Stanley, L. orcid.org/0000-0003-3882-8682, McGrath, T. and Hunt, T. (2023) The social meaning of wealth taxes. Economy and Society, 52 (4). pp. 579-601. ISSN 0308-5147
Abstract
Wealth taxes are back on the political agenda of developed democracies, but are subject to contestation. Given increasing inequality, middle classes may support wealth taxes so to redistribute wealth from the rich. However, asset appreciation has become central to the realisation of life chances, so a political programme of ‘wealth taxes’ may appear threatening. This article asks: what does the prospect of increased wealth taxes mean to the middle classes? Combining a relational theory approach with a qualitative focus group study in the UK, the article highlights two especially salient meanings of wealth taxes: (1) that wealth is considered as a form of security that one builds through surplus income earned through work (thereby conflating income and wealth); which can then be (2) used to sustain an intergenerational family through the relations of inheritance. Consequently, wealth taxes take on a meaning as a double tax that penalise hardworking families.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way. The terms on which this article has been published allow the posting of the Accepted Manuscript in a repository by the author(s) or with their consent. |
Keywords: | tax; wealth; inequality; focus groups |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Social Sciences (Sheffield) > Department of Politics and International Relations (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 07 Sep 2023 11:27 |
Last Modified: | 01 Nov 2024 14:06 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Taylor and Francis Group |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1080/03085147.2023.2264063 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:202992 |
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