to think mansion tax is an unfair tax on London and the South East?

[goodnessgracious]

I disagree with mansion tax but regardless it seems to me to be unfair on Londoners.

Aibu to think that it may also force some people to sell their properties who are income poor but property rich?

The issue is, and always has been, that in the UK property is as much (if not more) a financial investment as it can be a home. This is a cultural thing, for centuries people's fortunes have been tied to land ownership, from the sublime (Duke of Westminster end of the scale) to the ridiculous (eg tithed cottage). This has become, over many, many years, so much the case that class, upward mobility, access to education and good health can all be turned on their heads by this one thing alone.

Nobody would care if this were a tax on artworks, or cars, or other valuables items at £2m +. These are all privileges available to the rich, with no direct correlation to others not being able to afford their rent.

In other cultures, people put their money into family businesses, into buying farmland, into government bonds and stocks/shares, into education funds. Not so in the UK. If people come into money, more often than not property is at the top of the list.

I don't know what the solution is, but I do know that a blanket tax such as the proposed mansion tax is not the answer. The problem is complex and nuanced. This tax is like using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, missing, breaking your toe and allowing hundreds more nuts to accumulate in the meantime.

We pay more than that on council tax and sorry people from other areas are expected to move to where work is(we've done it several times) not getting why the rest of the country should weep and wail because you found your commute arduous and property high.

If my dp lost his job he'd have to get a London job and commute from Devon like many do.You chose the job in London,we chose the job in the SW.Both have to suck up the consequences and the unfair financial consequences that head our way.

Yes I agree with you again Petit . We live in the South West too and dh has to commute to London 3 days a week. It costs him a fortune. People living in central London avoid all of those costs.

You can bet your bottom dollar that the really rich will avoid this tax too.

It will affect people who have an asset on paper by accident and don't have the money to pay their way out of tax.

Some very precious people on this thread.

Seriously, anyone who lives in a house that's worth more than £2 or even £1m is NOT POOR even in London.

Much harder to avoid taxes on assets than taxes on income though merry. You can't hide houses.

I love the way people just say 'move'. It's not always that simple you know! If the tax affected us DH and I wouldn't just be able to up sticks. Both our mothers are elderly and rely on us so there's no way we could move away from them now. Also DH is self employed with a customer base here so would have to either start from scratch elsewhere or push up the prices to his customers to cover his increased travel costs. That would most likely mean losing a lot of his customers.

If only life was as straightforward as some people seem to think.

You can hide who owns them. You can hide the amount of money that changed hands.

Greengrow , please don't let us keep you and your remarkably saleable brain here, just to 'keep' all us valueless excess, so tiresome for you. In fact, I'll hold the door open for you and wish you a cheery tata. Well, not tata exactly, but I'll make it cheery expletive

Anyway the point is not "Should rich bastards pay tax?" The point is, if you are going to have a tax, should it affect all rich bastards equally? To each according to their need from each according to their ability.

ihate have you actually seen the price of property in central London.? You're talking a minimum of £1M for a one bed flat. You're still better off paying half that for a 5 bed house and commuting. I know commuting is expensive but it doesn't cost £500,000 per year.
Turnip I could get an equivalent job elsewhere but DH couldn't as he's manager in quite a specialist team. But the main reason we don't move is because we don't want to. We've lived here for 55 years between us. Our friends are here, our kids were born here, we have 2 teenagers at secondary school. We're very happy here.
Re transport, people are forgetting that it's not just millions of commuters coming in every day, there are also 20 million tourists every year.
And it makes me laugh when people talk about how lucky we are to have such wonderful transport , roads etc. I'm sure some of them are the ones who sneer about how crowded/noisy/dirty London is and go on about how on earth can you stand it? Now, we're incredibly lucky and should appreciate it.

It depends what you class as rich merry and how that income is earned. We have some very perverse tax rules at the moment where single income families pay marginal tax rates of 68% because one earner has an income of 50k and kids. This tax is not paid by two earners on 98k. That is not equal.

I have seen the prices of property in central London Andy. We couldn't afford to live there in a million years, despite dh being a higher rate tax payer, which is why we don't and dh commutes. It is still expensive though.

What you would need to do is be a rich bastard landlord owning many properties under the £2 million mark and live in a massive property in some lovely, beautiful place where jobs are few and prices are low.

I agree merry if this was applied, it needs to apply to total property value, i.e. if you own 3 houses, it is the combined amount of worth of all properties. These people are also very rich in my opinion. It shouldn't be based on one property solely. I know a few people who have 3 plus houses who purposefully earn under higher rate tax because they know they can fall back on sale of additional houses for extra income further down the line.

The latest polls show Labour doing particularly badly and the Tories ahead of them so thankfully we will probably not have to deal with the mansion tax.

(Not quite true middle earners pay the most tax actually. The 1% at the top pay 30% of the tax, the highest ever in British history although those who earn less than that don't like to believe it is so)

Not only the level of any "mansion" tax" vary with the regional house-price index: so should the starting point for inheritance tax.

So you dispute the fact that a single income earning family on 50k don't have a marginal tax rate of 68% then if they have 3 dc then greengrow and you think that is fair?

A 2 up 2 down in my old road recently went for £470,000. Not posh, an hour's commute to Waterloo taking walking into account, not in a good state of repair, looked as though it was rented. That's the kind of property you want as a rich bastard landlord. worth at least 50% more than when the Tories got in.

Of course if you just need somewhere to live and can't afford that you could move out to somewhere cheaper. But ten or fifteen years ago that road was the 'somewhere cheaper'. The 'somewhere cheaper' parts of London seem to be getting smaller and smaller. Certainly not big enough to house all the people in London who need homes.

My fear with the mansion tax is that normal properties will go above the 2 million mark if we have inflation.

It's a founder mentally unfair tax on aspiration. It's fair to make benefit claimants move to smaller properties as they are not footing the bill. If some one has worked hard to buy a nice house then why shouldn't they get to enjoy it when they are old?

I don't think labour are likely to win the next election. We devolution for England to stop stupid polices like this in their tracks.

The tories won't win the next election in any case greengrow. They have no chance. Even traditional tory voters won't vote for them. They are f**d.

All their MPs will have defected anyhow.

People 'just move' from Devon etc because there are no jobs. If DH and I moved out of London one or both of us would be out of work.

Do those of you outside London really want a massive influx of Londoners escaping house prices and competing for your jobs? Many of us in London were but born and bred here: I wasn't: I'm an ex-mining town Midlander. I did 'just move' , for the work .
I experience compromises for living in London (but am not moaning, I love it, now), I would experience different compromises had I stayed 'home'.

That's what we all do, surely?

The answer

Indeed LePetit!

We've already got a massive influx of Londoners thanks.Many don't even live in the second homes they Hoover up.Perhaps they could sell the second homes to fund the tax.