A software executive in his 50s published a piece this week explaining why he is leaving Britain for good, writing under a pseudonym because saying this under his own name in modern Britain carries consequences. He has spent 30 years in engineering and technology leadership, paid a mortgage, paid his taxes, and never asked the state for anything back. He watched the government tax, mismanage, and legislate his country into something he no longer recognizes, and he decided he had seen enough.
The last straw was a new prime minister and a land value tax that moved from campaign talk to a viable policy. The tax would charge homeowners annually based on the value of the land under their house, even homeowners who still carry a mortgage and do not fully own that land yet. The government sells it as a fairer replacement for the council tax and dangles other taxes as sweeteners to make it go down easier. Those sweetener taxes rarely disappear once a future chancellor decides they are useful.
Add that on top of Britain’s 60% income tax on earnings over £100k, a de facto second income tax that funds their state pension and benefits, inheritance tax at 40%, and talk of a 10% death tax with no asset threshold. Their public sector debt sits near 95% of annual economic output and debt interest now costs more than their entire education budget. Everything in this article is the direct result of an ever-expanding government that has reached into every aspect of the lives of U.K. citizens.
I don’t even own my land outright; I have a mortgage on it, which means a land tax would charge me annually on equity the bank and I are still splitting. It would sit alongside income tax already claiming over 60% of earnings above £100,000, National Insurance as a second income tax in all but name, inheritance tax at 40% and energy bills among the highest in Europe.
And it’s not the only ratchet in motion: a flat 10% levy on every estate on death – no threshold, no exemptions, the same “care levy” Burnham floated in 2010, when the Conservatives put it on an election poster and called it a death tax – is being looked at again, with Reform UK warning it would drag an extra 650,000 families a year into inheritance tax who currently pay nothing. A widow in an ordinary £250,000 bungalow, already taxed on every penny that bought it, would owe £25,000 the moment she died. There’s also a mansion tax surcharge already being rolled out, with the Valuation Office Agency using satellite and aerial imagery to value homes for it – first tested in Wales, not denied for England.
The Daily Skeptic
The United States is another train running down the same track. We run enormous deficits. Interest on our national debt is one of the largest line items in the federal budget. We continually add entitlement promises and expand the regulatory state. Once a government reaches the scale Britain’s has, it looks for new things to tax and new ways to reach further into your pocket rather than restricting its own growth.
A British software executive is packing up his family and leaving the country he loves. What other choice does he have? We, in the United States, still have time to change. Make government smaller before it consumes us all. At what point, with all the taxes and fees we pay, do we stop living for ourselves and only live to feed the government beast?
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