Would a wealth tax save Rachel Reeves?
The News Agents
Global
4.2 • 4.3K Ratings
🗓️ 8 July 2025
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The government has studiously avoided ruling out a wealth tax this week. Minister after minister has refused to knock down the suggestion, despite the Chancellor having dismissed the idea as recently as April. So what's changed? Could a levy on wealthy individuals be on the cards for October's budget? Would it even raise any money - or is Rachel Reeves in danger of scaring wealth creators out of Britain? We speak to the incoming director of the IFS, Helen Miller.
And later, why the failure to produce an 'Epstein client list' is sending MAGA crazy - and why bad bosses who try and gag their employees are due a reckoning.
The News Agents is brought to you by HSBC UK - https://www.hsbc.co.uk/
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:10.1 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:15.6 | But the appearance has been given that they have bogged down by their own imposed limitations. There are ways around that |
| 0:24.5 | they include asset taxes. Is the Labour government considering a wealth tax, yes or no? So some of the |
| 0:31.3 | decisions that we've taken in the last year, we have asked those with the broadest shoulders to carry |
| 0:36.4 | the greatest burden. So it is looking at the changes. |
| 0:39.3 | We have an awful lot of taxes in our system currently that do tax wealth and assets. |
| 0:45.3 | It's swelling around there somewhere. It's maybe not formally in the mix. |
| 0:50.3 | It's the idea of a sort of a one-off tax. People who have a room over 10 million pounds. |
| 0:55.8 | As I say, the Chancellor will be looking in the round of the entire fiscal position. |
| 1:01.1 | I don't have a view on it. I think Rachel Reeves will... |
| 1:03.5 | You have to have a view. No, I don't. No, I don't. No, I don't have a job. No, not on wealth tax. Particularly when you come on the program like this. Not on wealth tax. |
| 1:11.2 | Rachel Reeves has paid a lot more money than I am to sit and work out how to balance the book. |
| 1:18.7 | Do you have a view on whether Britain needs a wealth tax? |
| 1:23.6 | More critically, does the Chancellor have a view on whether that is on the cards for her next budget? |
| 1:30.3 | And the most interesting thing is that Downing Street is not denying that a wealth tax is under consideration. |
| 1:39.3 | So, would it work, would it raise the money that Rachel Reeves needs? Or will it be a counterproductive measure that will have to be scrapped? Welcome to the newsagents. |
| 1:55.0 | The news agents. It's John. It's Emily. And it's very easy to say wealth tax. And people go, yeah, wealth tax. |
| 2:01.4 | Good idea. We must tax the wealthy. But it's actually quite complicated over what you do. |
| 2:06.1 | So what's being discussed at the moment, the Neil Kinnock idea, is that anyone who has got assets over £10 million should pay a 2% levy per year on their assets. So that would be an additional £200,000 tax |
| 2:23.0 | bill if you've got exactly 10 million. But how do you calculate the 10 million? And this is where |
| 2:30.8 | the detail becomes devilishly complicated. Do you say it's the value of your |
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