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00:00:09You're watching TRT World, I'm Yashini Padiachi with the reminder of our
00:00:13main headlines. Iran's foreign minister says
00:00:16a Tehran and Oman are very close to deal a new shipping route through the
00:00:20straight of Hormus with technical and legal issues largely
00:00:23of resolved. Iran's revolutionary guard also issued a stark
00:00:27warning saying Tehran can can
00:00:29of allow. to pass through if the US accepts all of its
00:00:33conditions such as lifting the blockade of its
00:00:35ports the reopening
00:00:39of the straight of hormol is in fact subject to conditions said
00:00:43by the Islamic Republic of Iran and the straight will
00:00:47of be reopened on the basis of those conditions that depends on the extent to which the United
00:00:51States accepts the conditions determined by the Islamic Republic of
00:00:55of Iran. Turkey Saudi Arabia and
00:00:59Pakistan. have signed a landmark
00:01:01a defense pact in Mecca, pledging attack on one will be treated as an
00:01:05attack on all.
00:01:06a The Turkish President Erdogan says the deal reaffirms the right to
00:01:10self-defense and is not aimed any country. The deal
00:01:14comes as tensions have grown across the region since the war on Iran
00:01:17started. Russian overnight strikes on Ukraine's
00:01:21keive
00:01:21of region have killed three people, including a
00:01:24of child, three others were injured when multiple locations just
00:01:27of outside the capital were also hit at. comes as
00:01:30of president Zelensky visits Serbia on his first official visit, it's
00:01:34one
00:01:34of the few European countries that have maintained friendly relations with
00:01:38Russia. We have now reached an
00:01:42agreement with Trump that will grant the licenses, but just imagine if we had received them
00:01:46four
00:01:46of years ago, we would already be manufacturing patriots for
00:01:49in everyone, believe me, and Europe,
00:01:51of the parts of Europe that one and would like to have patriots,
00:01:55anti-ballistic systems and missiles would already have them all, I'm
00:01:59absolutely certain. Authorities
00:02:02say fire at the Ilskiy oil refinery in Russia's southern crasnador
00:02:06region has been extinguished. Russia's defense ministry said its air
00:02:10defenses destroy 397 Ukrainian drones over
00:02:14multiple regions overnight. And typhoon dolphin is moving
00:02:18towards China with the sustained wind speed of 162 km an
00:02:22hour. It's already triggered heavy rains in northern Taiwan and passed close to southern
00:02:26Japan where it injured five people and caused a large scale.
00:02:30back
00:02:30in out, the news continues here on TRT World, after
00:02:34Nexus, I'll see you again at the top
00:02:36of the
00:02:36hour.
00:02:44i
00:02:53British people haven't been tack so hard for decades, so is
00:02:56it time to squeeze more out
00:02:59of the very rich? the so-called wealth tax, a group of over
00:03:02hundred British millionaires including ex-football star Gary Linicker
00:03:06thinks it is, and they're asking the government to tax them
00:03:10and other rich people
00:03:11of more to create a fairer society. However, is it a good
00:03:15idea? has it ever worked? we asked two multi-millionaires,
00:03:19what they think? I know how hard it is to have nothing, but I've earned
00:03:23what I've got, the wealthy get wealthier, money begets money, and
00:03:26inequality just rises and rises, more from them and... moment, but
00:03:30first what is a wealth tax and how would it
00:03:33work? we need to
00:03:35of tax the billionaires, tax working people less, tax the super rich more,
00:03:39tax worth not work. it's
00:03:41of just fair, where else are you going to get the money from?
00:03:44raiding the piggy bank
00:03:45of the ultra wealthy is attempting
00:03:47of ruse for governments on the hunt for more cash. high net worth
00:03:51individuals are very good at keeping income away from the tax
00:03:54man, but a wealth tax targets what they actually own, compared
00:03:58to a monthly paycheck. It's much harder to hide a mansion or
00:04:02picasso. This is the wealth tax equation. You
00:04:06add up the value of a person's property, investments, savings, business
00:04:10assets, take away any debts
00:04:12of and that's the net worth. You then take a percentage
00:04:16of the net worth. There are usually threshholds. For example,
00:04:19economists Gabriel
00:04:21of Zuckman
00:04:21of and Ben Tippet have suggested the UK government introduce a
00:04:242% minimum
00:04:26in tax, their term for wealth tax, on households worth more than
00:04:30100 million pounds or $135 million. the
00:04:34of group called patriotic millionaires including
00:04:38of of figures like footballer Gary
00:04:41a of Linica, music producer Brian Eno and filmmaker Richard Curtis signed an open letter in Britain saying they were more than happy to
00:04:45pay the 2% wealth tax any fortune over 10 million pounds or
00:04:48around $13.5 million dollars. The
00:04:51of whole thing's gone upside down that the playing field is
00:04:55completely
00:04:57of tilted right into the pockets
00:04:58of the wealthiest people. but there are plenty of reasons wealth taxes
00:05:02have poor record of success. people can be wealthy on paper
00:05:06because they own an expensive house for
00:05:08of example, but have no liquid cash. that means they may not have the
00:05:11funds to pay. the tax bill when it arrives short of being forced to sell
00:05:15their house (not ideal) and of course the other issue very
00:05:19wealthy people are highly mobile and tend to take their money elsewhere in the
00:05:23world when they feel threatened and 2% of nothing
00:05:26is well the maths on that one is much easier.
00:05:30well let's bring in our two millionaires now and we have Mike Berners Lee
00:05:34who would like to see a wealth tax introduce and we also have
00:05:38Tony Ershaw who is strongly against it. our two economists will
00:05:42weigh on the debate a little later in the program after they've heard the
00:05:46millionaires talking uh
00:05:47so let's go with you first of all mike,
00:05:49you signed this letter uh to the government asking for a wealth
00:05:52tax, why do you think it's necessary? well
00:05:56because it's the simplest way of raising the revenue
00:06:00um to fund safer, more secure
00:06:04and more just society from which everybody, including the
00:06:08wealthiest people will benefit, so yeah if you get
00:06:11to um... point of wealth where you have reasonable amount
00:06:15of disposable income, you actually better off by having a
00:06:18society in which for example the crime rate is reasonably low and
00:06:22everybody can afford good healthcare and basic services are working
00:06:26properly and you're secure against threats um international
00:06:30threats as well so for all these reasons it's by far yeah it's it's
00:06:33by far um something that we all benefit
00:06:36from and the natural dynamics the
00:06:40economy are that the wealth. "unless you do something about it, the
00:06:44wealth get wealthier, the wealthy get wealthier, money begets money, and
00:06:48inequality just rises and rises,
00:06:50and uh, that throughout history, that has led to
00:06:54catastrophic collapse of civilizations, so it's something you
00:06:58need to intervene on, and why it needs to be a wealth
00:07:02tax is because it's not good me just giving all my
00:07:06money, uh, what I'll benefit from is if me
00:07:10and everybody who's as wealthy as me or wealthier
00:07:14does likewise, you and others like
00:07:17Tony Ernshaw. Tony, are you
00:07:19in? No,
00:07:22I disagree with it, it's not because
00:07:25entrepreneurs are greedy, it's because it simply
00:07:29doesn't work, it does the opposite of what we're trying to
00:07:33achieve, and that is to raise more taxes for for the
00:07:36government,
00:07:37it is to create more business in and around the UK, it's
00:07:41to attract. businesses to the UK and
00:07:45for instance, if you put a 2% wealth tax on
00:07:49100 million pound, that's two million pound, okay that
00:07:53I have to find. now millionaires across
00:07:57this country don't have liquid two
00:08:00million pounds just lying around, so we have to do one of
00:08:04two things, either sell that asset and to
00:08:08or refinance it to be able to pay for that tax
00:08:11or... we have to draw down that money from our companies which we
00:08:15own. now we've already paid
00:08:1825%
00:08:22um corporation tax on that money,
00:08:25then when we draw down as a dividend we are then
00:08:28paying another 39, nearly
00:08:3140% tax on that as as
00:08:34a dividend. um, so it
00:08:38doesn't work. now we've got countries across Europe who have...
00:08:42this over 10 countries and Austria, Denmark,
00:08:46Germany and one the most high profile ones and was in
00:08:50Sweden where the owner the founder of
00:08:54IKEA actually left the company and that's what's been happening in this
00:08:58country. In 2025 we
00:09:00had 1ous so sorry
00:09:0416 and a half thous millionaires leave this company. Now
00:09:08why is that important? These millionaires are business owners like.
00:09:13self: we employ people, we pay our taxes on our
00:09:16business, we pay personal tax, we spend in this company, but we employ people, which is the most
00:09:20vital part of it, and these people i employ also pay income tax,
00:09:24corporation tax, and without people like
00:09:27myself, the country will
00:09:30suffer and will have less capital investment, and
00:09:34overall and the company will not will raise less tax, and and tony, if the
00:09:37government did bring a 2% tax on millionaires
00:09:41with over. million and assets, would you be tempted to leave the
00:09:45country? I love the UK,
00:09:49um, I think it's one the best places to do business, um, but there has to be
00:09:53tipping point, doesn't that when you say actually, is it
00:09:56better for me to do business elsewhere?
00:10:00um, and lot of people have already done that, like I said, 16 and half thous millioners have done it in
00:10:042025, we into 2026, um, we need to be open for
00:10:08business, Britain needs to be open for business, we need to be pulling in
00:10:11investment,
00:10:12to be actually lowering corporation tax, maybe things like not taxing
00:10:16young people, because at the moment they can't get a job if we lower the taxes and
00:10:20give businesses what they need, which is incentives, every business needs
00:10:23incentives. "we can actually stop the gap
00:10:27from young people being employed, and we can we can raise more taxes
00:10:31overall, okay, let me actually even say, let me just put
00:10:35that to to Mike, Mike, um, Tony there, raising the possibility
00:10:39that you, actually it would be disincentive for business
00:10:42people to um, you create employment and so on, and that they
00:10:46would just leave, basically just leave the country if you brought in a wealth
00:10:50tax that you're proposing, so first of all, will people just leave, I mean it's
00:10:54funny if..." people were to leave, if if wealthier people were to
00:10:58leave, um, that would just be a sign of, their wealth actually
00:11:02imprisoning them, you know, if you if you find yourself you're so rich that you're no
00:11:05longer free to live in the country you want to, you want to live in, because you're afraid that you'll
00:11:09be slightly less rich, um, i don't think that's the case, and when
00:11:13this has been tried in the scandinavian countries where wealth tax has
00:11:17worked, only something like 0.01% the population did
00:11:21leave, i think i want emphasize the extent
00:11:25which uh we all benefit from the tax that
00:11:29we pay being put into public services, so
00:11:31Tony, as he grew up uh benefited
00:11:35from going to school, I also went had a great
00:11:39state education that was funded by tax payers and
00:11:43my most of my staff also had the same
00:11:46now as I grew up if I got ill,
00:11:50which I did from time to time, I could get um, I could get my
00:11:54healthcare. sorted out for free and all this is incredibly important and it's
00:11:58incredibly important for me and probably Tony for his workers
00:12:02as well, that he knows that if they get ill uh they
00:12:06can get their health seen to and
00:12:08that their relatives are getting health sure sure the thing is
00:12:10Mike, Tony knows better than anyone, he he actually grew up
00:12:14a council house how difficult it can be starting from the bottom
00:12:18and all the way through he's paid his dues, Tony just want to come in
00:12:22on that, yeah I think... it's important to recognize
00:12:26that um as business owners um for instance
00:12:30i started my business when i was 19 year old my very first business i started with
00:12:34300 pound my background is i come from a counselor state quite a
00:12:38rough area actually and i grew
00:12:39up in poverty um and i managed to get half
00:12:43decent GCS at school um and i basically went into the
00:12:47business world i started off actually as to windo cleaner um now i
00:12:51have a multi million pound business which operates in every single
00:12:55town and city in the UK and but did that with lot of stress, lot of
00:12:59financial risk to meself, lot of pressure, lot of hard work. there was
00:13:03some days i wasn't sure i could pay my my rent,
00:13:07um, some some months i was that worried and made sure paid my employees before i
00:13:10even paid myself, um, i remember eat having one meal a day
00:13:14sometimes, eating beans toast from aldi because that's all i could afford, that's when a
00:13:18t of beans only three pents, and she can't lecture me on on these
00:13:22things because i know how hard it is to have nothing. and but I've earned what I've
00:13:26got, and but I've also brought people up the chain with me,
00:13:29employed these people, you mentioned the NHS, I actually um
00:13:33pay for everybody who works for me for private health
00:13:37insurance, and their families are included in that, so anyone within
00:13:41their household including their children, including their wife, and
00:13:45so we do already pass down this wealth, and like I said, I employ over
00:13:48100 people across the UK and within UK commercial
00:13:52group, um, but there's this thing. it
00:13:55raises very little tax, there's very simple things we can do,
00:13:59for instance if we went to cash free society, which
00:14:02is something we could do practically within a year or two,
00:14:06um,
00:14:06that would raise over 20 billion pound in
00:14:10revenue for the government, that's 2% the government
00:14:13spend, that would going back to your argument, build 20
00:14:17hospitals, it would employ 400 thous
00:14:20nurses, um, and it's a much better way of raising
00:14:24revenue.
00:14:25than actually just saying, what, you've done well in your life, we're just going to tax you
00:14:29even more for it, what incentive does that give me or anybody else who wants to start a business? thank
00:14:33you for that, just going to pause the debate for one second. according to one survey,
00:14:37vast majority of British millionaires support a wealth tax, even the
00:14:41ones with assets over 10 million pounds or $13 million dollars,
00:14:45back it. the majority the general public back the wealth tax
00:14:48too, and to double check we conducted our own straw poll around
00:14:52London. do you think we should have a wealth tax in this country? 'absolutely,
00:14:56yes, I do think that, I think that's that the wealthy have been getting away for far too long
00:15:00and they need to pay fair share their taxes. I just personally
00:15:03don't feel like we should penalize people for accumulating
00:15:07wealth and doing well. Yeah, absolutely. For the rich, I
00:15:11think they should definitely be paying more. I don't think so, no, some
00:15:15people worked hard for it, and just cuz you're rich in assets
00:15:19don't mean you're rich in money, so you know, it's a bit difficult for
00:15:23everyone. Do you need wealthy people?' ' because you want them to pay tax, who
00:15:27do you think pays for all the services that you get? i think there does need
00:15:30to be some kind of redistribution. start with the billionaires
00:15:33and then see how much revenue that generates and then
00:15:37and sort of scale it out from there, back to our panel now, so Steve
00:15:41Davis, it seems that millionaires and the wider British public
00:15:45actually back a wealth tax, but does it ever
00:15:48work? now the point is that, well actually it's not
00:15:52a good way of raising revenue, because it has all kinds
00:15:55of knock-on effects, as Tony explained, which are
00:15:58detrimental to the dynamism and growth the economy as a whole, and therefore
00:16:02the degree to which the government has tax base that it can generate revenue
00:16:06out the problem. is
00:16:08that as bike himself has explained towards
00:16:10the end there, what wealth is is assets that generate
00:16:13income, and if as Tony that explained start of his
00:16:17remarks, in order to pay a wealth tax you've got to
00:16:20liquidate some of that wealth, because you can't typically
00:16:24pay it out the current income that the asset generates, now
00:16:27that means you have to sell it to who? probably foreign owner, which just means
00:16:31a lot of that income stream is now going to go to foreigners and not be
00:16:35taxed, so... if you grant that we need more government
00:16:39revenue, this is not the most effective way of doing it, there are other ways of doing
00:16:43it, but he also made different argument, which is that you want to prevent
00:16:47accumulating wealthquality. now that's a fair
00:16:50enough argument, I'm not sure I agree with them, but granting for the sake of argument that that
00:16:54is something we should be worried about and you want to do something about it, I would argue
00:16:58that actually a wealth tax is not the best way of doing it, there are other
00:17:02things you can do which are more effective and less economically damaging like for
00:17:06example um reforming land title or having
00:17:10major radical land reforms, because it's actually things like real
00:17:14estate that are the prime base of wealth inequality uh,
00:17:18all those things that Thomas Pickety was pointing out in his book few years
00:17:21ago, it's been since shown that most the increase in wealth inequality he's talking
00:17:25about is due to real estate appreciation, houses and land
00:17:29becoming more monetarily valuable, and so if you do want to reduce
00:17:33wealth inequality, supposed to income inequality, something else uh
00:17:37that there are better roots to go down than using the
00:17:40tax system to do it, the tax system has other
00:17:44purposes, but I don't think that redistributing
00:17:47wealth is particularly good thing to use tax for. understood,
00:17:51thank you, and Steve Keane, would a wealth tax work in the
00:17:54UK? no, I don't think it would, for
00:17:58different reasons that have been put forward so far, I think
00:18:01George Monday put it very nicely a short while ago, and that was he said
00:18:05that the the poor paid taxes. the middle class pay lawyers and
00:18:09the rich pay politicians
00:18:11and what you get out of that is the distortions we've seen in tax rates over
00:18:14time that mean that the wealthier can locate their money in
00:18:18offshore tax havens if they wish to, they can
00:18:21evade paying the tax in the first instance they can lobby for tax rates to be
00:18:25reduced, so all this stuff means the tax is very ineffective way of getting
00:18:29money back from the wealthy. now if you see where they get their money
00:18:33from then part of it yes of course is private enterprise
00:18:36and of businesses and all the very difficult things that go into making
00:18:40a business, but a large part of why the taxes
00:18:43accumulated is that they don't actually pay the tax in the first
00:18:47place, it's something they managed to reduce their tax rate, so the effective
00:18:51rate on millionaires is probably below the effective rate on
00:18:54street on windows cleaners these days given all the changes that have
00:18:58occurred over time, but what we're all focusing on is the
00:19:02decline in the quality of public services, now major reason for that decline
00:19:06in the public services we've been cutting spending in the belief the government shouldn't
00:19:10spend more than it takes back in taxation and that's what's causing all
00:19:14these constraints
00:19:15are on public house building and hospitals and and
00:19:19education services and so on, and that's a fallacy. when you take a look
00:19:23at the accounting that's involved, the actual financial
00:19:26transactions that are involved in government spending and government
00:19:29taxation, it turns out that government spending more than it takes back in
00:19:33taxation is what creates fiat back money. we actually
00:19:37need the... government to run deficit, now the obsession that the government should not run a
00:19:40deficit is partially why we're we're cutting spending and cutting taxes and
00:19:44cutting spending and cutting taxes, driving the economy down to
00:19:48government is like 0% the economy rather than 20 or
00:19:5130% as it is right now, what we should
00:19:54be doing is realizing we don't need to eliminate the deficit, that's a major
00:19:58part the problems we're facing, and i would also point out that
00:20:02you can see this is developing right-wing reactions by billion by
00:20:05millionaires to taxation. 'well everybody has that reaction to
00:20:09taxation, nobody likes taxation coming out their income. now this is
00:20:13something which has only occurred since World War II fundamentally, and this
00:20:16means that you you vote for people are going to reduce your tax, so everybody bts rotes right
00:20:20wing, and as you cut the tax you also cut the spending. uh, we should
00:20:24actually, I'd rather have transaction taxes and things like that that are much harder
00:20:28to evade, and that are also on something that make people think they want to
00:20:32vote right wing. mike, have either of our economists changed your
00:20:36mind on trying to
00:20:50to pay less tax, not more tax, and that's a massively
00:20:53real problem. um, I'm sympathetic to the idea of
00:20:57a wealth tax that begins on just the very wealthy, maybe
00:21:01people with over hundred million, for example, in wealth, because
00:21:05actually it's such a small number of people that you're dealing with that it's possible to
00:21:09actually uh, it's possible to actually get a handle
00:21:12um on that evasion, I mean, I
00:21:16do think I'm also sympathetic to the detail
00:21:20Maybe
00:21:21there are other mechanisms by which
00:21:23it is possible to raise money by
00:21:27reducing wealth inequality and if there's another mechanic
00:21:31that uh that works uh better
00:21:35then great, I'm up
00:21:37for it. I think my the biggest thing I want to say is I want to
00:21:40register my willingness to be part of contributing
00:21:44more to society because I'm able
00:21:48to as long. as long as
00:21:50others or more would do the
00:21:54same, and I think most people, if asked are in the
00:21:58same position, yes, we'd be prepay prepared to pay more
00:22:02for better society, provided everyone as wealthy as me,
00:22:06wealthy like Mike, just quickly, Tony was trying to say there that you
00:22:09can actually do that already, there's nothing stopping you from just going online
00:22:13and paying more tax, why don't you? no, because the caviat
00:22:17is as long as everybody... as wealthy as
00:22:21me or wealthier does likewise, and that's why it needs a government
00:22:24intervention such as through tax system. the wealth tax that you're
00:22:28proposing would affect people with assets over 10 million pounds or
00:22:32$13 million dollars, how many people who signed that
00:22:36letter have assets over 10 million or 10 million pounds or
00:22:3913 million dollars, i know that some them are actually under that threshold so they
00:22:43won't be affected by the wealth tax they're
00:22:45proposing. well, i signed that
00:22:49tax i signed that letter uh and ticked the box and say a
00:22:53person of wealth, because when i did the sums on my total assets, including
00:22:57pension and everything came to more than million pounds right, and i consider that to be
00:23:00somebody,
00:23:01you know, you relatively speaking, if you don't consider that to be wealthy
00:23:05then then you've kind of got a problem, but the principle
00:23:09is that those with the greatest wealth can and should
00:23:12and will also themselves benefit, i think this is key point that I think
00:23:16I'd want to maybe emphasize to Tony, he will benefit. from
00:23:20being a society in which crime rates are under control and
00:23:24people get their health looked after and everyone in society, however
00:23:28wealthy they are gets the opportunity to maximize their
00:23:31opportunities and their potential in life. I mean,
00:23:35and very importantly we become a more secure
00:23:38nation, so all these are things, it's not as though we're taking a hit, Tony,
00:23:42I'm not suggesting that you and I take a hit, I'm suggesting that we actually have better
00:23:46lives. Well, as Tony mentioned earlier in the debate, several European countries. have
00:23:50tried a wealth tax, but has it ever worked on the continent? let's take
00:23:54a quick look. in 1990, more than dozen
00:23:57European countries had a wealth tax. now nearly all
00:24:01them have scrapped it. why? france introduced its
00:24:05modern wealth tax in 1982 under Francois
00:24:08Mitteron. it raised little revenue and was blamed for driving
00:24:12away the rich. in 1995, the cap limiting how much
00:24:16total direct tax household could pay was abolished and
00:24:20wealthy began to leave, an estimated 42,000 millionaires
00:24:23left between 2000 and 2012, taking with them not just
00:24:27their wealth tax revenue, but also income tax and VAT
00:24:31contributions. Emmanuel Macron scrapped the wealth tax in
00:24:352018, replacing it with tax on property wealth over
00:24:38$1.4 million. Sweden's wealth tax dated back
00:24:42to 1911 and peaked at around 4% in the
00:24:461980s. Wealthy Swedes, including tennis star beyond
00:24:50and IKEA founder Ingabard Khambrad left to avoid it. The
00:24:54tax was formally abolished in 2007. Only three European
00:24:58countries still have a wealth tax, Norway, Spain and
00:25:02Switzerland. Steve Davis, as we saw many European
00:25:06countries have tried it, many have scrapped it with the exception of Switzerland,
00:25:09Norway and Spain. What lessons are there to be
00:25:12learned from the European examples? Well,
00:25:16that although wealth tax sounds pretty simple in. reality, it
00:25:20turns out to be very, very complicated for
00:25:23the fundamental reason, first of all, that there are lots and lots of international tax
00:25:27treaties, most these taxes aim to tax global
00:25:30net wealth, but the problem is if somebody for example owns real estate in the
00:25:34United States, they can't be asked to pay tax and say Norway or
00:25:38Switzerland or Spain on that wealth because the tax treaties the
00:25:42United States has, so all sorts of assets in global wealth are
00:25:46actually out of reach because the various complicated tax treaty range between...
00:25:50different sovereign jurisdictions, secondly, because actually
00:25:53valuing wealth, amongst the super wealthy is very, very difficult,
00:25:57because lot their wealth consists of tradeable financial assets
00:26:01and working out. the net value of all those assets is actually
00:26:05very, very tricky, and so in practice wealth taxes tend to
00:26:08become very, very complex, and they typically
00:26:12therefore don't raise
00:26:13kind of large sums of revenue that many people hope that they will. they
00:26:17also tend to have very significant knock-on effects in particular, they tend
00:26:21to fall mainly on people who generate a large amount of current
00:26:25income out of business activities, not so much on people who
00:26:29hold what you might call passive wealth such as realist. states of
00:26:33various kinds, which is exactly the opposite of what you want to do
00:26:36essentially, and so for those reasons they tend to find that they're
00:26:39simply not worth the trouble, that's why they give it up, and finally,
00:26:43as Norway for example, has found out since 1921,
00:26:47what you often get is an exodus of very high networth
00:26:51individuals, lot of Norway's richest citizens have left
00:26:55since the tax rate there was put up to 1.1% for really large
00:26:59fortunes and they've moved elsewhere, notably to Switzerland, of a wealth
00:27:03tax, but a much lower level, and also a non-federal basis.
00:27:07so you have all these different problems, and the conclusion that lots of
00:27:10actually pretty left-wing governments in Europe are arrived at is, it's just
00:27:14not worth the amount of administrative grief and low
00:27:18results that you get from it, you might as well look for some other
00:27:22way of getting income out the wealthy uh and tax
00:27:25revenue that is out the wealthy and of dealing with wealth inequality, that's what
00:27:29you're worried about. mike, just... towards the end the
00:27:33program, a quick answer from you and Tony, um, do you expect the government to
00:27:37actually listen to you? now we have new prime minister, Andy Burnham, he said it's not
00:27:41off the table, but it doesn't look like it's his
00:27:43priority. well, I'm sympathetic
00:27:47to detailed and newanst analysis of what the exact
00:27:50best mechanism is, if there's if there's something that
00:27:54practically works better than a wealth tax
00:27:58at finding ways of taking money from the very wealthy and using...
00:28:03to improve our society, then I, you, I'm sympathetic
00:28:06to uh, getting at some different form of detail, but I think the
00:28:10principle is absolute, that's that's really what I'm here
00:28:14to advocate for, I think society
00:28:18even for the very wealthy. You wrote a letter to the prime minister, I'm just
00:28:21wondering, he's he's new into the job, although he's just gone on
00:28:24holiday uh, do you think that he is going to take up
00:28:28your cause? I hope Andy Bernam uh does the right.
00:28:32thing a few different fronts, I think he's
00:28:34got a there's a great opportunity to put us a good
00:28:38a better course here if he takes them, I hope I hope he does understood
00:28:42and turny your message to Andy Burn, I'm sure he's
00:28:44watching, well I'm hoping Andy's going to be a bit of a
00:28:48right leaning socialist and um actually instead of just taxing is
00:28:52maybe think about a bit of growth for the UK which will raise lot more
00:28:56tax then a wealth tax whatever whatever create and
00:29:00get the get the company the country. open for business again
00:29:03and start bringing in outside investment instead of circulating the same money round and
00:29:07round and round. Tony Ennshaw, Mike Berner's Lee, Steve
00:29:11Daves and Steve Keane. Thank you all very much for your expertise today, really
00:29:15appreciate that. And thank you at
00:30:09and talks with oman, Iran's foreign minister says his country
00:30:13is very close to opening the straight of hormos. Hello
00:30:17and welcome to TRT World Live from Istanbul and Yashini
00:30:21Padiachi. Also coming up, Russia launches hundreds
00:30:24of ballistic missiles and drones in its latest attack as the
00:30:28Serbian President Alexander Vutic voice a support for. crimes
00:30:32territorial integrity. a UN report
00:30:36warns at least 8 million children in Sudan are suffering due to the
00:30:40civil war. while unicef
00:30:44reports says Palestinian children in Gaza have born the brunt of Israeli
00:30:48attacks with one child killed daily since the October
00:30:52cease
00:30:52fire.