Tax on top earners could boost UK budget by billions - Oxfam

Taxing the UK's top 1% of earners could raise billions of pounds each year and reduce the country's inequality, according to a study conducted by the charity Oxfam.

If the UK was to introduce a "net wealth tax" on those earning more than £750,000 a year, the Treasury could raise around £10bn of extra revenue.

The amount could fund around a third of the UK's £35bn public order and safety budget - which funds the police, courts, and prisons.

According to the charity, such a system might tax wealth above a threshold of £750,000 at a rate of 0.2%, rising incrementally to 2.5% for net wealth of around £12m.

Under this proposed framework, Oxfam said 90% of tax revenue would be raised from the wealthiest 1% of households.

Pensions and an amount equivalent to the average price of a home would not be taxed, the charity added.

The study comes ahead of a meeting of the G7 member states in France this weekend. Oxfam's research claims that inequality has spiked in all of the G7 countries over the past four decades.

The gap - which is most pronounced in the UK and Italy - has widened in all member states except for Japan and Canada since 2004.

The richest 10% in Britain now own 60% of the country's total wealth, the report added, while the poorest half only accounted for 4% of the total wealth.

The summit in the French town of Biarritz will focus on the fight against inequality, according to the French President Emmanuel Macron.

Cecile Duflot, an executive director at Oxfam, said: "G7 governments have helped to create the inequality crisis, they now have the responsibility to be part of the solutions - to make a choice between a brighter and more sustainable future for all of us or continued extreme wealth for a few."