Why you should ignore the CGT whiners

Entrepreneur Duncan Cheatle is complaining that changes to the CGT rules will deter people from starting up their own businesses and prompt them to turn to property instead. Merryn Somerset Webb looks at why it's the former option that offers the real route to riches.

This article is taken from Merryn Somerset Webb's free weekly personal finance email, Money Sense. Click here to sign up now: Money Sense

There's been nothing but complaints and as the days go by increasingly vitriolic ones - since Alistair Darling made his Pre- Budget speech on the 9 of October proposing a new 18% flat rate capital gains tax (CGT) for all. (To read our briefing on the CGT changes, click here: Darling's daring tax reforms.

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.