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Cake day: March 2nd, 2024

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  • Yes the concept of a wealth tax is indeed popular in the UK right now, but the challenge as with similar taxes that target the wealthy (like capital gains taxes) is that there are so many loopholes that implementing it to be effective is really tough. An example:

    • a high net worth individual owns a company worth £100m. what tax should she pay? if it’s a 1% wealth tax, how does that tax get collected? does she have to sell some of the business to the state each year for zero cost? does she have to find another investor to buy some of the business and pay that out to the government?
    • the business has a bad year and is now only worth £80m. does the owner get a £20m tax break now? should the treasury refund the £1m?
    • the business owner goes to the bank and takes a loan of £50m with the business as security. what tax is due now? the owner can use the £50m for whatever she wants, but taxes are not due on loans.
    • she uses the £50m to buy a large amount of property abroad as an investment. what tax is due on those next year? does she have to sell a property every year to pay the wealth tax?
    • finally, the business owner decides to take a stake in a large overseas renewable energy company and buys a 40% holding worth £10m. what tax is due on that holding and how is it collected?

    most wealthy individuals have very little in the bank, and their wealth is based on notional ownership of valuable assets like companies. this is just one example of where it will be very difficult to implement a tax system that doesn’t cause business owners to take their money elsewhere to invest, or on the other hand to have endless court battles to force them to sell assets at some value to pay a tax bill.



  • Tor operator here.

    If you don’t have a second IP for your relay, don’t host at home. You will have CAPTCHAs everywhere, many sites will block you and your ISP will eventually contact you to stop degrading their IP space reputation.

    Most website owners don’t discriminate between Tor exits and relays. They subscribe to block-lists that include all known Tor IP addresses. Major online services will make your browsing experience really shitty and once you’re a “known Tor IP” it will take months to remove that reputation.

    You can run a Bridge instead, but you will eventually have the same problem.













  • the thing is, it’s a gap between the money the government is spending and the amount of money it gets through taxes and other incomes each year.

    So it’s money that has to be borrowed from folks, every year to keep things going as they are. And each time that money is borrowed it needs interest paid on it which makes the problem worse. Especially with the high interest rates around the world.

    So british people are working hard, paying their taxes and a percentage of those taxes is going towards servicing debt that has been built up, by poor spending decisions in the past.

    It’s like payday loans for governments. you’ve either got to get spending under control, make more money somehow (tricks in the car park or maybe sell crack) or eventually reach the end of the road.


  • I agree.

    But the realist in me knows it is unlikely to be allowed to happen.

    I know that the government will have to service a £15bn debt through borrowing, which will raise interest rates, mortgages, rents and require cuts to public services to pay for. That is on top of the investment needed over the next few years to stop sewage leaking into rivers and leaks of millions of litres a day.

    In addition I know that pension funds and large investors will lose substantial sums of money and will look to divest from similar risks, which could lead to more utility companies becoming insolvent. A snowball effect.

    Finally, I know that international investment in the UK will be seen as more risky.

    What the government will be doing now is weighing up those risks against the cost of raising bills by the 59% that the water companies and industry bodies are asking for. If the worst should happen, will taxpayers be better off with a couple of hundred extra £ on their water bills to pay, or potentially a lot worse off with a rapid nationalisation of multiple firms.