03. A fair share of the gains
The Problem
A small group of US-headquartered companies are on track to become the richest organisations in human history. They didn’t get there alone. The foundational research that made modern AI possible was largely publicly funded. The infrastructure they rely on was built with public investment. The data that trained their systems was generated is the sum total of our shared written inheritance.
Meanwhile, the UK’s public finances are built on taxing labour. Income tax and National Insurance pay for the NHS, schools, and social care. Labour’s share of national income has already fallen 2.6 percentage points since 1980. AI threatens to accelerate that trend — just as longer life expectancy and a tighter labour market push demand for public services up.
If we don’t change how we tax the gains from AI, we’ll have less money for public services exactly when more people need them.
If we don't change how we tax the gains from AI, we'll have less money for public services
What we want
There’s a powerful case that the public has a claim on AI’s returns — and our tax system needs to reflect that. We’re campaigning for:
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Equal tax treatment of capital and labour. People who work for a living shouldn’t pay a higher rate than people who own the systems
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Consideration of an AI services tax
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An investigation of how to tax economic rents — including monopoly profits from AI market concentration, the value of unique datasets, and other returns above what is needed to induce the activity in the first place
Politics can move quickly when a fair argument meets a moment of crisis: the windfall tax on oil and gas profits went from an outside-the-box idea to government policy in months. We’re starting to build the movement now to capture the AI Windfall here in the UK.