Thirty Percy’s involvement in the progressive taxation space: Why? And why now?
“Wealth is like muck - only good when it’s spread” Francis Bacon, philosopher, 1625.
Since March this year, we have been funding, convening and collaborating with partners in the progressive taxation space, with a specific focus on ‘taxes at the top’. As part of our desire to do more working ‘out loud’ and in the open at Thirty Percy, we wanted to take the opportunity to share some of our rationale behind our interventions in the world of tax.
This is the first of a three-part blogpost series. In this piece, we’ll unpack our motivations for this work – why taxes on wealth, and why now? – whilst the second and third instalments will outline what we’ve been up to, and what our role as a funder has looked like.
So, let’s start with the big picture.
We outline below four key motivations for our interventions in the world of progressive taxation. If any one in particular resonates with you, we invite you to sit with the others too, and lean into the interconnections.
*By ‘the ultra-wealthy’, we’re really talking about those with assets worth over £10m - or 0.04% of the UK population. We recognise that there’s no ‘correct’ definition, but we were interested to see this number also come through in Ingrid Robeyn’s work on Limitarianism.
Your instinct might be that philanthropy and tax justice make for uneasy bedfellows. As an organisation born of excessive wealth now venturing into the tax justice space, it won’t surprise you to know that we’re not so sure! For us, they’re two sides of the same wealth redistribution coin.
We are increasingly uncomfortable about the role that excessive private wealth plays in determining what gets funded, how it is used as a sticking plaster for public service failure, and how in doing so it justifies its continued existence. Thirty Percy is itself funded by such wealth, and we believe it’s essential to see a fairer distribution of it. We believe this requires a wider rethinking about how wealth is governed, and taxes at the top are a vital part of that shift.
Some others in the progressive wealth-holder space have also been vocal on this. There was a brilliant webinar hosted by Thousand Currents which looked explicitly at the relationship between tax and philanthropy. We would recommend the recording to anyone interested in the kind of questions raised by this blogpost.
Globally—and in the UK—wealth inequality has reached unprecedented levels, with profound and far-reaching consequences. A recent report from the Good Ancestor Movement and Patriotic Millionaires UK has highlighted seven interrelated impacts on society and the environment, all driven by extreme wealth. These include media manipulation, political capture, corporate dominance, social breakdown, and limited access to justice. A clear demonstration of how tax justice – which can go some way to redressing this imbalance – is so deeply intersectional.