What would a land value tax look like instead of council tax?

[Newmeagain]

Just saw something about this in the news. Concerned about potential impact on home owners in London who may not necessarily be wealthy - ie no other assets to sell and not a huge income.

does anyone know?

And the land that doesn’t have registered boundaries.

They are just about everywhere

Now that would be a mindfield

Exactly !

Stamp duty is payable only when land changes hands

Land tax is payable every year
example here
Property taxes $7000 a year
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/185-Ambrose-Way-Wolfeboro-NH-03894/204133811_zpid/

Eh ?
The Land Registry has details of every parcel of land in the UK
Not all are registered, but every single one is identifiable
https://search-property-information.service.gov.uk/search/search-by-map/

If people try to move the widowers in my street who couldn’t afford this in the last decade of their lives I’d find a protest.

We live in a terraced house in an American city with high property taxes. I just did a quick Google and our annual taxes are over 3x Band C in London, which is the band it would fall into.

So switching to a property tax model could raise ALOT of money, but I don’t think that it would be popular!

I was around when it was introduced and my df made me pay my share

That’s basically a wealth tax then. Much the same as the proposal we’re talking about on this thread

It doesn’t however reflect what council tax is all about ie Paying for services in the community. That’s a usage issue and whilst currently more expensive properties pay more than less expensive ones on the same road that’s assuming ( usually quite rightly) that the properties are different sizes and accommodate therefore more occupants

A land tax as you say does not necessarily reflect usage ( especially at the % rates you’ve shown )
and the entire purpose of council taxes would have to be resold to the electorate as just basically another tax.

At those rates most people couldnt live

Title cannot change without a Land Registry update.
So people who think they own land find they do not
(I deal with this VERY regularly)

There is a lot of unregistered land
There is a lot of land owned by companies and trusts in perpetuity

If the tax is based on national bands, it will become a tax on London and the south. There is also the problem of local accountability - no taxation without representation. if the representation is at a local level, the taxation should be too. If Londoners pay a disproportionate amount of tax, should they get a say on how it’s spent in Bradfield?

As soon as government use a local tax to raise money at a national level (to level up poorer areas - a good thing) local democracy is broken - not a good thing.

i’ve often wondered if a locally raised tax, which is voted for locally Plus a centrally taxed element to subsidise poorer areas might work. Maybe the centrally taxed element could be IHT based. As the baby boomers get older, this will be quite a large figure given they own a lot of property.

Local tax is always full of unfair winners and losers - but so is national tax rates where there are huge regional variations in income AND expenses to live.

Another option would be to have a local income tax and a local element of VAT. The rates adjusted to accommodate the amount needing to be raised.

it will be a mess however it’s done!

IHT already goes into the central pot. It doesn’t go to the local councils

I know, but maybe it could be earmarked for levelling up poorer area’s local spending, allowing other areas to maintain the link between local services and a local taxation.

edited as didn’t proof read!

Re. Your first paragraph
Is this whats being proposed only I can’t find any recent articles at all

Does anyone have anything that’s not just about taxing those with over £10million

So what happens to the areas of spending it’s already earmarked for

A land tax based on value of property, becomes a tax disproportionately affecting London and the south.

The problem is we’re all relying on sound bites and comments from insiders in the Labour Party as quoted and interpreted by the BBC and press. Political parties do this to see which leaked method causes least squealing.

I’ve put together a patchwork of such snippets and haven’t really any real knowledge.

Council tax has very little to do with paying for services in the community, if by services you mean services everyone uses like bin collection etc.

About 70% of council tax revenue is spent on social care (adult and child). Most people will never need or use council-funded social care. But you pay for it anyway, just like any other taxpayer-funded service.

Lots of people are fine with national tax being progressive and having no link with your consumption of government services, but somehow think councils should be like a business where you only pay for the services you receive. I’m not sure why people think this, but it’s not how the system works.

Paying for services in the community doesn’t mean everyone uses those services.
( Nor does it mean if we pay more we get more
Our council tax is higher than all our neighbours but we don’t get to put out more bins than them even though we have twice as many bedrooms
We all get the same )

It means services are available to everyone in the community if at any time they may need them
As social care isn’t a centralised service that means we all pay towards adult social care for those in our community that need it.

I don’t agree with only paying for the services you need. It’s often those who need more that are less able to pay unfortunately.

I wouldn’t be so sure it would be band C.

Mines a small terrace and I’m band F.

That needs sorting too, a social insurance that everyone pays into, CT then reverts back to local services & cut at the same time.

May to her credit, tried this but it soon got called a "Death Tax"... Johnson promised a 2% increase in NI to pay for it.... when he went, Sunak scrapped it and Hunt cut NI by 4%.... leading to the mess we are in now... thats costing Reeves 10billion per year to fund.

He of course knew this would happen.....

@MidnightPatrol It could be, I just took a quick look at the bands. Our property taxes are about double the Band F rate. We get very little for what we pay here, it’s v. frustrating.

It also depends where you are in London. Westminster is very low and Camden very high for example

what council tax is all about ie Paying for services in the community.

It's not really about that though. It's about having a fiscal hook on local accountability, not about bills for bins. Initially the vast majority of LG funding was from central government which was how it was envisaged to continue, until the 2008 administration.

Anyway it's clearly in need of reform. It's nonsense to base a tax on house prices from the previous millennium.

Why would there be any difficulty in assessing companies or trusts with rates assessments?

Regarding unregistered land, do you mean land where there is no identifiable owner or land where, say, a change of ownership hasn't been registered?

Land with no buildings on it is not subject to council tax and if there is no business activity, not subject to business rates.
It just sits there.

Unregistered land has never been registered with an owner since 1992
either because it has no owner
(astoundingly common)
or it has not changed hands
(see much of central London where the freeholder is the Duke of Westminster)

the third category is land where the owner has ceased to exist
(development companies that have been struck off)

Why is it cheaper in Westminster and other places, is it because not many people need care or other reasons