I'm On The Right of Centre Politics, But I Support Taxing Billionaires.

You'd think that if I was on the right of centre politically, I'd support the rich enjoying the fruits of their labours in the form of lower taxation, but I don't.

If I, at the lower end of the scale are paying over 50% of the money I earn in the various income taxes, VAT and Stealth taxes, then I believe that the rich should also pay exactly the same percentage. 

After all, isn't that fair? 

I pay a third of my wage in income tax, National Insurance, NEST payments and that's before I start to pay VAT on everything I buy (remember when VAT was a luxury tax?). Then I pay tax on insurance, on my pension payments, if I want to fly from an airport on holiday. 

So the amount I pay in tax eventually comes to be over 50%.

So, why shouldn't billionaires pay the same? Why are they allowed to swap earnings for dividends which attract less tax?

Now I'm altogether against the IR35 tax rules that class independent contractors as employees, because it treads on the transition from PAYE to self-employed, but when it comes to passive wealth, that is earning income from huge savings, there has to be some trimming of the fat.

If you have several hundred million in savings, investments, property, etc. you are earning quite a bit moving that money around, buying property to let out (the favourite of millionaires because the primary asset increases in value along with the monthly rental income).

I can see an argument for not taxing increases in property portfolios under (say) two or three million pounds. That sort of protect the single house owner that bought a house in London almost a century ago and now own a million pound plus house. Taxing over 5 million in savings would also protect the majortity of people.

I'm talking of second, third and above properties. Those should be taxed because they are not homes for the owner, they are investments. Taxing them or making it difficult to own large numbers of dwellings should encourage billionaires to own fewer properties, releasing them for the likes of you and me. 

The whole capital gains tax system needs to be reworked, so that a lid is put on massive property investment, so possibly a sliding scale with an increasing percentage in tax for each extra property in the portfolio. 

There needs to be some way of taxing unearned income as closely as earned income. 

And as long as you hold a UK passport and you earn the money within the UK borders, you pay the tax here.

The same goes for corporations. No matter where your head office is, if you transact with a UK citizen and/or deliver to a UK address, you pay UK tax on the item inside the UK. No special treatment for Amazon, eBay and PayPal, for instance.

Foreign nationals should pay their fair share here and not syphon money abroad tax-free.

Those that can afford an extra one percent need to start paying it. In most cases it's us the ordinary people that helped you get that money, so it's only fair you pay some back and help us out, rather than sit on it and accrue ever-increasing wealth.

The tax system needs changing so that the transition from working class to middle class or the equivalents in earnings, is a light one. We need to encourage betterment and aspiration and entrepreneurship.

But I'm talking not about millionaires so much as several-multiple millionaires, where 1% tax on earnings of any type is a drop in the ocean to the multi-millionaire, but a significant sum to someone on benefit. 

And I don't subscribe to clobbering individuals or companies. A light touch at the top of earnings, skimming off the fat and dissuading the excessive behaviour and holding onto large amounts of property and continuing to amass huge passive wealth and not spending it (in other words putting it back into the economy) is what I'm proposing.