Petition · past parliament

Put an emergency tax on the top 1% to cover the costs of the coronavirus crisis.

Rejected 16 signatures

What the petition asks

The coronavirus has exposed the weaknesses in our health and welfare systems. People are going to need a lot of financial support as businesses and the self-employed are losing weeks of income.
The 2008 financial crisis is being paid for through austerity measures which adversely affect the lower income groups. Austerity has left the NHS, schools and councils hugely under-funded. The higher earners who can afford it should now make a greater contribution to help the nation recover from this new 2020 health crisis; the burden cannot again be placed on ordinary earners.

Why it was rejected

There was already a petition about this issue. Duplicates are rejected so signatures collect in one place.

You may wish to sign these petitions calling for the same action:

Increase taxes on high earners to fund emergency Budget measures: Increase taxes on high earners to fund emergency Budget measures

Implement a windfall tax on UK billionaires to fund effort to fight Covid-19: Implement a windfall tax on UK billionaires to fund effort to fight Covid-19

You can find out more about coronavirus and how you can protect yourself and others here:

www.gov.uk/coronavirus
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/coronavirus-covid-19/

The Government has also created an online service to help you out what you can do if you’re struggling because of coronavirus: https://www.gov.uk/find-coronavirus-support

You can read NHS tips to help if you are worried about coronavirus here: https://www.nhs.uk/oneyou/every-mind-matters/coronavirus-covid-19-anxiety-tips

You can read impartial analysis of the Government response to coronavirus and policy developments here: https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/coronavirus/

You may also be interested to know that because of the large number of petitions that have been started in relation to coronavirus, the Petitions Committee has been questioning the Government about its response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Find out more: https://committees.parliament.uk/work/192/the-governments-response-to-coronavirus/

Timeline

28 Mar 2020 Petition opened for signatures
22 May 2020 Rejected by the Petitions Committee

Key facts

Signatures 16
Status Rejected
Rejected 22 May 2020

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Source: the official petition page. Last checked 15 Jul 2026.