This is much harder to evade - if you own most of Mayfair, you can't just move your assets elsewhere - they are very clearly tied to the location.
Of course, this would mean taxing powerful aristocrats, including the royal family. With their large majority, the British government had the opportunity to do this, but decided to take an easier path. The reason why this path was easier is now becoming clear to them.
It's a loophole the mega-rich are using to avoid tax.
The other thing that's happened is that a lot of the mega-rich have lobbied to gradually chip away at inheritance taxes. So again they just pass the asset, paying a fraction of the taxes they'd have paid had they been a "normal" tax payer.
And one of the big things they've got? No capital gains on those stocks when passed to children.
So yeah, we need to tax assets as well as income. Because anything that's not taxed the rich just funnel money into it to avoid paying tax.
This isn't to say taxing wealth is actually the solution, but it's the catch all that people like to scream about.
30% of pensioners are millionaires in the UK, and they recieve a state pension. Fixing that would probably immediately turn a massive budget surplus ( albeit a nasty suprise for financial planning ).
However, suddenly if you find pensioners releasing funds from their property, you affect what's going to be inherited and that's a no go area. There's no real concept of fairness in the debate, just the politics of it all.
I think “30% of pensioners are millionaires” is also a bit moot given the majority of those are living in properties that they didn’t buy for millions and have lived in while house prices have gone up. My parents for example are probably close to your millionaire threshold and it seems unfair that they’d have to sell their home they’ve lived in for decades and want to continue living in just because the housing market has pushed its value past the point where it seems like it should be taxed. They’d have to sell it just to pay that tax and move somewhere smaller, which seems unfair to force on people approaching 80yo.
Like you're talking about fairness, but you're also arguing that other people should pay taxes to give your parents money, in order for them to keep their property, whilst many of those paying their taxes, will never get on the ladder, and if they do, will never afford such a lovely house.
Where's the fairness in that?
Further, most folks are aware of equity release and your parents could borrow against the house and not move. The main outcome is you wouldn't get it. Now I've bought such a house but I didn't get it from my parents, I got it by earning the money which I've paid income tax on, so it's literally required 2-3x in earnings to get there.
What's fair in that?
For the record, I have a kid in private school and will try my best to pass on as much as possible, so I totally get both your parents and your own position. I'm just poking fun on "fairness" because fairness in politics never seems to consider the person the money comes from and when you consider all angles, it's rarely fair.