Let me give Rachel Reeves some credit for once: the so-called “mansion tax” set to be introduced in Wednesday’s Budget is a good idea. Asking people in homes worth more than £2 million to pay a bit more council tax is entirely reasonable, given that until now they’ve been paying tax on the 1990s valuation of their homes, not the current one.

But, once again, the Chancellor is going nowhere near far enough. For while Reeves will ask some of the wealthiest homeowners to pay more, she appears to have rejected more comprehensive proposals to make more people pay tax on the massive increase in wealth they have enjoyed as a result of the house price boom.

According to reports, the Chancellor was worried about targeting those in homes worth £1.5 million and more – putting them comfortably in the wealthiest 10 per cent of households – because she was concerned that some owners might be “asset rich but cash poor”. This phrase comes up a lot in discussions about housing. It describes people who are rich but whose wealth is tied up in assets (as wealth usually is), meaning they might have to sell something in order to pay a bit more in tax.

This applies to a lot of wealthy people: a billionaire with three yachts and 12 homes, tens of millions worth of shares and a garage full of Lamborghinis, but not much left in the bank, is technically “asset rich but cash poor”. That is how wealth often works: not many people have millions sloshing around in their current accounts. For most wealthy people, their money is tied up in assets. For decades, though, this has been used an excuse to stop them having to pay their fair share.

UK governments have long been allergic to the........

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