A unilaterally imposed UK wealth tax, mooted at 2% per hear on wealth of 100m Euros, is doomed to fail. Don’t get me wrong – I’m fully in favour of ensuring the super rich repay society for the opportunities and benefits society has conferred on them, but in practice it would lead to those that wanted to avoid this to change the country of their tax residence, hide their wealth in tax structures and further damage the reputation of the UK as a place to grow high-value businesses. 

An equally substantive risk to tax revenues is the increasing likelihood of the very large number of people that have a wealth of a few £m or more that has been paid for by UK citizens by historic rapid growth in house prices and 40% tax breaks on pension contributions upping sticks and relocating to sunshine states with little or no tax on this UK income.