‘I’m a multimillionaire who wants to pay more tax – it will be good for me’

As the world’s richest people gather in Davos, 250 millionaires and billionaires – including actors Brian Cox and Simon Pegg – have signed an open letter asking to pay a wealth tax. Peter Stanford meets some of them to discover why they prefer this to philanthropy and how you can be just ‘too rich’

Unlike his character in Succession, actor Brian Cox is all for tackling wealth inequality (PA)

Who exactly is it,” Nick Marple wonders aloud, “who objects to millionaires paying more tax?” Certainly not this millionaire investor.

The 54-year-old London-based father of two is one of that elite group with assets over £10m – quite a change from his modest upbringing when his dad thought his mum was posh because her family had an indoor toilet. Today he is sitting in the study of his Islington home in front of a signed shirt of his favourite football team, Aston Villa. Marple, who initially made his money through a betting syndicate, is talking to me about why he has joined UK Patriotic Millionaires, a group of super-wealthy people who want to pay more tax.

And they are not alone. Today the international campaigning group, first set up in the United States in 2010 by, among others, Abigail Disney, great-niece of Walt, is releasing a poll that shows that 74 per cent of 2,300 millionaires and billionaires from G20 countries surveyed actively want their taxes to go up.