While much capital is certainly mobile, the UK has the advantage that a lot of it is in the form of land & buildings (such as those offices the govt is keen to get us back into). You'd think an ex-Treasury man would be aware of that.
Excluding offshore holdings, the UK's aggregate net household wealth is £15 trillion, of which half is land or UK-domiciled finance (shares, securities) that would be easy to assess. So would I have to sell my house to pay my tax bill?
No. Tax obligations can be converted into debt redeemed on liquidation of assets. If you sold your house in 10 years, you'd pay the tax then (assuming growth >1%, you'd still make a gain). The debt is used to back money creation by the BoE. On redemption, the money is cancelled.
An annual capital levy of 1% would raise £150bn, which is just under half the current estimate for the Covid-19 "bill". In other words, a 1% annual wealth tax for 3 years could reduce the deficit & leave some funds over for public sector investment.
