Whilst a lot of what's being discussed around tax is just speculation at this point, this is very much the direction of travel that's been emerging over the last couple of years. So there's every chance some or all of these measures get implemented. The tax I'm particularly interested in is Capital Gains Tax (CGT). Whilst it makes up a tiny portion of the country's tax revenue, it's an extremely important tax, because the rate it's set at has a broad potential impact on economic growth and investment in the country. Based on HMRC's own modelling, a 10 point rise in the higher rate of CGT would lose around £2bn a year by 2027-28. So we need to ask the obvious question… if it doesn't raise revenue, what is it actually for? CGT brings in about £13bn. Under 2% of all receipts. From roughly 350,000 people, with 41% of it coming from a few thousand who realise gains above £5m. It's a tiny base and a highly mobile one. Which is precisely why talk of an exit tax is also now circulating. Aligning CGT with income tax means a top rate of 45%. That would not just be high. It would be the highest capital gains tax in the developed world. Above Denmark at 42%. Above Norway at 38%. Nearly double the top federal rate in the US. And because we don't index gains for inflation, that 45% would land on nominal gains, not real ones. On the OBR's numbers the tax take is already heading for 38.5% of GDP by 2030-31, the highest since records began in 1948, and past 40% on the IMF's broader measure. We are nearing Scandinavian levels of tax, but nowhere near Scandinavian public services. Because the state is not short of money. It is bad at spending it. Really bad. By the government's own assessment, £198bn of major projects are currently rated in doubt or unachievable. HS2 has gone from a £33bn budget to as much as £100bn for London to Birmingham alone. The level of government waste is staggering, yet seems to consistently be presented as a tax problem. And that's before we even start looking at the ballooning welfare budget and astronomical amount of debt interest we pay. That is what you are being asked to fund with the return on your risk. The real cost here is not the revenue forgone. It is the part we never see, the hidden cost. The companies that don't get started. The capital that doesn't get deployed. The founder who incorporates in the US instead. You can't tax what was never built… you can only tax it into never existing. But perhaps that misses the point. Because this is unlikely to raise money, and on some level I imagine they know it. Consider who is left. On the ONS's own numbers, 53.3% of people now live in households that take more from the state than they pay into it, once you count the NHS, schools and every benefit in cash and kind. Net contributors are already a minority. So a policy that punishes them does not have to add up fiscally. It only has to add up at the ballot box. That is the real inversion. The arithmetic of the economy and the arithmetic of the electorate now point in opposite directions. Which leaves one question. Why strive? Why take the risk, the years, the personal guarantees, when the state takes the largest cut in the developed world if you win, taxes your inflation as if it were profit, and fines you on the way out if you decide this isn't the right country to build anything in. This isn't a growth strategy. It's managed decline. As I say, this is all just speculation right now. But it seems very much in line with the path we're currently on.