Asked by: Richard Burgon (Labour - Leeds East)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will make an estimate of the number of people with wealth over £10 million in each of the past 10 years.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
The tax information HMRC holds does not include comprehensive data on the wealth of taxpayers.
The Office for National Statistics undertakes a Wealth and Assets survey biennially, which can be found here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/personalandhouseholdfinances/incomeandwealth/datasets/totalwealthwealthingreatbritain.
Table 2.5 provides a percentage of households estimated to have wealth of over £1 million. The most recent estimate was 17 per cent of households.
Asked by: Richard Burgon (Labour - Leeds East)
Question to the HM Treasury:
To ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of introducing a one-off wealth tax on individual wealth above £10 million.
Answered by Lucy Frazer - Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport
The Government is committed to a fair tax system where those with the most contribute the most. This is why the Government has taken steps to ensure the wealthy pay their fair share by reforming the taxation of dividends, pensions, and business disposals to make the tax system fairer and more sustainable.
The Government has also ensured the wealthy pay the tax that is owed. In 2019-20, HMRC secured £2.2 billion in tax from the wealthiest individuals that would have otherwise gone unpaid.
The UK does not have a single wealth tax, but it does have several taxes on assets and wealth. The UK taxes assets and wealth across many different economic activities, including the acquisition, holding, transfer and disposal of assets, and income derived from assets.
Notably, the Wealth Tax Commission, which has no connection or link to the Government, found in 2020 that if considering Inheritance Tax, Capital Gains Tax, Stamp Duty, and Stamp Duty Land Tax, the UK is among the top of the G7 countries for wealth taxes as a percentage of total wealth.
It is also clear that the Wealth Tax Commission’s suggestion of a potential one-off wealth tax in the UK would be a complex undertaking, and the amount of revenue raised would be highly dependent on the final design of the tax.