To think an annual property tax is incredibly unfair?

I think it’s unfair. Not from a north/ south perspective.

From an owner / subsidised renter/ social housing perspective.

Whats going to happen is those renting on UC (getting their house paid) will be exempt. Same in social housing and same for private renters.

People who try to own secure housing even if they themselves are poorer on a take home basis than those on UC/ being subsidised will be penalised.

Gov gets a worker bee nation of work work work, pay for everything, own nothing.

0.48% would also mean a slight reduction on our current council tax bill if I take the top end Zoopla estimate, it would be a significant reduction if I take the lowest one. The devil is in the detail (should it ever actually appear) but on the face of it, it does seem like those who own small houses in expensive areas would see a disproportionate hike - but that’s mostly London and the South who have had all of the investment and advantages for the last 50 years so maybe a tax like this would work to rebalance the country

Thing is, that £1m house may well cost even less than the £350k house, if it happened to be in that part of the country.

Two-up two-downs in London sell for that. You have to spend far, far more on mortgage repayments to afford what would elsewhere be considered a very modest house.

So why pay huge amounts of additional tax for doing so too?

I think it would be fairer that the current system using house values from 1991. I would pay about £400 extra under the proposed property tax at 0.48%. I am happy to pay if public services are improved. It is costing me more that £400 pa to replace tyres damaged by potholes and private GP appointments.

Is it to replace stamp duty or council tax?

If it replaced council tax I could kind of get on board.
If it replaced stamp duty, then would it only apply to new sales, or people who already had to pay stamp duty have to pay again?

That is exactly the plan

Maybe the plan is to have a property tax to replace stamp duty and council tax.

Wealth taxes where you take say 1% of someone’s wealth a year don’t work. They never have and never will. But this is a form of wealth tax that does work. It taxes the value of an asset (home) a person owns. Yes people may have a big mortgage and that’s les fair, but trying to build that into cal a makes the tax more complex and easier to game.

A revaluation of house prices would have to happen before the tax is brought in which is why this particular can has been kicked down the road for so long. But this is good. This is progress to a fairer tax system.

There is a reason that houses sell for higher prices in some areas than others. If people don't want to pay higher prices, they can choose lower priced areas, but often the infrastructure isn't as good, which is why it's cheaper.

I don’t think it’s unfair, to be honest.

A lot of people live beyond their means.

It's definitely a good idea to get rid of stamp duty which is a stupid tax that stops old people downsizing and puts people off moving for job opportunities.

A property tax seems like a sensible alternative. Using your .48 percent figure, most people where I live would be paying less than their existing council tax, so I fear it will have to be a much bigger percentage.

They could just add more bands to take that into account.

People don’t pay taxes according to how much of a service they use. We have this idea that council tax is linked to services but it’s not, it’s just a tax. I pay a lot of income tax, it’s not because I ‘use’ more government services, it’s because I earn more.

As someone who lives in an expensive area, moving to a house like mine would cost over £200k in stamp duty alone- this is for a nice house but far from a mansion. I'd quite happily swap that for a 0.48% value tax, which works out at about £12k (which is only about £7k more than I pay in council tax).

So the prices in London go down.

Its supply and demand - people want to live there so its expensive. My South East home would go down a bit

Also - depends on the calculation of house value, last sold? How will they do that, we are still paying council tax from a house valuation from years ago I think

I was late teens when poll-tax was brought in, and I did initially object. But actually, it was the best solution imo. Discounted for disabilties and incomes as appropriate.
🤷‍♀️

Fairness is a totally nebulous concept.

What is ‘fair’ about paying CGT if you make money investing in a company but not if you make money on your PPR? What’s ‘fair’ about council tax or SDLT for example?

We tend to accept taxes we are used to and object to new taxes - it’s got little to do with fairness.

Well at the moment there are people living in £350k houses who are paying more CT than someone living in a £1m+ house. A new scheme based on % of worth may be fairer. Depending on the detail.

Well we would be £85 a month better off under the new scheme. The current council tax system isn't fair, we're band D my neighbour is band C, our houses are the same size but we are an end terrace and have a side gate which means our garden is 3 feet wider than theirs. So for that extra 3 feet we have been placed in a higher band!

I'm not sure the new scheme would work either, who will do the assessments every year, how much will that cost?

That’s then complicated by equity. Somebody who owns a home worth £500K outright or with only a small amount of mortgage to pay off is wealthier than somebody with a property of the same value with a 90% mortgage and only a small amount of equity (or potentially, negative equity) - but I can’t imagine any property tax policy is going to take this into account.