Does anyone actually know what the property tax is rumoured to be?

[kirinm]

I’ve read a few bits and pieces and all I’ve gathered so far is they may get rid of stamp duty (a good thing for me personally) but then bring in other taxes which might include a general property tax and / or capital gains?

For buyers, surely the change is a positive one unless I’m missing something?

(Stamp duty on our current purchase is nearly £60k so if we somehow manage to avoid it, that would be brilliant).

exempt even.

Council tax is not a property tax though as it’s paid by renters as well - it’s an occupancy tax

stamp duty makes moving prohibitive. Lots of my younger colleagues and relatives have just skipped the flat stage and gone straight for a small house on outer zones as they don't want to pay 2 lots of stamp duty.

Putting aside what potential policies have been leaked to the press and the concerns they're causing, I'd be extremely worried if I was sitting on an expensive house with not a lot of liquidity about Andy Burnham taking over the Labour Party. It wouldn't be immediate - he has to become an MP first.

"Setting out policies he said would "turn the country around", Burnham called for higher council tax on expensive homes in London and the South East; £40bn of borrowing to build council houses; income tax cuts for lower earners; and a 50p rate for the highest-paid."

I very much doubt he'll give a jot about someone living in a £2m not being able to afford higher taxes on homes.

Nobody likes Keir Starmer, so his chances of success are probably far higher than during his previous two attempts.

As I say I think this will hit the pockets of the large corporations buying up residential property for their portfolios a lot harder than Mr and Mrs Smith who bought their property in London for £1.50 in the 90s and now have £10 million of paper gains.

Any government has to access that money tied up in housing & the older generation though because the country is in serious economic strife. The ageing population just adds more strain on the public purse and we can't really keep increasing income taxes.

Did you mean to respond to me? An annual property tax will affect everyone with a property over the threshold value - it won't matter what they paid for it.

I was very sure about yet another raid by Labour, on property now, until I read this
Nigel Farage on course to be next prime minister, mega poll projects | Politics News | Sky News

This new property tax would effectively be a tax on London and since this morning I'm not entirely convinced Labour will go for it given that London is their only remaining stronghold. How stupid they would be to kill it?

But it will matter what it’s currently worth.

Providing their going to Recalculate utilising the data available to them on an almost 6 monthly basis as to whether the property is gone up or down.
If AI and data is going to be utilised in that manner, that’s a positive

Nigel Farage is only popular because he is saying what people want to hear, low taxes & great public services. It's bullshit

Surely part of the issue, as it was with the VAT on Private schools, is that it will hugely affect the lower end of the scale and not the super rich at all.
I know it's hard to get tax out of the people with off shore accounts but all they are doing is widening the gap and making areas and options for the elite only.

I don’t care what they do so long as they don’t chuck a load of property tax at me after I’ve just spent £75k on stamp duty.

Yes - but you keep talking about gains and my point it that the gain will be irrelevant. It will affect everyone to the extent that their property is over the threshold value.

Surely part of the issue, as it was with the VAT on Private schools, is that it will hugely affect the lower end of the scale and not the super rich at all.

It's very hard to tackle the super rich though without global action.
Council tax is a weird one though as you have people paying a lot more in one part of the country which a cheap homes vs someone who has a ££££ property.

Not really. Two examples.

1. People who buy new builds in my town, of the same value as mine, pay Band D whereas I pay Band B because it was an ex-local authority home built in the 1950's. Purchasers of new builds are being ripped off.
2. Top Band H was based on homes valued greater than £320000 in 1991. Someone whose home was worth £500,000 in 1991 pays exactly the same council tax as someone whose home was worth £2M. CT isn't well linked to property value.

But similarly to private school VAT it won't affect the vast majority so may prove popular with voters.

Yes, exactly. I live in a really small terraced house. It’s worth quite a bit of money but I am not wealthy. None of my neighbours are wealthy. If there was an annual property tax I would probably need to sell. I am feeling stressed and worried about it.

As a proponent of an annual tax, I recognise that many people are asset rich but cash poor. I would hope that a scheme would enable the annual tax for those people to be added as a charge to their property that only gets paid when it is sold or inherited.

I think that a property tax is fair for people who have avoided paying Stamp duty on purchase, there’s about 55 billion in property mostly London, average price 1.3 million owned by overseas corporations. Property is then bought and sold but because it’s the ownership of an overseas business changing hands, it isn’t attracting CGT or stamp duty. It’s avoidance rather than evasion, I feel like the Blair’s got in trouble with this as their home was purchased in a corporate wrapper way back when so not a new issue.

£800k. It isn’t a mansion.

I think Council Tax is the thing they need to change. I'm in a 3 bed semi and pay the same as a 5 bed detached 600 meters up the road. I never understood why we don't do the sq ft thing like other countries as it's a better reflection of mansion than bedroom number (where someone can have a library and playroom instead of 2 bedrooms for eg). Cities should have a base rate devised from the average salary for that city then the sq footage rate added on.

As a proponent of an annual tax, I recognise that many people are asset rich but cash poor. I would hope that a scheme would enable the annual tax for those people to be added as a charge to their property that only gets paid when it is sold or inherited.

My parents could easily downsize as the house is too big for them but I get that change is hard so a charge later could be an alternative.

Exactly, if I die my child will have to sell the house that I've paid the same council tax on as the millionaires up the road, just because they are on the same road and my very average house is now worth more than it would be on any other road in the town. It's mad! They'll end up with millions after IHT because they have 5 bedrooms and a pool and my kid will just about have enough to buy a house on another road in town. The % of IHT paid feels unfair if you look at what has to happen to pay for it at the bottom end of the scale.

Why is there not a global push to tax these billionaires anyway? Every country has the same problem and rising fascism is laughing at the lack of any accountability.

But how is that fair? In my case, I have not benefitted from any huge gains in the value of my house. All my earning from nearly three decades of work are tied up in it. I have prioritised having somewhere to live over other things. All the money tied up in my house has already been taxed many times over.

@Newmeagain you would scrap IHT?