Labour isn't Working - Thread 40

[Nuthatch26]

A chat thread for those who don't like this Labour government. 🥀

The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people's money.

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Lowering ‘mansion tax’ to £1.5m. May as well be called London terrace tax for many areas.

Lowering business rates - typical Labour Starmer / Reeves clobber businesses everyone says they were right now they’ll turn on a dime.

I hadn't heard that about the London property mansion tax.

They really are trying to squash London and the SE. I guess we'll see how that works out.

Morning 🙂

I was just reading about the mansion tax proposal in the Times. Another case of "who can we tax in order to pay benefits to others".
It will be interesting to see how this flies in the affected constituencies with Labour MPs.

The proposal has the potential to be controversial among Labour MPs in London. Reducing the threshold would bring 66,000 additional properties in the capital under the scope of the tax, many in seats which Labour controls.

www.thetimes.com/article/9e82024b-e092-4d75-9411-9853ec25333a?shareToken=65e02e9c39b13fb8898c4557d1f7140d

Labour's 'favourite think tank', The Resolution Foundation is urging the government to boost housing benefit, so that's where any extra tax may well go (source:Telegraph)

Formerly headed by Torsten Bell, now pensions minister.

Labour would lose a lot of support in London, surely? I doubt that more than a relatively small minority of London homes are worth £1.5m+, but from what I can see there’s a big concentration of them in certain areas - like Starmer’s constituency!

Poorer inner London is already Labour (though pockets are probably vulnerable to the Muslim vote). To judge by the local council elections, though, the suburbs are more contestable. I have friends in better-off bits of north and south London who all tell me their areas would be hit badly by any ‘mansion’ tax, unless it was set higher than £2m.

There’ll be plenty of twitchy London Labour MPs now. And Khan will be nervous too, I expect.

Every meeting is who can we tax next for benefits.

Why?! I don't get it at all.

They are saying the gap between the benefit and actual rents is too high because Local Housing Allowance rates have been frozen since April 2024.

Here's the full article

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/gift/30ea69355991be0c

So we will need to pay more to live in a house that’s been paid with taxed money, which is not a mansion, I must add, on top of all the other tax I pay so people who are have their rent subsidised with my money can have more?

Add to that the inevitable interest rate rise, and the energy bill inflation and squeeze!

Not to mention that a lot of those in the £1.5m homes will still have enormous mortgages. London and SE prices already falling - seems unlikely they want that part of the market to collapse?

we’ve definitely started Halloween tax scare season haven’t we - it’s a reliable annual anti festival now, where is the trick landing?

The law of unwanted consequences has no mercy.

A snapshot of life for those in receipt of Labour's largesse: We rent out part of our land as DIY grass grazing and currently have a vacancy. A potential renter came to view this morning and asked if she could have a reduction as she's "on benefits".🙄

Wow!

Bringing the tax down to £1.5m is very risky. It could cause London properties to slump. And there are a lot of knock on effects from that.

Creating a recession in London isn’t going to help anyone. Especially not Labour.

It shows how slippery these arbitrary thresholds are. Labour can and will move them.

I think they actively want to bring London house prices down.

No empathy of course for the many young people who will end up in huge, leveraged negative equity - since despite all the talk of 'unearned gains', London and SE property has been flat for the last 5 years (even in nominal terms, let alone real terms)

People are trapped by stamp duty though, and can't afford to move.

Typical Labour - take advantage of where the middle class are trapped to bleed them dry. Just like private school VAT.

@redange I never actually watched Dangermouse but I do enjoy a random cultural reference 😂

currently paying no attention to news but hello and love to all especially @Nuthatch26

This £1.5 million mansion tax. How will it affect landlords. Will flats be rated separately or the overall property taxed. If renting the whole property can the landlord dump the charges onto the tenant?

Also HMOs for students etc.

A question about the mansion tax: if say someone owns a property worth £1.5 million and decides to sell it because of this tax. There are no takers at the asking price of £1.5 million. so if the price, and therefore the value come down then presumably it’s no longer eligible for the tax?
It will be interesting to see what steps people take to reduce the value of their properties.
Some years ago someone was lent a nice flat in central London and was told they could stay there until it was sold. He made sure he was at home for viewings and would greet prospective buyers saying “hello, sorry, I’m absolutely exhausted. The ghosts kept me awake all night”

It’s getting to the stage where I can’t imagine ever recovering from this cycle of tax, spending, tax more, prices rising, tax even more, and let’s waste money meanwhile.
I’ve worn with a headache this morning so a bit fog headed but I just can’t think what’s fair about why the very few getting very very rich and those living on our money laughing, whilst the rest of us get even poorer?

It's not even British getting rich, but murky overseas investors.

It’s relentless. Some love it. I do actually want dc to have good jobs. All Labour and co think of is benefits.

The country is never going to fully recover, the best we can hope for is some kind of salvage operation. We to face the reality we are never ever going to be a First World Country ever again or at least in our lifetimes. However, we are heading to becoming a genuine Third World Country (we are there in some parts already). The very best we can hope for is that we stabilise after the Right do their duty and work together and save us from utter disaster, is a Second World Country.

We have to face reality, there is no coming back and ideas from Kemi such as scrapping IHT is Bollocks ! IHT is the most appalling tax in history, however it is never ever going to be repealed in this country . The time to have actually have repealed IHT was between 1979-1997 . After that it was never going to happen and cannot with the political state of the United Kingdom