Britain’s Richest 1% Owns A Quarter of the UK’s Wealth

BRITAIN’S richest 1% of people own almost a quarter of the UK’s entire wealth according to a recent thinktank study.

The study, conducted by London-based thinktank Resolution Foundation, revealed that the top 1% of Britain’s richest people had almost £800bn more wealth than suggested by official statistics. This means that inequality has been far higher than previously thought with researchers warning the extra billions was a conservative estimate and could well be more.

This makes a big impact on the percentage of Britain’s wealth understood to be held by the top 1%, increasing it by more than a quarter – from 18% to 23%.

The Resolution Foundation claims that wealth taxation “will need to play a bigger role in the economy over the course of the 2020s”.

“The foundation is calling on the chancellor to embark on the biggest reforms to wealth taxation in a generation – including via the restriction of capital gains and inheritance tax reliefs (together raising several billion), and adding a council tax supplement of 1% on properties worth over £2m (raising over £1bn).”

Jack Leslie, an economist at the foundation, said: “The UK has undergone a wealth boom in recent decades, which has continued even while earnings and incomes have stagnated. But official data has struggled to capture these gains, and misses £800bn of assets held by the very wealthiest households in Britain.”

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