this post was submitted on 27 Aug 2023
31 points (100.0% liked)

United Kingdom

4060 readers
317 users here now

General community for news/discussion in the UK.

Less serious posts should go in [email protected] or [email protected]
More serious politics should go in [email protected].

Try not to spam the same link to multiple feddit.uk communities.
Pick the most appropriate, and put it there.

Posts should be related to UK-centric news, and should be either a link to a reputable source, or a text post on this community.

Opinion pieces are also allowed, provided they are not misleading/misrepresented/drivel, and have proper sources.

If you think "reputable news source" needs some definition, by all means start a meta thread.

Posts should be manually submitted, not by bot. Link titles should not be editorialised.

Disappointing comments will generally be left to fester in ratio, outright horrible comments will be removed.
Message the mods if you feel something really should be removed, or if a user seems to have a pattern of awful comments.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Yes, through loopholes.

An example, you may have heard of "Employee Owned Businesses", a system introduced by the Tories, modelled after John Lewis/Waitrose, which is an employee owned company. Essentially, under the scheme a privately owned cash-rich business can buy itself from its owners. This is done with the set up of an Employee Owned Trust (EOT), a separate business that temporarily owns the main business over however many years it takes to pay off the owners for the full price. After that, the business is fully employee owned and operated. However, the big incentive is that it's tax free for the original owners.

Say the business was worth £50 million. In theory you could restructure the business into an employee owned business, or sell it to anyone else, but you'd have to pay £10 million in capital gains tax, and you'd only take home £40 million. By going the EOT route you get the full £50 million.

Most high value transactions that are done use some tax incentive scheme or another to reduce the capital gains tax below the starting level of 20%. Such loopholes are not available for income tax. However, truly wealthy people don't make most of their money through salaries, their main income is capital gains.

Personally I don't think income should be taxed, at least not below some very high threshold (to prevent exploitation). You're already giving up your time, which is the ultimate value, and you're doing so in service of a business which itself is in service of society. You've done your part, you're not getting the excess profit. The things that should be taxed are when people make money from assets, when they make money not by doing things but by exploiting what they own.