This should include:
- A 2% levy on personal assets over £10 million (‘wealth tax’).
- Replacing the Energy Profits Levy with a permanent excess profits mechanism on top of baseline tax of north sea oil and gas companies;
- Extending the Digital Services Tax;
- Returning the overall rate of the Bank Surcharge (a tax charged on profits above £25m made by banks at 3% since 2023) to 8% and;
- Scrapping the agreement to cover Bank of England losses.
This specifically targets the wealthiest individuals and corporations which all-too-often pair massive profits with substantial structural damage to our economy, people and the planet.
Potential benefit
This wealth tax (2% levy on assets over £10 million) would only apply to 0.04% of UK residents but stands to generate up to £24 billion in tax revenue a year, helping to redress the imbalance in the economy and tackle inequality.
Introduce a permanent mechanism to capture excess profits on oil and gas companies, a tax on shareholders in fossil fuels and a Climate Damage Tax in the UK could generate up to an estimated £20 billion over 20 years.
Trebling the Digital Services Tax would raise £2.2-£2.4 billion annually.
Returning the bank surcharge rate to 8% would raise at least £3 billion.
Scrapping the agreement to cover Bank of England losses could save the Treasury over £20bn.
Potential cost
Climate Damages Taxation is designed with the intention that some of it is spent on climate reparations around the world so the full £20bn is unlikely to be spent on domestic policy.
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Those with the broadest shoulders should be expected to pay their fair share to pay for the services that benefit us all. Global Witness estimated that oil and gas companies would make £3.2 billion profits in 2024 on production in the UK alone. Oxfam found that the number of billionaires rose to 2,769, up from 2,565 in 2023, with their combined wealth surging from $13 trillion to $15 trillion in just 12 months.
The government should tax the wealthiest people and the biggest profits. We recommend taxing assets over £10 million by 2% each year.
We must also increase taxes on the industries which have the highest profits and do the most damage to our society including:
- Replace the Energy Profits Levy (a 38% tax paid on oil and gas profits) with a permanent mechanism that captures all excess profits, including windfalls, and close all loopholes which encourage further investment in oil and gas.
- Introduce a Climate Damages Tax, a permanent fee on the extraction of each tonne of coal, barrel of oil, or cubic metre of gas, calculated at a consistent rate based on how much CO2e is embedded within the fossil fuel. Greenpeace has proposed this at $5 per tonne, increasing by $5 per tonne per year.
- Extend the Digital Services Tax (a 2% tax paid on technology companies with profits higher than £500m of which £25m is made in the UK) to AI platforms and triple it from 2% to 6%.
- Return the overall rate of the Bank Surcharge (a tax charged on profits above £25m made by banks at 3% since 2023) to 8% in response to huge profits being made by the financial services sector.
- Scrapping the agreement to cover Bank of England losses could save the Treasury over £20bn on bond insurance, according to the New Economics Foundation.
Polling from July 2025 found that three quarters would support a wealth tax of 2% on wealth over £5 million (75%). ‘Taxing the rich’ is the most popular public solution to fixing public finances.
