Low dividend taxes were supposed to ensure that richer, business owners who provided political donations were taxed less than the people who worked for them. Th

Low dividend taxes were supposed to ensure that richer, business owners who provided political donations were taxed less than the people who worked for them. The "loophole" is that workers figured out a way to get that white glove capitalist treatment. In the process of trying to "close the loophole" and codify the distinction between "good upstanding capitalist" versus a "dirty little employee" they kind of underscored the fact that economically identical activity is being taxed differently according to your position in the British class hierarchy. It reminds me a bit of dekulakization - the idiotic Soviet reforms that took the opposite tack and attempted to crack down on "dirty little capitalists" by deporting farmers to siberia because e.g. they owned a sewing machine and two pigs.