A new wealth tax is a terrible idea. The rich are already being hit by sneaky taxes – Merryn Somerset Webb

Ideologues want to squeeze more tax out of the rich with a wealth tax. They’re already wrung dry, says Merryn Somerset Webb

High angle view of pie chart made of colorful building blocks and stacks of Euro coins
(Image credit: Getty Images)

The UK isn’t a great place to have a high income. Or even a highish income. Our tax system is firmly progressive – and from pretty low levels. If you’ve been to university and have a student loan you can find yourself paying an effective marginal tax rate of 37% by the time you earn more than £25,000. And even if you don’t, you pay 28% tax from just £12,584 (including national insurance, an income tax by any other name).

Then there are the horrors of the £100,000 milestone. Once you pass that income threshold, you start to lose your measly personal allowance, whereby you normally pay no income tax below earnings of £12,500. Worse, if you have children, you start to lose your childcare allowance, too. For high-earning families, the effective tax rate can be more than 100%.

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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.