Millionaire Gary Stevenson 'is quitting YouTube because he's tired'

Published: 20:27, 26 July 2026 | Updated: 20:29, 26 July 2026 Wealth tax campaigner Gary Stevenson has quit his YouTube channel just weeks after his TV documentary on inequality aired to intense backlash.  He announced that he would retreat from the public eye on Sunday to his 1.6million YouTube subscribers because of health concerns.  The celebrity tax campaigner, who was formerly a City trader, entitled the YouTube video 'It's time to say goodbye' and blamed quitting his popular weekly videos on being 'knackered'.  'There is still so much more we can talk about. But I’m someone who has experienced burnout before, and I’ve already gone further than I should have done ... from a health perspective, and I have to stop,' Mr Stevenson said.  The campaigner claimed to Piers Morgan that he was worth around £5million.    But he said making the videos had become 'harder and harder as he had got more tired'.  He added: 'It would destroy me if I keep doing this.'   Mr Stevenson rose to popularity through his YouTube channel and best-selling memoir Trading Game in which he described how he made millions as a top Citibank employee in the years after the financial crisis.  Gary Stevenson announced that he would retreat from the public eye yesterday to his 1.6million YouTube subscribers because of health concerns The tax campaigner, who describes himself as an economist, claimed that he was 'Citibank’s most profitable trader, in the whole world'. He advocates for a 2 per cent wealth tax on assets exceeding £10million but was widely mocked after being seemingly unable to defend his policy on a 90-minute documentary aired earlier this month.  The Channel 4 documentary, How to Get Filthy Rich with Gary Stevenson, showed the campaigner take his arguments to tax experts and the rich.  Prominent tax expert Dan Neidle called his plans 'populist claptrap' and suggested that Mr Stevenson had not fully considered the ramifications of his policy – including the impact on foreign direct investment, for which he did not have a response. Left-leaning newspaper The Guardian gave the show two stars out of five calling it an 'embarrassment'. It said that Mr Stevenson was 'outdone and undone by almost all of his interviewees' and was 'left floundering, without convincing comebacks'.  It concluded that the documentary was a 'faintly embarrassing waste of time'.  The tax campaigner, who describes himself as an economist, claimed that he was 'Citibank’s most profitable trader, in the whole world'.  But many of his former colleagues disagree with the claim, saying it was unlikely that he was the bank's most profitable trader, according to the Financial Times.    Many also added that the bank did not even produce a ranking for overall trader profitability across all of its divisions – so were unsure of how he would have known that he was the best trader. Gary Stevenson showing viewers around the modest east London home he grew up in Mr Stevenson has repeatedly called for a 'wealth tax' that would tax assets, rather than income and capital gains.  He said it would raise around £24billion for the Treasury – but the policy has never been wildly successful in any other country where it has been used.  France, Sweden and Germany all abolished wealth taxes because it failed to raise revenue.  Mr Stevenson was born in 1986 in east London and describes himself as working-class. He won a place at the London School of Economics to study mathematics and economics before joining Citibank.  Gary Lineker last week signed an open letter with more than 100 other millionaires urging Andy Burnham to increase taxes for the wealthiest. The self-styled 'patriotic millionaires' declared: 'We want you to tax us. We can afford it.' But it was later revealed that Mr Mr Lineker had a protracted fight against the taxman over a £4.9million bill he didn't want to pay. Court documents showed how the father-of-four resisted demands from the taxman to pay £3.62million in income tax and £1.31million in National Insurance over his television presenting work between 2013 and 2018. After years of legal wrangling a judge finally ruled in his favour in 2023 following a costly three-day tax tribunal in London.