Latest mansion tax should be on top % homes locally not nationallu

[Lionfisher]

Rachel Reeves is front running yet another class warfare policy in the press, this time suggesting everyone who lives in a home over £2m should have to pay 1% on anything above 2m.

First - I’m fine with this. I live in SW London and would probably have to pay some.

But I’m ONLY fine with it if everyone round the country does too. Meaning that it should be on the top 5% of homes by REGION (I’ll leave it to other people to argue what region means, all the data is there to do it).

We could happily sell our 4 bed home and move somewhere else in the country and buy a 10 bed castle. Or just buy another 4 bed home and stash the rest in the markets. TBH we might even do that if this comes in.

But people don’t want us to do this because it prices them out of local homes etc. Which is pretty much what this policy would do, price people out of local homes so they move elsewhere and prices up somewhere else instead.

But more than anything you can be far more rich on far less money in other parts of the country. So this isn’t a tax on property it’s a tax on the south.

As long as top X% of homeowners elsewhere are paying their 1% above their threshold I’ve no issues with this.

But people won’t agree with me as it’s easier to think it should always be “other people” who pay…. or will they?

A wealth tax will force many people who have been prudent out of their home because they will not have the disposable income to pay the annual tax. Those larger home will be bought by corporates who will subdivide and build three homes where there was once one. Expensive matchbox sized town houses with postage stamp size gardens.

It is a tax on workers who have been prudent all of their lives, not those with the broadest shoulders.

It will do nothing to protect tenants and tax payers from the corporate greed and the shit political leadership that is killing this country. That is where the government should be focusing their attention. That and the fact they can't cover their own pension commitments.

People in the north - and everyone else 30 years ago, were told there would likely be no state pension when they retired, so were advised to invest in property. It’s not their fault and yes, I’m in the North. I also think it’s a nonsensical tax, and that anyone within the M25 / 30 mins out of the M25, and similar highly priced areas, should be discounted if it does get passed.

Rachel Reeves is the stupidest Chancellor there ever was. All her ideas are shit. Her tactics of upsetting the market by leaking all her stupid ideas to gauge which will stick is fundamentally flawed. She is singlehandedly making the UK economy the most unstable in Europe.

Tbf I can’t stand Rachel, but ALL chancellors have done this she’s far from the first

OK, so our house possibly hits the top 5% for our region - it would depend on exactly how big the regions were.
If I pay an extra charge, please can our region have school outcomes like the SE? Public facilities like maintained parks and (free?) museums like the SE? Public transport that runs past 5pm, so it's actually usable for a commute?

It's not just a tiny uplift in salary that the SE gets. It's massive Publicly funded investment and subsidies. Let's stop pretending the NE is just like the SE with lower costs of living. It absolutely isn't. The NE has been decimated time and time again.

So to be clear, you support the tax rises as long as you’re not paying it? Or as long as everything you pay goes directly towards benefitting yourselves. Got it!

Nope. Happy to pay so long as everyone benifits, and not, as we see time and time again, the SE get the lions share and benifits, and the NE (and other forgotten regions) get screwed over yet again.

Well yes, it would be, seeing as it doesn't actually exist.

Let's just wait and see...we haven't had the Budget yet, read out by one of the most popular Chancellors in living memory.

@Lionfisher

im guessing you are se based. As soon as you live outside of the se you realise you are a second class citizen, we have 3 buses an hour, a luxury compared to the next village along which now has zero public transport, zero (bus company pulled out during pandemic, council can no longer afford to run subsidised services) we get our rubbish picked up every 3 weeks, we have no children’s centres, elder care centres or anything other than bare minimum unless run as a charity with no public support, and our council no longer funds 6th form travel meaning you can’t got to sixth form unless you can afford £1100 a year for a bus pass. The museum (crappy local museum) is £6.80 to visit whereas in London they are amazing and free.

I think you have a weird idea of the SE as some big uniform blob with all the facilities of London. The SE town I grew up in had 2 buses an hour 20 yrs ago, I think it’s down to 1 now. The SE village I now live in has 1 an hour, 1 every 90 mins on the weekend, and has a 3 weekly rubbish collection schedule. Yet you list these things as examples of being a second class citizen outside of the SE.

ETA - to be clear I’m not saying there is no regional inequality. It just makes me laugh this idea that those within “the SE” have no idea the awful misery of 1 bus an hour and 3 weekly bin collections that they’d experience if they stepped out of the utopia bubble they live in

Exactly. We had all this last time round. Loads of panic on MN and certain press whipping up a frenzy, and it turned out to be mostly fine.

You seem to think the whole of the SE has tubes and buses and public transport everywhere. That’s London. And the streets are paved with gold. That’s nowhere.

We are 15 miles outside London. I’m on the edge of a town, not a big town like Guildford or farnborough, just a normal sized town.

There are a handful of buses that come into the town from Greater London (we are the end of the route). To get one it would take us 50 mins to walk to the nearest stop. They go maybe twice an hour.

We then have two buses that go down the main road, once every two hours, joining the villages up. My cleaner lives 5 miles away, it takes her 1h 30 to get here via three buses.

its FAR worse when you get further away and into other parts of the south east, where they face exactly the same challenges as everywhere else.

At one point recently, Surrey schools had some of the fewest spare school spaces in the country because everyone comes to live here and nothing got built. We didn’t get either of the schools we were in the catchment for because they were oversubscribed. all the secondaries were living out of temporary classrooms for years until a new secondary was eventually built.

Our rubbish collected twice a week, which is better but I’m not sure you could say it was great. And all the museums and parks near us are a fortune to get in. One near us is £16 for an adult… for the park.

@mamagogo1 - I suggest you undertake a road trip round Britain - nay, a bus trip. Then report back on what you find in the south east.

I am amazed that my dcs were receiving free transport to sixth form according to you. Why on earth in the land of milk and honey that is the south east was I paying £1000 a year?

@Leavesfallingthis is only a tax on unearned wealth if you’ve had your home for ages and it’s increased in value. Otherwise it’s an additional and unexpected expense on what for some will be a recent (now falling in value) purchase of a family home. In the south many families have been saving for years - yes, high earners but already paying eye watering amounts of tax. To then slap an additional charge on that home purchase just doesn’t seem right or fair

Agree. I think I've been through all that upthread. I did give an example too of the circumstances in which it could be considered unearned.

Also even if you’re house has massively inflated, it is so expensive to buy anything else unless you move away with extra stamp duty threshold they raised this year so no financial gain

Until you die.

My cleaner lives 5 miles away, it takes her 1h 30 to get here via three buses.

Perspective is everything...

This Labour party are NOT left wing!

Also, I think someone should start a thread where we all state what area we live in roughly, what size our houses are and how much council tax we pay. I think it would be eye- opening. The rest of the country is being shafted by London.

Why should anyone have to sell their only home to pay a tax? How is that fair? It does not matter what you think your house is worth or what the estate agent tells you. It is only worth what a buyer is prepared to pay, at the moment that is likely to someway below the asking price.

Yes but shrouds have no pockets😂

or may need to go into a care home

Liverpool. Four beds. £4,244 a year. But yeah, everything is so much cheaper up here, so they say. Our council have stated they are providing no services this year other than social care and bin emptying.

😲

Sheffield £2600. 4 bed semi in nice area.Don’t get anything for it though. Bins emptied fortnightly, getting into any local tip
is like a military operation. City centre non existent. Schools on their knees