To think that the mansion tax breaks the principles of taxation

But taxing your car is linked to emissions and you don't have to pay if you aren't driving it (SORN). It's a tax on using your car on the public roads. Not the same at all.

Nah. It’ll be abolished when Labour are ousted at the next election.

@ByQuaintAzureWasp. We tried that, didn’t go down well! Don’t you remember the poll tax riots

Wealth taxes are part of most countries tax mix. You need a mix to ensure the savvy with expensive accountants don’t pay less than ordinary people on paye (pure income taxes can be quite unfair because those with the most means to pay often pay less). If you can afford a £2m house then these relatively small amounts are pocket money. I pay nearly £3k for my band e house, my share is 10% of my income!

is taxing ownership of an asset new?

Well see how far you get without taxing your car, and get back to me.

I definitely think this will happen. Actually I expect that once it's been embedded for a few years the thresholds could well gradually reduce. It's a tax that won't raise a great deal at the moment but will be much more worthwhile for the government the more people are brought into it's scope.

Also - please correct me if I'm wrong but is taxing ownership of an asset new? Most taxes are either service charges (eg council tax, vehicle excise duty), target transactions (income tax, CGT) or levied at the time assets are realised (IHT). Can anyone think of any other taxes that exist to tax ownership of something? It seems that once this principle is established it's a small step to extend this to taxing other assets just for owning them.

Its bloody ridiculous (im nowhere near or ever will have a £2m house).
Its for local services and should be per adult head count.

ISTR there was a mumsnetter on another thread (I didn't 'watch' it so can't link) who said their property transaction collapsed the day after the budget due to this tax.

It will work at all bands because the amount they are charged is going to be a percentage of the price the property is valued at.

That will only work within a particular band of value though and will be pretty counter productive

It will also be like the window tax, which caused people to brick up window in their homes in the 18th century. People will let properties fall into a state of neglect to prevent them being valued too highly.

I agree with this. You can work till you are killing yourself with stress in a high paid job and you still won't have a fraction of the wealth of Jenny down the street who is currently renting a property from her dad, having UC pay the rent and working PT and will then inherit her dad's (paid for by UC) property empire in due course (and I personally know quite a number of mums doing this!)

The IFS has done a great series on tax if you’re interested. Arguing it’s a bad tax is different to making stuff up about principals of taxation that don’t exist. If enough people don’t like it then they will be voted out at the next election.

I didn’t say anything about tax being old. I said governments can tax anything they like and if we don’t like it we can vote them out.

Responding to the poster who said this will raise half a million for flood defences. The truth is that half a billion is very little, way more than the welfare reform that Labour Reform MPs wouldn’t stomach and much less than all other tax raising mechanisms. It could cost more to administer at the start so they’re only doing it to expand to many more homes soon.
It is like the farmer inheritance changes and VAT on school fees - a starter before the main course.

We need to start taxing wealth, not income.
income doesn’t make you wealthy. As a high earning dual high income family, with high mortgage, high childcare fees, high cost of living, but no inherited wealth, we are not wealthy.
We’ve both worked extremely hard, done several degrees with no financial backing or wealth behind us. We’ve always worked very long hours, weekends, late into the night.
It’s been a long uphill struggle and the future is still uncertain.

Those around us with familial wealth, land, multiple properties, very high value properties who themselves work much less, earn much less, spend more time with their kids, yet pay less tax. All whilst being able to afford multiple holidays and private school. How is this fair? Income tax does not tax true wealth.

We should be taxing billionaires, big corporations, those with land/multiple properties and prevent wealth from being off-shored. The real reason times are getting harder is that true wealth, large assets, land, global corporations are not taxed enough.

If it has a mortgage surely the bank owns that bit so they should chip in

Maybe we can let them secure it as a charge against their property instead. Then the money can be collected when the property is sold.

They didnt earn all that value. It came from a crazy escalation in house prices that is causing others to struggle to even dream of buying a home

Me too. Much fairer. Although I'm in favour of the mansion tax (because rich people can hide all their other wealth), another cliff edge is going to have lots of attached problems.

The rich get richer, and everyone else gets forced out.

how are "the rich getting richer" in this scenario?

Death and taxes, the 2 certainties in life

I wonder how many property sales will go through at £1.99M with the extra booked as fixtures and fittings to avoid the levy ...

On top of this, there will non be a group of people who decide it is now financial suicide to move up the ladder

you're talking about a tiny number of property owners, and you're not taking account of those who already live in £2m+ houses who aren't going to move because they now have to pay £2,500 a year extra.

neither will people stop their house move plans because of the tax, they'll have predicted this and now be working with their vendor to avoid the levy by the method I've mentioned at the top of my post. Anyone buying a £3-5m house isn't going to be bothered either.