Reeves plan to tax houses over 500k PART TWO

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I am not the OP from the OP!

The welfare bill will certainly not be going down if the pressure on middle aged, middle earning people continues to ramp up. Occupational pensions are nothing like they were. Many people like us will end up having to sell, needing to rent again (having rented almost middle age) and claiming housing benefit to cover rent in retirement.

I fully expect this will be our situation too. DP has a degenerative health condition that will impact his mobility in the future. I fully expect to be a full time carer in ten years time. If we are forced out of the house due to spiralling costs rhen guess where we’ll end up? 🤦🏻‍♀️

The housing market only moves and grows when everyone has mobility not just one price bracket, this will totally stall the market assuming they stick to £500k all homes valued at £500-800k will start to reduce and fall in value. Anyone living in a home over £500k will stay put for the long term so there will be no stock movement above £500k.

Any new builds will stick, developers won’t be able to sell anything on the estates above 500k it will be a bit of a disaster and we will just have low value cheaper homes being built.

Once they start working on it then it will come in because it will raise more money and any new government will say ‘oh it’s too far along to go back now - it’s all labours fault’

they are killing aspiration in this country - I look at new graduates coming out and struggling to find even minimum wage jobs and wonder how we stop them giving up on themselves. It’s sad

@Marshmallow4545 completely agree with you. There needs to be a sensible discussion on how to stabilise the welfare budget. When we take into account that 1 in 4 working age people are not actually working. Plus children and pensioners of course not working, less than 50% of country actually work. Anyone earning under about 50k (well over national average salary of about 38k) is unlikely to be a net contributor. So out of every 10 people in this country there are only 2 who are actually net contributors - that's not a sustainable system.

There is a sweet spot where reducing taxes doesn't actually reduce overall tax income through a combination of attracting higher earners and big business, allowing smaller businesses to flourish, and people having nore disposable income so spending more which increases VAT income and creates jobs, therefore reducing the welfare demand. People feel happier as less stress about affording their bills and greater drive to improve their job prospects as they will take home more of what they earn. However, our current government are heading the opposite way, stifling both business and state services with the NI increase, and taking us towards an unstable precipice, both economically and politically.

We encourage our young people to move abroad.

Just over a year after winning the 2024 election, the net approval rating of the Labour government in the United Kingdom is -56 percent.

This is the lowest approval rating for the current government, and is
equal to the rating the Conservative government had just before the 2024 general election.

In August 2025, the net favorability rating for the current British Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, is -44 percent, 13 points below the Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch.

Starmer's popularity has fallen considerably since taking office in July 2024, and as of this month, he was noticeably less popular than the Reform Party leader, Nigel Farage, and Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey

Source: Statista

Sadly unpopularity won’t get you out of office when you are only a year into governance.

But this should:
13 months of Labour in office. This is what they’ve done to the UK’s 30-year gilt yield. They have done this 3 times in 1 year.

Now remind me what they said about Truss when she did this? Plenty of evidence on X!

Yes, because the grass is always greener!

What it will do is influence policy.

Why? Pressure.

Pressure from the markets, from the media, from the electorate, from the constituents, from the back benches, from the WH, from the IMF. Labour have a habit of u-turning, of flip-flopping, of polling the media before trying to introduce new reform.

There will be greener short term pastures even if it’s with a long term plan to come back.

Quite so.

The November budget will probably see the end of Reeves - as Starmer will knife her.

No amount of waterworks will save her.

Hopefully it will be the beginning of the end for this utterly wretched excuse for a government.

Banish them back to the wilderness for a multiple of 14 years, please.

UK inflation accelerates to an 18-month high due to surging fuel, food and transport prices.

CPI rose by 3.8% YoY.
Services inflation up 5%.

Under pressure Reeves…..

Wonder how "surprised" they are

completely agree with you. There needs to be a sensible discussion on how to stabilise the welfare budget. When we take into account that 1 in 4 working age people are not actually working. Plus children and pensioners of course not working, less than 50% of country actually work. Anyone earning under about 50k (well over national average salary of about 38k) is unlikely to be a net contributor. So out of every 10 people in this country there are only 2 who are actually net contributors - that's not a sustainable system.

It's never been normal to have a high % of net contributors though, what has changed is demographics and the fact wages have been stagnated for years.

I was also thinking how the hell they are going to make these increased housing taxes palatable to the public when they are paying so much to house people entering the country illegally.

i know the plan is to stop using hotels but I was reading the current case where Epping Forest District Council has had an injunction against the government upheld and some of the rhetoric from the governments barrister was bizarre. It really feels like they have no interest in addressing that situation. Everything seems so geared towards the human rights of people who aren’t or af least werent resident in this country until a few months ago. I can’t see how a tax like this wouldn’t Further deepen divides and cause more instability.

The aging population is a huge issue. Longevity has improved but the oldest are not well and take up lots of NHS resources as well as having state and other pensions for longer

UK debt is massive and the interest payments massive. Roughly £1 trilliion in 2010, £2 trillion by 2020, £2.5 trillion after Covid, now nearly £3 trillion. That is why austerity has impacted on services. Toties were just starting to reduce debt with their cuts but then Brexit happened and debt carries on going up.

Reality, which no one wants to hear

Honestly, I think this is terrific.

The sooner, and the more of us Labour can shoe-horn ill-conceived, punitive taxation on, the sooner they will be out of government.

They are that toxic combination of incompetent, and ideologically vicious.

Bring it on!

Nobody’s blaming pensioners or deflecting @DrPrunesqualer It’s just acknowledging, that the money for pensions, pension credit etc comes from the welfare state.How will the welfare cost, for pensioners naturally decline? when pensioners are living longer.And there’s actually more pensioners, today than ever, which will continue to rise.As you said birth rates in the uk are low (the lowest they’ve ever been)

The demographic changes are having a huge impact but again people don't want to discuss it.

I'm beginning to feel the same. Each poor decision is another nail in the coffin.

Yep.

EU inflation is 2% for comparison. USA 2.7%.
Food inflation has jumped up to 4.9% in July.

Thankfully with Labour there's always a tweet 🤣 this one from 2022

😂😂
Yep. We have the receipts.

Oh god don’t 🙈

I hate it when people say ‘well it can’t get much worse’ and it always bloody does.

I really couldn’t agree with this more, and it is a well established path.
You cannot keep increasing the tax burden on the same section of society - let’s face it, the easiest to target through PAYE.
We must;

• smooth cliff edges
• compel people back into work (that can)
• Target areas of abuse such as company structures focused on oversees holding companies to avoid UK tax, dodgey R&D and dodge gore packs.