Reeves plan to tax houses over 500k PART TWO

Me too. In fact I plan to off myself if I get a diagnosis of dementia. A bottle of vodka and plenty of pills should do the job nicely. Unless I can get hold of some heroin, that would be a relatively nice way to go.

DMIL (who played to a very high county standard apparently and who could count what cards had fallen even into the days when she could not have recalled the name of the PM) was adamant about it. To my shame, I let her get away with it too long and I probably should have done more to ease my DH's conscience about looking after his ma.

But she was never coming to live with us because I cleaned her up enough times when I visited. I was very fond of of her, and happy to help her shower and get properly clean, but it became increasingly horrible. She hated every indignity, but when you are 94 and physically frail and all your friends are dead, and the last two people you don't mind intimate care from are your daughter and daughter-in-law, and they are not close at hand all the time. It was awful for her. I want to go before I get to that stage.

I think most people are beyond even knowing what bridge is by the time a care home is appropriate!

In Devon and Cornwall, there aren't many luxurious posh UC care homes. My DMIL was horrified when she looked at the options nearby. Nobody played bridge (although she couldn't manage it either by then) but she still self funded to the tune of £1250 per week , to subsidise the LA rates of 700 per week.

That’s not the norm though.

Most do accept both

Not round here. The population here is quite old and most care homes have waiting lists of self funders. There’s no need for them to accept council referrals so they don’t.

However most do accept those funded by the authority funded

The money runs down at exactly the same rate regardless. The care homes that don’t accept local authority funded residents are the most expensive ones.

Unfortunately there are stats on how long the average pensioner lasts in a home though
Thats two years !

Let’s not forget those paying whilst there are also subsidising those paid for by the council. So the money runs down a lot quicker aswell

Thanks for that. Costs a fortune whoever pays for it!

It’s around half according to this at a cost of around £60k a year. The average stay is about two years.

https://www.carehome.co.uk/advice/who-pays-what

True, but a couple of years in care and the house value is soon spent, and the Local Authority pays the rest. There aren’t any stats on how much is self funded and how much paid by LAs

Since the elderly have a disproportionate amount of housing wealth relative to other age demographics, any increases on tax on property value is bound to fall more on the elderly. It's pretty much inevitable.

Downsizing at the moment does seem to be quite tax efficient in the respect when you downsize you will spend less on stamp duty or the new place than the old.

I wonder if reducing the zero rate relief on inheritance tax for housing would be a better way of raising money. You could make some other mods to incentivise it. But whenever anyone talks about modifying inheritance tax the whole country seems to go beserk, so probably a non starter politically.

Rightly so.

Not if you’ve got a house to sell to pay for it.

It only apples to new house sales, not where stamp duty has already been paid, so will not generally affect older people

The council can’t make people move home but they can help you stay at home rather than needing to go into residential care. Residential care costs (taxpayers ultimately) a fortune

Same there is no access so we couldn’t sell or remove the land. Poor farmers again.

My post said that unless the annual tax replaced Council Tax it would stuff the elderly. A number of options are being discussed on this thread. I was responding to @Notnowjo.

Agree but
The ‘on sale’ one is stamp which Reeves is talking of changing to not ‘on sale’ but a yearly ( paid monthly) tax instead
You were concerned about the elderly feeling forced to move but with the changes talked about they are far less likely to move. Why would they they’d end up with this extra tax every year.

I was responding to a post that spoke of the tax being an annual one, not the on-sale one.

They need to make the housing market as frictionless as possible to make the whole thing more efficient so I support removing stamp duty

but I don’t trust them (government - not Labour specifically) not to put in something worse and use it as a cash cow

Exactly this. It’s become a Government tactic to leak all their ideas to the press over the summer to see what reaction they get before they actually put forward any proposals.

re CGT on primary residences - they would be insane to bring this in, it would crash the housing market overnight as no one would ever move house again.

I think that would be very expensive to manage
Easier to catch those at point of sale. The conveyancer simply has to notify HMRC

Loss of PRR is a bigger issue imo. It could seriously stagnate the housing market

I think they are throwing all the property tax ideas out there and seeing which one pisses people off the least

in reality they need to touch the 3 big taxes if they want to start filling that hole

also don’t forget the hole is influenced by forecasts. The reason the hole went up after the election was because the forecasts changed to reflect expectations of the new government and fluctuates based on global economy etc

So they are not replacing council tax at all?

(Still confused!)

hopefully they won’t decide those of us who have lived in our Houses since before stamp duty have to catch up!