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Why Was a Wealth Tax for the UK Abandoned? Lessons for the Policy Process and Tackling Wealth Inequality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 October 2011

HOWARD GLENNERSTER
HOWARD GLENNERSTER*
Affiliation:
Department of Social Policy and Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The distribution of wealth is widening in many countries and with it the growing importance of inherited wealth. In 1974, a Labour Government came to power in the United Kingdom committed to introducing an annual wealth tax. It left office without doing so. Using the official archives of the time and those of a key advisor this paper traces both the origins of the policy and its fate at the hands of the civil service. It explores two related questions. What does this experience tell us about the role of the civil service in the policy process in the UK and what lessons might be learned by those wishing to tackle the issue of widening wealth disparities today?

Type
Articles
Information
Journal of Social Policy , Volume 41 , Issue 2 , April 2012 , pp. 233 - 249
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2011

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References

References

Hugh Dalton Papers British Library of Political Science (BLPS). Kings College Cambridge, Kaldor Papers, NK/11/1–17 ‘Labour Party Advice’. The National Archives (TNA), Public Record Office (PRO), Kew, Inland Revenue (IR) and Treasury (T) files 1974–1979 under the heading ‘Wealth Tax’ or ‘Introduction of a Wealth Tax’. Most files contain un-numbered papers in date order, some are numbered and in those cases these are added to the file reference.

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Parliamentary Debates (Commons), Written Answers, 29 November 1976, Hansard.Google Scholar
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Sandford, C. (1971), Taxing Personal Wealth: An Analysis of Capital Taxation in the UK, Present Structure and Future Possibilities, London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Sandford, C., Willis, J. R. M. and Ironside, D. J. (1973), An Accessions Tax: A Study of the Desirability and Feasibility of Replacing the United Kingdom Estate Duty by a Cumulative Tax on Gifts and Inheritances, London: Institute for Fiscal Studies.Google Scholar
Thain, C. and Wright, M. (1995), The Treasury and Whitehall: The Planning and Control of Public Expenditure 1976–1993, Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thatcher, M. (1995), The Path to Power, London: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Wass, D. (2008), Decline to Fall: The Making of British Macro-economic Policy and the 1976 IMF Crisis, Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whiting, R. C. (2000), The Labour Party and Taxation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Atkinson, A. B. (1972), Unequal Shares: Wealth in Britain, Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Bachrach, P. and Baratz, M. S. (1970), Power and Poverty: Theory and Practice, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Barnett, J. (1982), Inside the Treasury, London: Deutch.Google Scholar
Benn, T. (1989), Against the Tide: Diaries 1973–7, London: Hutchinson.Google Scholar
Boadway, R., Chamberlain, E. and Emmerson, C. (2010), ‘Taxation of wealth and wealth transfers’, paper prepared for the Mirrlees Review, www.ifs.org.uk/mirrlees, also in Dimensions of Tax Design: The Mirrlees Review, edited by Institute for Fiscal Studies (2010), Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bochel, C. and Bochel, H. (2003), The UK Policy Process, London: Palgrave.Google Scholar
Brown, M. B. (1971), ‘The welfare state in Britain’, The Socialist Register 1971, London: Merlin.Google Scholar
Butler, D., Adonis, A. and Travers, T. (1994), Failure in British Government: The Politics of the Poll Tax, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Butler, J. (1992), Patients, Policies and Politics, Milton Keynes: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Castle, B. (1980), The Castle Diaries 1974–6, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.Google Scholar
Crenson, M. A. (1971), The Politics of Air Pollution, Baltimore: John Hopkins.Google Scholar
Crosland, C. A. R. (1956), The Future of Socialism, London: Cape.Google Scholar
Deakin, N. and Parry, R. (2000), The Treasury and Social Policy: The Contest for Control of Welfare Strategy, London: Macmillan.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Donoughue, B. (2006), Downing Street Diary: With Harold Wilson in No 10, London: Pimlico.Google Scholar
Due, J. F. (1960), ‘Net worth taxation’, Public Finance, 40: 310–21.Google Scholar
Dunleavy, P. (1981), The Politics of Mass Housing 1945–75: A Study of Corporate Power and Professional Influence in the Welfare State, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ellison, N. (1994), Egalitarian Thought and Labour Politics, London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Feinstein, C. (1996), ‘The equalising of wealth in Britain since the Second World War’, Oxford Review of Economic Policy, 12: 1, 96–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graetz, M. J. and Shapiro, I. (2005), Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Fight over Taxing Inherited Wealth, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hall, P. (1993), ‘Policy paradigms, social learning and the state: the case of economic policy making in Britain’, Comparative Politics, 25: 3, 319–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hall, P., Land, H., Parker, R. and Webb, A. (1975), Change Choice and Conflict in Social Policy, London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Harris, J. (1977), William Beveridge: A Biography, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Harrison, B. (2010), Finding a Role: The United Kingdom 1970–1990, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Healey, D. (1989), The Time of My Life, Harmondsworth: Penguin.Google Scholar
Heclo, H. and Wildavsky, A. (1974), The Private Government of Public Money, London: Macmillan.Google Scholar
HMSO (1955), Final Report of the Royal Commission on Taxation, Cmd 9476, London: HMSO.Google Scholar
HMSO (1974), Wealth Tax, Cmnd 5704, London: HMSO.Google Scholar
House of Commons (1974)/5), House of Commons Select Committee on a Wealth Tax Report and Proceedings, HC 696 I and II, London: House of Commons.Google Scholar
House of Commons (1976), Parliamentary Debates (Commons), Volume 921, Written Answers, Column 49, ‘Wealth Tax’, Written Answers, 29 November 1976.Google Scholar
House of Lords (1974), Parliamentary Debates (Lords), Volume 352, Columns 1479– 1586, 26 June 1974, ‘Wealth Tax Proposal and Historic Houses’.Google Scholar
Joseph, K. (1976), Stranded on the Middle Ground: Reflections on Circumstances and Policies, London: Centre for Policy Studies.Google Scholar
Kaldor, N. (1955), An Expenditure Tax, London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Kingdon, J. (1984), Agendas, Alternatives and Public Policies, London and New York: Longman (second edition 2003).Google Scholar
Labour Party (1974), Let Us Work Together– Labour's Way Out of the Crisis, London: The Labour Party.Google Scholar
Levin, P. (1997), Making Social Policy: The Mechanisms of Government and Politics and How to Investigate Them, Buckingham: Open University Press.Google Scholar
Lowe, R. (1989), ‘Resignation at the Treasury: the Social Services Committee and the failure to reform the Welfare State 1955–7’, Journal of Social Policy, 18: 4, 505–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lowe, R. (1997), ‘Milestone or millstone: the 1959–61 Plowden Committee and its impact on British welfare policy’, Historical Journal, 40: 2, 463–91.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lukes, S. (1974), Power: A Radical View, London: Macmillan (second edition 2005).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mandler, P. (1997), The Fall and Rise of the Stately Home, London and New Haven: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Marquand, D. (2008), Britain since 1918: The Strange Career of British Democracy, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.Google Scholar
Miliband, R. (1969), The State in Capitalist Society, London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson.Google Scholar
Mirrlees Review (2011), Tax by Design: The Mirrlees Review, Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
National Equality Panel (2010), An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK, London: LSE, CASEreport 60.Google Scholar
Newby, H. (1978), Property, Paternalism and Power, London: Hutchinson.Google Scholar
OECD (2008), Growing Unequal Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries Paris: OECD.Google Scholar
OECD (2010), Revenue Statistics, Paris: OECD.Google Scholar
Parliamentary Debates (Commons), Written Answers, 29 November 1976, Hansard.Google Scholar
Paxton, W. and White, S. (2006), The Citizen's Stake: Exploring the Future of Universal Asset Policies, Bristol: The Policy Press.Google Scholar
Piketty, T. (2011), ‘On the long-run evolution of inheritance: France 1820–2050’, Quarterly Journal of Economics, 126: 3 (forthcoming).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pogge, T. (2007), Freedom from Poverty as a Human Right: Who Owes What to the Very Poor?, Oxford: UNESCO and the Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roine, J. and Waldestrom, D. (2009), ‘Wealth concentration over the path of development: Sweden 1873–2006’, Scandinavian Journal of Economics, 111: 1, 151–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sandford, C. (1971), Taxing Personal Wealth: An Analysis of Capital Taxation in the UK, Present Structure and Future Possibilities, London: Allen & Unwin.Google Scholar
Sandford, C., Willis, J. R. M. and Ironside, D. J. (1973), An Accessions Tax: A Study of the Desirability and Feasibility of Replacing the United Kingdom Estate Duty by a Cumulative Tax on Gifts and Inheritances, London: Institute for Fiscal Studies.Google Scholar
Thain, C. and Wright, M. (1995), The Treasury and Whitehall: The Planning and Control of Public Expenditure 1976–1993, Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thatcher, M. (1995), The Path to Power, London: Harper Collins.Google Scholar
Wass, D. (2008), Decline to Fall: The Making of British Macro-economic Policy and the 1976 IMF Crisis, Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Whiting, R. C. (2000), The Labour Party and Taxation, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar