The sheer costs of COVID-19 are clearer by the day. As the pandemic expands so there is growing concern over not only the direct costs but the longer-term economic damage, and much talk of substantial increases in taxes to pay for it all.
A column in this series six months ago put this in perspective by reminding us of the high levels of wealth in the UK in the hands of a few thousand people, which suggests that windfall taxes might be a good place to start.
More recently, in early August, the British government put out a revised estimate of the cost of the pandemic at a little over £200 billion. That was published two months after the Sunday Times ‘Rich List 2020’ revealed that the richest thousand in the country had £743 billion, more than three times the total cost of COVID-19. Moreover, wealth is now skewed so much in the UK that the even the richest twenty on the list have £213.3 billion and so could theoretically pay that bill.
