To think an annual property tax is incredibly unfair?

[Itchthescratch]

I come from an area with low house prices. It is great! My friends can generally afford houses even with lower salaries as the earnings:house prices ratio is better. Rents are also lower so they have proportionately more disposable income.

I have moved to a more expensive area where house prices are higher and people have really had to push themselves to buy a property. Salaries are higher but not high enough to make up the difference. They have had to pay more stamp duty , pay more interest and have less disposable income each month.

I am really struggling to understand why my friends in the South should also automatically be paying more property tax under the new proposals being suggested by Burnham supporters? What is the justification? They would love to buy a large detached house for £300k like my friends from home but this isn't possible. It feels like they are being double penalised.

Just to add house prices haven't risen in real terms in the area in live in now for 20 years so the value of my friend's houses is simply money they have paid in.

Link?

If you can find Hansard you can find the government's own website.

The rules are you provide your own evidence. No link, no credibility.

Yep

Social housing is partially funded by taxpayers, primarily through government grants for construction and ongoing welfare benefits like Universal Credit.

Most of the housing element of universal credit goes to private landlords. Construction cost is paid recouped via rents.

Isn’t it simply typical of the more liberal (with other people’s money) posters that their responses are invariably “link” or picking on one tiny detail of a post and ignoring the substance of it. Such a tactic.

Yeh those demands are frequent.

To note about your point: Why should people in Westminster pay more Council Tax when they don't need to pay more to afford their local services? They will already pay a disproportionate amount of national taxes so it's not like they aren't paying their share in other ways.

No they don't necessarily. The very wealthy pay very little in tax, as they are able to get around personal taxation with business structures. Aside from stamp duty and council tax (which they are massively underpaying in many wealthy areas), most people in that demographic will pay very little. Many will also be overseas resident, with second or third properties in the UK, so don't pay other UK taxes. Paying a tax based on the value of assets held in the UK is one of very few ways to get any tax from them.

Not saying this is the right solution nationwide, but this option is one of the ways that the very wealthy can be taxed appropriately for the wealth they have and assets they own. And may also put some off buying second homes.

We who are happy to pay our share evidence sources and expect others to do the same.

Well I think most people are happy to pay their share. But it is increasingly the case that we have to pay a large number of others’ share too.

Yes of course

I was challenging the notion that rent was no cheaper than private and it’s not subsidised but I suppose tenants are not paying market rent

Those who think that LVT is a nasty left wing idea may be interested to know that past advocates include

Adam Smith, the Father of Economics
(in The Wealth of Nations)

Winston Churchill

Margaret Thatcher’s Economics guru, the American supply side economist Milton Friedman

This information is in the OP of a thread in the News forum started by @MikeRafone on 19/06 and was verified by me.

Fascinating, isn’t it?

What Andy Burnham is proposing is not a proper Georgist land value tax.

The classic LVT idea is to have it, only it, and nothing else. Hardly the latest proposal.

Aside from flats, the largest portion of the value of most family homes is in the plot if land. To this extent, the difference is not significant.

I might be happy to pay for the plot my semi sits on, if I paid no income tax, no NIC, no capital gains, no IHT, no road charges, no stamp duty, no VAT etc.

A land tax on top of everything else is not what classical economists were advocating.

I don’t have wealth. I have a massive mortgage because I live in London where housing costs more.

Milton Friedman was well aware of these other taxes. He did advocate swapping over to LVT, but if it were to replace our other taxes, just imagine how large it would be!

That is the whole point. Land is the one thing you cannot make more of. The idea is that everyone rents from the state rather than private land ownership. This makes sense ideologically because collecting rents is not productive. So you just tax land. This leaves no distortion on the productive and innovative part of the economy.

It’s an interesting idea. Not sure what I think of it, but it is intellectually coherent. Just slapping a tax on home ownership isn’t. I don’t think Adam Smith or Milton Friedman would be impressed with this initiative as it stands.

The problem with taxing land is that it would hit, say, someone with a plant nursery or riding stables. Good! some might say, You can build on it. But it would impoverish the landscape somewhat if every inch of spare land was built on in “desirable” areas.

You mean like a Poll Tax? 😂

Same old Labour, take from the worker to give to the shirker which ever way they can.

Council tax at the moment is incredibly unfair. City of London council charge a maximum of £2,659.12 for their council tax including houses worth millions. I pay more than this for my house in Lancashire which is a very normal 4 bed house.

It's another "chip on the shoulder" tax policy by Labour politicians to get at "the rich" even though house prices are based on where you live, not what you earn. Over time you can become asset rich but remain cash poor.

Not really - it’s to replace council tax which is already based on house value but extremely outdated

It is. It’s the normal Labour Party politics of envy.
Read George Orwell’s “The road to Wigan Pier”- It examines socialism and his conclusion is - socialists are not driven by love of the less fortunate or a desire to help them attain equality but generally by a hatred of the rich & those with more money & a desire to have their wealth themselves and be as rich as them.