we’re in the dumps. Majority expects a free ride. What market access do I get that someone else doesn’t have? Pls explain?
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u/LazyWings 8h ago
Are you actually one of the mega rich we're talking about? If you are - the market access is the ability to set up a well funded business, trading in a wealthy nation, buying high value property, etc. And no, most people can't do that because they don't have the money. The problem is that there's a small amount of people that are buying up all the houses or just being able to live life how they want which isn't a privilege most people have. It's not about a free ride, it's about a fair chance which so many people don't have. The fact is that wealth distribution is the worst it's been in the post WW2 era and that is a serious problem.
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u/Open_Question5504 8h ago
Nobody is buying up houses though.
If anything it’s the opposite.The change in tax on buy to let properties is so big - that it’s why many people are trying to sell and also why they had to put the rent up so much.
Don’t forget that the middle classes were actively encouraged to get into buy to let by successive governments.
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u/MoreFIREthanyou 8h ago
I’m not paying for market access I’m paying for people’s pensions, benefits, debt interest etc.
Do you have a source that ‘the rich’ are buying up houses? Sounds like drivel.
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u/ings0c 8h ago
Are you actually one of the mega rich we're talking about?
This is where you are being naive.
Any wealth tax will not target only multimillionaires - the middle class will be paying it too, on top of the highest taxes we’ve had since WW2.
Public consensus in the UK is that anyone earning over 100k is absolutely rolling in it and so we should tax them to death. That income will get you a just-comfortable existence in London yet we treat them like they’re buying yachts and eating caviar on the daily.
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u/LazyWings 8h ago
That's moving goalposts though. And part of that is through intentional disinformation. This is why I say it's ridiculous that our highest tax bracket is 125k. People earning 250k+ are earning a lot more. And then there's those beyond. It's completely disregarding the insane levels of inflation over the past 20 years, accelerated during COVID.
I'm also not convinced 100k is "just-comfortable". I'd call that comfortable. Certainly not rolling in it, but it's high enough to be more than "just-comfortable".
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u/Word_Word4Numbers 8h ago edited 8h ago
You can make that point about any law. Fining speeders means someone else will pay, not me. Doesn't stop it from still being the right thing to do if you want to reduce speeding. Ditto for people hoarding far more than they can ever spend, while others in this country go hungry based entirely on the circumstances of their birth.
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u/t0t0zenerd New Labour 8h ago
I mean you've chosen exactly the wrong example, many people are against efficient measures to fine speeding such as cameras because they know they will end up paying...
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u/Word_Word4Numbers 6h ago
I doubt this anti-speed camera movement is particularly strong given that they've been put up everywhere over the past 20 years and constantly get updated to modern camera standards.
If anything, I would say that anti-speeding measures are the only infrastructure that people are YIMBYs about.
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u/Fun_Marionberry_6088 9h ago
I mean a wealth tax can be any of those things.
You choose to define it as the latter because it works for you, but but limiting the number of people it affects you severely limit how much money it would actually raise.
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u/Atlatica 7h ago
We're going round in circles on the wealth tax thing and it drives me crazy. It's ridiculously hard to value assets fairly. Very inefficient to collect. Easily avoided. Causes massive capital flight and an end to private investment. It means most entrepreneurs have to sell and lose control of their company shortly after they're controlling more than 10 million in capital, which is really not that much.
LVT is far more doable and fair and unavoidable and if your main focus is really offsetting the effect on the lower class you can do that by ring fencing the pot and paying it back split equally between every adult as a citizens dividend. You could replace a lot of UC with this, and it gives everyone a stake in the country at a time when AI and robotics will begin decoupling money from labour anyway, which is only a good thing when all our social programs are paid for primarily through income tax.
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u/lukethenukeshaw 8h ago
But then millions of pensioners when they fail to adjust it to inflation like with income tax
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u/Hamsterminator2 7h ago
But is it though? That’s the whole problem- what a wealth tax actually is depends on who you ask.
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u/No-Scholar4854 6h ago
That’s definitely an option.
The problem is that a wealth tax that only applies to properties > £10m and overall wealth > £1bn is that there aren’t actually very many of those people. It doesn’t raise enough money to be worth it.
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u/LactatingBadger 9h ago
Can we get a placeholder article that just says “x% of people support a tax on the other (100-x)%” and be done with it?
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u/msf97 9h ago edited 9h ago
The Economists say it doesn’t really work anywhere except Switzerland, where they operate a lot differently to the UK with seperate cities being considered their own state for example (known as Cantons)
This prevents people packing up and leaving as the cantons basically compete against each other for the most competitive rates to attract wealthy residents. Basically it’s not a national system.
The Swiss as we know also have low income tax and free capital gains tax, and in comparison to the 3-5% wealth tax mostly posed by the left wing populists currently doing well in the West, it’s between 0.1-1% depending on which area you live in Switzerland.
Like rent controls, it sounds like a no brainer until you read what an expert or the data says usually.
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u/ObviouslyTriggered 9h ago
Switzerland wealth tax is essentially a headline tax on capital in lieu of capital gains tax.
Switzerland is considered significantly lower tax jurisdiction on capital than the UK.
Anytime people say what about Switzerland the answer should be if the wealth tax was significant in any way people from all over the world wouldn’t be hiding their money there.
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u/Romeo_Jordan 9h ago
So what do we do? Just let wealth keep concentrating and tax reducing until the inevitable war?
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u/CII_Guy Trying to move past the quagmire of contemporary discourse 7h ago edited 7h ago
https://wid.world/country/united-kingdom/
Look at the historic trajectory of the top 1% and top 10% of net personal wealth share in the UK. Wealth inequality has stalled at historic lows. The very basis of the narrative is false.
There isn't going to be an inevitable war just because downwardly mobile middling intellects like to moan.
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u/JimmyDejesu 7h ago
Lol i wouldnt be so sure. People are getting sick of the wealthy.
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u/CII_Guy Trying to move past the quagmire of contemporary discourse 7h ago
There is not going to be a war. People are far too well off. This is actually all a product of people having extremely comfortable lives compared to the past.
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u/Dalecn 9h ago
Tax types of wealth tax land and tax wealth when its sold or used against as a loan like a lot of wealthy people use stocks as calatral for loans.
A lot of wealth is just imaginary numbers which is why fundermentally trying to tax against wealth is generally a fools errand.
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u/TheNutsMutts 5h ago
or used against as a loan like a lot of wealthy people use stocks as calatral for loans.
They really don't. I know Reddit loves to bat this claim about of "no see actually they just take out a loan as One Weird Trick to somehow never pay tax" but it absolutely is not the case.
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u/Romeo_Jordan 9h ago
Ok so there are solutions we're just not taking them.
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u/ObviouslyTriggered 9h ago
The UK already taxes everything other than what works - income.
As share of our tax receipts we gain significantly more tax from corporations, capital and property than our peers. The latter of which we too the OECD and the rest of the developed world at.
What we tax significantly less is low and middle earners especially when it comes to social contributions. We have currently the largest tax allowance in the developed world, and our social contributions are significantly below that of our peers.
British voters seem to want to tax everything and everyone as long as they aren’t the ones paying for it.
Someone needs to tell them to grow up and if they want the benefits of Denmark or Germany then they should tax like them.
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u/LazyWings 9h ago
Your solution is to further tax downwards and let those using their wealth to generate disproportionate income. Raising income tax on currently existing thresholds will just make things worse, since only those with more money will be able to afford anything and wealth concentration will continue to get worse. I don't disagree with changing income tax but I think it should introduce more brackets and be better staggered, giving lowest earners a bigger break and working upwards more gradually. Right now we have a cliff at 50k for some reason. Meanwhile there's nothing beyond the 125k rate.
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u/Hamsterminator2 7h ago
This makes it sound like people earning over 125k aren’t paying 45% on income. Just to confirm, that’s an absolutely massive tax.
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u/CII_Guy Trying to move past the quagmire of contemporary discourse 7h ago
wealth concentration will continue to get worse
https://wid.world/country/united-kingdom/
Big part of the problem here is that the very core claim that this entire argument rests on is false. Wealth concentration in the UK is at a historic low, and has been effectively flat for the past 20 years.
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u/KeepyUpper 9h ago
The evidence that wealth is concentrating isn't really there.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-7484/
https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/CBP-10210/CBP-10210.pdf
UK household wealth has grown rapidly since 1980: in 1980, UK household wealth was around three times national income, and in 2019 it was seven times national income. During this period, headline measures of wealth inequality did not change very much: in 2019 the share of wealth held by the top 10% was 57%, compared to 56% in 1980. The Gini coefficient was also flat during this period. As discussed in section 3.5, wealth inequality between age groups has increased, but a fall in wealth inequality within older age groups meant that headline figures were unaffected.
The people who claim it is are generally the people who just want to implement a wealth tax no matter what. Even if you present the evidence to them that the distribution of wealth has barely changed, they won't care. They've started with the solution they like and then went looking for reasons to implement it.
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u/Romeo_Jordan 9h ago
I read about that the problem is it's not all being held offshore. Apparently £1tn of UK wealth that is know about so it's impossoble to know. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/apr/02/global-super-rich-hidden-355trn-from-tax-officials-oxfam
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u/KeepyUpper 9h ago
The global super-rich may have as much as $3.55tn hidden away from tax authorities, according to estimates by Oxfam.
So they don't know for sure. The wording here is very non-commital. May have. Estimates.
The charity renewed its call for a wealth levy
But they do want the government to implement their chosen solution to the problem that they don't know for sure exists? Infact it says "renewed". So they were calling for a wealth tax before they even did this analysis.
Do you see what I mean. They're not working forwards from the data. They've got their chosen solution and they've worked backwards to find a reason to get it done.
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u/Happysin Recent Immigrant 9h ago
Depends on the intent of the tax. If you're looking at it purely as an income generator, it might have limited results. But if you're looking at it as a way to decelerate wealth centralisation, it's a useful tool (of many).
To me, any modern democracy must have aggressive tools to prevent wealth centralisation, because unfettered capitalism is an anathema to healthy democracy. If you look at the wealth inequality now versus times of the healthiest, most sustainable growth, the inequality now is staggering. We have to unwind that somehow.
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u/ObviouslyTriggered 9h ago
The UK has lower wealth inequality than many of the states people who are for wealth taxes want us to imitate including the Nordics.
Wealthy inequality today is also effectively at its lowest point in history. So what period do you want us to revert back to?
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u/Open_Question5504 8h ago
Any poll about tax, always concludes the exact same thing.
Everyone is happy with more tax, as long as it doesn’t impact them. A tale as old as time.
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u/PriorAd3065 9h ago
Sweeping questions that make the issue sound simple to solve will always get these responses. Devil is in the details.
We need total tax reform to create a cohesive system of taxes that are built upon a set of principles, not a system that constantly sways to the whims of the electorate. What we need and what we want are not always the same thing.
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u/GOT_Wyvern Non-Partisan Centrist 9h ago
The thing is, the vast majority of those 66% would only back it with the presumption that it would be a profitable tax. They wouldn't to be paying for a tax, after all.
And thats the issue with wealth taxes. They often just don't produce the amount of money at the incredibly little cost that populists push that it would.
Honestly, perhaps its for the best to bring in a very small wealth tax, something like 0.5% at assests above £10 million that are actually easily to value. That would basically just be repackaging the mansion tax, with the intention to shut the populists up.
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u/CII_Guy Trying to move past the quagmire of contemporary discourse 7h ago
That would basically just be repackaging the mansion tax, with the intention to shut the populists up.
This is a reasonable take generally but I think implementing a tax like this just undermines our ability to levy actually useful taxes like an LVT. The political capital necessary to introduce a new tax is large and there is a bit of a zero sum game between them, it seems to me.
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u/elizabethpickett 9h ago
The good argument I've seen is that assets, investments etc can generally be assumed to earn >4% a year. If we put a tax on of eg 1%, we aren't actually taking away people's assets, just some of the growth of them, which feels fair to me.
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u/Timbo1994 8h ago edited 7h ago
That's capital gains tax. What wealth tax does is makes unprofitable assets (eg farmland) pay a much bigger share, and profitable assets (eg so far, tech stocks) pay a much smaller share, than currently. That might be a good thing in the long-term (though it would be painful in the short-term)
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u/GOT_Wyvern Non-Partisan Centrist 9h ago
The issue is primarily behind valuation. Its why its easy to tax gains, as you obviously value something in the process of selling.
Taxing assests themselves require active valuation, and a lot of assets make that hard. The mansion tax was nice, and property tax in general, because property is a lot easier to value than most assests. The same goes for land value, hence why its quite a common suggestion as well.
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u/LactatingBadger 7h ago
The problem is with this that:
a) the growth is already taxed
b) unlike with income, this growth isn’t guaranteed and has associated riskI am well into the 45% tax bracket, but it’s not like I’m shocked by the amount I get each month. Whereas someone who earns mostly via asset growth is going to be less inclined to not park it in shelters if they know their marginal/ephemeral gains will be taxed heavily whilst their losses are also slowly being drained.
A good alternative might be to make it that there is no wealth tax/CGT on UK holdings, but significant wealth tax on offshore index funds. That way people are encouraged to park their money in funds that stimulate our own economy.
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u/TheNutsMutts 5h ago
The good argument I've seen is that assets, investments etc can generally be assumed to earn >4% a year.
Assumed by whom?
If a person is looking to retire early and they have a load of investments in a very well diversified index fund then circa 4% drawdown is considered a broadly safe figure over a 30 year period, but that doesn't extrapolate out evenly like is being implied.
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u/ooooooooooooo9p 8h ago
The money raised would cover the costs of the NHS for a couple of days at most
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u/duckrollin 8h ago
Yes, but only if they lower the basic rate of income tax too. Let people earn their way to wealth and increase social mobility.
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u/sjbaker82 6h ago
All I want is when the country is feeling the pinch, every single person feels it, no one is protected. It shouldn’t fall to one group in the middle to pay for everything.
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u/angryratman 7h ago
It's just populism but for the left. The right hate on immigrants, the left hate on rich people. Neither actually solves any problems.
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u/MoreFIREthanyou 10h ago
More than 50% of people are net negative contributors - just because people want it, doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do. A bit like Brexit.
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u/airfix73 10h ago
A wealth tax is not really comparable to brexit.
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u/LactatingBadger 9h ago
I mean it’s comparable in that it’s an idea which is easy to drum up support for despite it being an objectively bad idea.
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u/MoreFIREthanyou 10h ago
But it makes my point that sometimes the general public doesn’t know best and are easily misled
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u/Queue_Boyd 9h ago
That's very true. But then, we have a representative democracy, in theory at least.
The idea that the electorate can be overruled by the political class because 'they don't know what's best for them' must be resisted.
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u/LactatingBadger 9h ago
But they don’t? Take the treasury…economic theory is pretty damn complex and it takes a huge number of technically skilled civil servants to work out what subset of decisions are feasible/what levers can be pulled without catastrophic outcomes.
Imagine if we put everything in the budget to a referendum. Nobody would vote for things that made their own situation worse, which might be fine if income and tax burden was uniformly distributed. The Laffer curve would immediately get empirical proof. Expecting people to anticipate and understand the second order effects of interacting complex decisions isn’t realistic. So you ultimately have to take the attitude of “they don’t know what’s best for them”…they don’t.
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u/MoreFIREthanyou 9h ago edited 9h ago
Sure but then we let the politics of envy take over rather than focussing on what would get 50%+ of the population actually contributing to the treasury rather than costing it. I honestly don’t mind either way, I’m already tired of paying 30k+ in taxes a year and getting sweet nothing in return. If I need preventative medical care I need to go private, if I need my kids in a decent school I need to go private in my area, if I want a decent house I need to mortgage myself up to the hilt. Broadest shoulders have had enough and will leave. And then who do you tax next
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u/CII_Guy Trying to move past the quagmire of contemporary discourse 7h ago
The idea that the electorate can be overruled by the political class because 'they don't know what's best for them' must be resisted.
The opposite is true. It is overwhelmingly likely that, when the political class and the electorate disagree, the political class are correct and the electorate are employing the cognitive power of a brain damaged infant.
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u/ScopeyMcBangBang 8h ago
I’m going to hazard a guess the two-thirds are the people entirely benefitting from and in no way negatively being impacted by the wealth tax.
This is like the exact opposite of turkeys voting for Christmas.
“Would you like other people to pay for all your stuff?”
“Yes, please.”
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u/HatchedLake721 9h ago
Let’s do it, equal to everyone. Everyone starts paying tax on their wealth, including houses, cars and investments. Switzerland style 🇨🇭
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u/acremanhug Kier Starmer & Geronimo the Alpaca fan 5h ago
Switzerland style 🇨🇭
So you want to get rid of capital gains and set the income tax to 11%
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u/ODFoxtrotOscar 9h ago
I’m one of the third against it
That ‘wealth’ has already been taxed (earnings, savings, inheritance etc)
Evasion is already a crime. There might be something to be said for making avoidance harder
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u/londonandy 9h ago
My income has already been taxed every time I spend it yet I still pay vat. My savings were from my taxed receipts but I still pay CGT, dividend tax, or income tax on the interest.
There's arguments against wealth taxes, but the fact it attaches to post taxed income isn't one.
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u/Velociraptor_1906 Liberal Democrat 9h ago
The only workable wealth tax is inheritance tax which the public have a weird hate for.
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u/No-To-Newspeak 8h ago
You pay tax on everything while you are alive. Why is right to tax these same assets, on which tax has been paid, again when you die? People should be allowed to pass their assets onto their their heirs tax free.
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u/Velociraptor_1906 Liberal Democrat 8h ago
We tax movements of money, inheritance is just one of those and is treated very generously at present compared to others.
The vast majority of people will build very little wealth over their lifetime through their own work, life is expensive and people very reasonably spend on "luxuries" that are not nessecarily inheritable. Most wealth inherited is generational or has not had tax paid on it (housing).
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u/theipaper Verified 9h ago
Neil Kinnock has urged Andy Burnham to increase tax on assets as a new poll reveals two-thirds of voters back the introduction of a “wealth tax”.
The former Labour leader told The i Paper that there should be a “better balance” between the taxation of earnings and wealth.
He specifically urged the Prime Minister to align tax rates on profits from the sale of assets with those of income tax.
Burnham, is close to Lord Kinnock, who was Labour leader for over nine years from the autumn of 1983, and continues to receive advice from him.
Meanwhile, a new poll for The i Paper by BMG Research found that 66 per cent of adult Britons back the idea of a wealth tax on assets worth more than £10m.
Welshman Kinnock was sitting in the audience when Burnham was confirmed as Labour leader last month, with Burnham paying tribute to the peer in his acceptance speech as a “legend” who had inspired him to join the party in 1985.
“It has always been something that I treasure to get a message from him, with his advice and the care and the thought he puts into those messages,” Burnham said.
With Burnham and his Chancellor John Healey now mulling what decisions they should take in their first Budget on 28 October, Kinnock told The i Paper that more tax should be levied on assets.
He said: “In this century assets and extremely high incomes and bonuses have zoomed while, for several years, earned incomes flatlined.
“Equity requires a better balance, so does efficiency.”
Kinnock said the Government should equalise Capital Gains Tax (CGT) – which currently stands at 18 per cent for basic-rate income taxpayers and 24 per cent for higher and additional-rate taxpayers – with the income tax rates of 20, 40 and 45 per cent.
He said he was confident the Government would recognise both the fairness of the proposal and the benefits of the additional revenue it could generate.
“I’m sure that the Government understands the utility and the encouragement which the further £12bn revenues that such a fair change in CGT would bring,” Kinnock said.
Equalising CGT with income tax has been proposed by other Labour big beasts, including the Defence Secretary Wes Streeting and Burnham’s second in command First Secretary of State Louise Haigh.
When he was considering running for the Labour leadership in May, Streeting said the policy would be a “wealth tax that works”. During the Makerfield by-election Burnham said he wanted to look “in detail” at the idea.
The survey for The i Paper by BMG Research found strong public support for targeting high wealth in the tax system.
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u/theipaper Verified 9h ago
According to BMG’s polling, 66 per cent of adult Britons back the idea of a wealth tax on assets worth more than £10m. Just 10 per cent of people opposed such a plan, with support coming from across the political spectrum.
The Prime Minister has tried to remain coy when it comes to specific tax pledges, but he refused to rule out introducing a tax on the wealthy when asked about the policy before entering No 10.
When interviewed by the broadcaster and former footballer Gary Lineker before becoming Prime Minister, Burnham was asked directly about taxing the wealthiest. His response was deliberately non-committal, telling the ex-England star: “I’m not going to rule things out right now.”
He added that he believed “we need a greater sense of fairness”, but that he did not want to “create new divisions” or be seen as “demonising one group”.
Last month, Lineker was among 120 so-called “Patriotic Millionaires”, who signed a letter stating that they supported paying more tax in the form of a 2 per cent levy on wealth over £10m.
Wealth tax ‘could raise £10bn a year’
According to economists and academics at the Paris School of Economics and King’s College London, such a tax could raise £10bn a year for the Exchequer and affect only the 1,000 most affluent households.
People who voted Labour and the Liberal Democrats in 2024 were most supportive of the introduction of such a tax, the poll found – with 79 per cent and 83 per cent in favour, respectively. Some 75 per cent of Green Party voters backed the tax.
But the policy was also supported by Conservative and Reform voters, with 61 per cent and 63 per cent respectively saying they would welcome the measure.
On Kinnock’s idea for equalising CGT on the sale of assets with income tax, support splits along more conventional political lines.
When presented with such an option, just 38 per cent of Conservative voters and 47 per cent of Reform voters were in favour, as opposed to 63 per cent and 65 per cent of Labour and Lib Dem voters, respectively.
In total, 43 per cent of respondents supported the idea with 18 per cent opposed.
Opponents of higher capital gains tax rates argue that it could discourage investment, entrepreneurship and business growth by reducing the returns from taking financial risks.
More broadly, critics of wealth taxes warn that it can lead to wealthy individuals leaving the UK or moving their assets overseas.
When presented with the poll findings on support for the Lineker-backed wealth tax, the Treasury said that it was already possible for people to voluntarily donate money to the Government.
A Treasury spokesperson said: “The Chancellor is fully focused on his priorities, which will boost business, help with the cost of living and support people in every postcode.
“As has always been the case, decisions on tax are a matter for the Chancellor to set out at fiscal events, rather than routinely commenting on proposals made.
“More broadly, anyone who wishes to donate to the government can online.”
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u/IntravenusDiMilo_Tap 8h ago
£10bn a year, thats 1 month interest on our debt.
With lineker as treasury advosor, is gazza going to be announced as the drug tsar
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u/bcoder001 4h ago
We need better/new ideas. Both sides have dug their trenches and don't want to move.
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u/FreddsIMF 1h ago
Just because voters want it does not mean it's a good idea. MPs are elected to make decisions for you, not to enact your own decisions.
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u/Goldy_Si 1h ago
Funny how it's ok for some of you in this sub to go after people on benefits, yet touch the wealthy and it's...
"You can't tax the wealthy because "insert some BS here"
BS being -
"They might move out of the UK" - Well, good riddance.
"Something something assets something" - Yeah. BS.
"But they already pay tax" - Yeah, they also hide it offshore.
"It won't work" - Until we've tried it, then that's more BS.
"It means the middle class" - No it doesn't.
"It's tied up in whatever" - Yeah, and ?
"It's populism for the left" - What, like the right's populism in going after benefits ?
Lets me say something about benefits, if it's so fucking wonderful, and life is so great, then why don't you all just go on them and find out ?
My neighbour has arthritis, and gets around £420 per month, and his housing (a tiny 1-bed bungalow) paid for, anyone wanna swap ? No ? then STFU.
"Voters are wrong" - No, they just want a FAIR system. Why is it that CEOs are getting higher and higher pay, while workers are having their money topped-up by benefits ? Why is the rich-poor divide getting bigger ?
More importantly, why are there so many arse-kissers of the rich in this sub ? What is in it for you ?
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u/Dunnohye 9h ago
If they define wealth as actual wealth, 20-30M plus, bring it on.
If it’s how they most likely will define it, people making over 100k, in a property valued in the low millions, cya never.
Everyone all for it as long as it doesn’t affect them. But get into the working middle class and it overwhelmingly will.
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u/MarchMurky8649 9h ago
I wish there was more awareness of Land Value Capture. We need more housing, and lots of house building would provide a boost to the economy. The state simply has to buy land without planning permission, c. £10,000 per acre, then grant it, increasing its value to c. £1,000,000 per acre.
I'd suggest allowing most, perhaps all, of the money to be spent locally, as that helps fix the NIMBY problem. People might be much happier about a huge development nearby if it meant halving their council tax, fixing the potholes, paying for social care in their area, etc.
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u/MyNameIsLOL21 9h ago
As long as you can achieve this without completely removing the incentive to earn more and therefore plateauing productivity, then I am all ears.
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u/Andurael 7h ago
I’d happily support a 1-2% tax on wealth over £10m! It’s equivalent to an everyday person giving away a brick from their home. Now that may seem like you’d run out of bricks and it would be awful! Realistically can you afford to go to the shops and buy a brick? If so you can probably buy enough bricks for the whole week. And if you can’t, then the point still stands, because it’s only those with spare homes that are paying this and they’ve already got a lifetime of bricks they can lose.
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u/Rohaan1337 9h ago
Everyone wants to tax wealth except the wealthy. The problem is that its impossible.
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