to be pleased my property portfolio won't incur a mansion tax?

[AlphaBravoHenryFoxtons]

The portfolio consists of five London flats worth between £1.4M and £1.9M, three London houses worth 1.5M - £1.9M, and an actual mansion in the north worth £850,000 (with tennis court, its own orchard and some topiary on the front lawn in the shape of a giant socialist clenched fist).

A £2M property in the SE and London isn't necessarily anything special.

I'm sorry, but this just demonstrates that you are deluded and out of touch, OP. Sure, you may not get a "mansion" in Central London for that price, but there are millions of families living in London and the South East who could never dream in living in such an expensive property.

If you can afford a £2m mansion, you are rich. If you earn enough to secure an £800k mortgage, you are also rich. This tax may be unpopular among you and your rich friends, but don't assume that the rest of the country will take pity on you!

happybubblebrain - Stay classy.

Kampeki "If you can afford a £2m mansion, you are rich." I'm not saying you aren't. But aren't you also "rich" if you have two £1M (one you live in and a holiday home or three £1.5M properties? And aren't you similarly well off if you own £2.5M worth of equities? Or a £1.5M house, a £1M pension pot, £500K worth of ISA investments and £250K corporate bonds? Houses are illiquid assets. And you primary residence is especially illiquid as you live in it! A home does not produce an income for you. Mansion tax will be paid out of income AFTER income tax.

20% of UK tax payers pay 80% of the tax in the UK. And 52% of adults receive more from the state than they contribute. I have absolutely no problem with that redistributive tax regime. But Mansion Tax is just designed to appeal to people like happybubblebrain: people who want to stick it to the well off and don't care if that's done in a disorderly and unfair way.

But surely house prices only have to rise by 5% and you WILL be paying Mansion tax, as you will be over the £2M threshold on some of your properties.

I'm wondering about my portfolio to be honest. It's increasing in value and several will be tipping the 2m mark soon. Is awfully worrying.

5% of £1.9M is £95,000. That would still be under the mansion tax threshold. And the point is that this new tax will cause all sorts of problems and price distortions. It will mean that property will fall which won't help the recovery at all.

Also if you buy two properties of £1.4M each, you would pay far less stamp duty than you would if you bought one house for £2.8M. So you get spanked on both fronts. You pay more in SDLT AND you get to pay mansion tax. Whoopeee.

House prices are unlikely to rise if Labour gain power.

If I was rich, I think I would emigrate.

It seems to be OK to think that the rich are a bunch of greedy bastards who should just hand over chunks of their wealth for no good reason. In fact, those in £2m houses (I assume) pay the highest rate of council tax already and presumably (high rate) interest on their savings and top rate tax on their earnings. Council tax is already a tax on your property value and mansion tax is just a way to try and win votes from people who envy the rich. I don't think that much money would be raised anyway as I imagine a very small percentage of people have houses like that. So it isn't even about raising money IMO.

As a society, we would be so much worse off without the rich. Even if you consider people who are filthy rich and have family money and only dabble at work sometimes, they spend loads - they employ people, their spending (even if £10k on a kids party) is going back into the economy and keeping businesses going.

Anyway I'm not talking about myself, it's the principle. Our house would have to multiply in value several times for us to be liable to mansion tax .

"House prices are unluckily to rise if Labour gain power"

Of course! They didn't rise at all the last time Labour were in power

If you keep those houses, you will most definitely be paying the mansion tax within a few years.

*What if you have say 15k income having retired on the state pension and a private pension? But you live in a house you brought years ago that is now worth 2m. Are you suggesting that you force that person to move?

Really?*

Why not? Plenty of poor people have been forced to move due to welfare changes. Why not people who have been extraordinarily fortunate to gain from the unearned wealth created by housing boom and are already cushioned from the cuts.

Bakeoffffcake but that was New Labour who (to quote Mandelson) were intensely relaxed about people getting filthy rich. Ed Miliband is from the Planet Fuck where no one gets richer than their postman. Unless they have a big win at bingo or their numbers come up on Lancelot in the midweek Euro Millions draw.

Made me giggle Bailey101.

Come the rebellion we'll all (rich, poor and socialist topiaryists alike) move into un taxable yurts, until we get real politicians again

So if person A buys a house in the North and person B buys a house in the south, identical income, identical cost and identical mortgages. In 30 years time A is worth 500k and downsizes to a bungalow at the seaside pocketing 200k in profit to supplement their pension. B, for exactly the same input, is now in a house worth over £2m and, if they retired next door to A will pocket £1.7million+. Why shouldn't there be a tax on that huge amount of unearned income? Why should people make vast profits simply due to the area they live in?

I have nothing against pensioners but recent figures have shown that pensions have gone up far faster than salaries in recent years so don't understand the concern for pensioners who may have to pay tax if they sell mansions

sen, but most of us won't do that. My parents died in their 4 bed detached house house in the North East. I intend to die in my 5 bed detached house in London where I had to move for work. When I die the state seizes 40% of the value of the house for inheritance tax and my children are then homeless (we have no other savings). I don't expect sympathy from anyone and I have paid a mortgage for 30 years, but there are certainly some unfairnesses in the tax.

As i said above the result is that if I am subject to it (I am under I think and also by the way Labour has said the £2m limit will rise so anyone just under now probably will stay under even if houses go over £2m) I will ensure I pay much less tax otherwise as I do not currently claim lots of reliefs I could like contributions to pensions so I will ensure the sttae is the loser and those jealous of those of us who live in London houses with massive mortgages who work full time will no doubt be pleased but the net result is less tax raised and that's great - ya boo sucks to Labour - if you tax the hugely mortgaged in London until the pips squeak you end up with less juice than had you not done the squeezing.

Plenty of poor people have been forced to move due to welfare changes. Why not people who have been extraordinarily fortunate to gain from the unearned wealth created by housing boom and are already cushioned from the cuts.

There's a very big difference between having to move because you are financially dependent in other people, and having to move because despite being financially secure and independent the government wants to take what you may or may not have to benefit other people, especially when you already pay in your fair share to the tax system.

It's the people who support this tax that are greedy, what else is it when you want to take something that rightfully belongs to someone else for your own gain and to their detriment? I have no chance of ever being hit by this ridiculous policy, but the injustice of it it glaringly obvious.

Totally agree Ptolemy

senrensarata It is not "unearned income". It is capital gain. The distinction is VERY important and it is ignorance such as this which makes people support the mansion tax. It has long been the case that your main residence is exempt from capital gains tax. Yes it is luck, but that doesn't mean the state can just seize money because we can't all have the same. On that basis, if somebody sells their house in London because they move to Newcastle for their work and they buy the same house at half the prize, then the government should tax them. Bollocks to that.

If I could speak with Ed Milliband, I would say this: why not just take money out of bank accounts, Cyrpus-style? Decide what kind of bank balance makes a person "wealthy" and just take say, 15% of it. It's much simpler.

I don't think that's a simple solution to anything. I presume it would lead to a loss of confidence in the UK banking system and billions being taken out of banks here and put into banks / assets abroad. Anybody with wealth would probably be more reluctant to invest in the UK at all, in case Ed decided to extend this smash-and-grab raid to other forms of capital.

Yes, Goodbye, I would much prefer that (as I have no savings just a so called mansion). Take 10% of everyone's savings rather than their capital asset home. Much fairer as we need the home to live in whereas savings are a luxury some of us in mansions don't have!!

Sure, I agree BadLad. I think there's already a loss of confidence because it's not that unthinkable given that the mansion tax is now actually viable?

I'd prefer it too.

Yes, prices are dropping in London which is not a problem for me as I get more and more below mansion tax levels - bring it on. I don't want to sell this house ever and will be here for 40 more years so no problem if the prices halves although a bit of a pity for when I die as I have not had equity gains in it - every last penny earned and taxed already at 40%+ unlike some of the OAPs who just bought and prices rose.

But the level at which mansion tax applies will just chase the market down if property prices fall.

I know quite a few people who aren't voting Labour because of this stupid tax and not necessarily because it applies to them, but because they disapprove of it.

Chortle snort. Very nice dear. Who did you get to do the topiary. I quite fancy one in the shape of michael gove standing victorious on a pile of suffering teachers.

Nettymaniaa That sounds rather intricate for buxus (a shame as I love the sound of suffering teachers), could you come up with something simpler? But if your heart's set on the Gove piece, do consider fake topiary. I find trimming my bush increasingly time consuming and difficult.. As I get older, it's hard to get to all of it. I'm often tempted to get rid of the lot and replace it with a smooth peach tree. But espalier trees are high maintenance in an entirely different way. I sometime wonder if it might be better to just let nature take its course and hang the trimming versus rejuvenating conundrum. But what would my front lawn say to visitors driving in?

Let it all hang untamed and you might escape mansion tax (topiary in small London houses subject to the tax being anyway one plant pot).
Labour have said the £2m will be indexed (not that I believe them on just about any issue though.......) so if I am £1.8m now then probably I will stay out of it. If they say I am over £2m then I will ensure I pay the state less tax than now by things like pension contributions as a matter of principle so the state is the loser overall.