More taxes are coming, but the rich might not be paying them

Parties across the board are determined to raise taxes on the rich, says Merryn Somerset Webb. But that doesn't mean the tax-take will be any higher.

15-4-20-miliband-634

More of Britain's richest will leave than ed Miliband thinks

A letter from a reader. He takes issue with the idea expressed in the chart in my last blog that it is not really possible for the tax-take in the UK to go above 37% of GDP. That may have been the case up until now, he says, but given the determination of all parties to tax, tax and tax again, the take will surely go up.

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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.