Wealth taxes would be more worker-friendly than raising employers’ NI contributions, write Anne Gray and Clive Needle, while John Digney advocates taxing land values

Rachel Reeves seems to show an extraordinary lack of imagination with her tax on jobs, raising employers’ national insurance (NI) contributions (‘We had no alternative’: Reeves defends her budget to the CBI, 25 November). Several sources have proposed far more worker-friendly and small-business-friendly ways of plugging the Treasury’s alleged £22bn hole.

For example, the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has estimated that a wealth tax of merely 0.17% on assets of more than £500,000 would raise £10bn a year. Prem Sikka estimated last year that a larger yield of £22bn could be obtained from a wealth tax of 2% on assets over £10m, which would apply to merely 22,000 people. Researchers at the University of Warwick suggest that £8.6bn could be raised by charging NI on unearned income. Higher contributions will push many people to work “off the books”, paying no tax at all and losing pension entitlements.
Anne Gray
London