Mansion Tax at £1.5m - what will this mean?

[MaureenOHara]

Does anyone have any idea what this might mean for an individual and what it might do to the market. What happened to the £2m market and will that be replicated or is it different?

Total UK mortgage lending is currently GBP 1.76 trillion.

I hope Healey has done his maths.

@BeardySchnauzer thanks

It is everywhere.

@LifeOnEnceladus I will read your post in detail but you are already talking my language re redirecting money towards the young. The problem is how do you get voters on board when so much of the electorate is older?

So people who already pay more tax should pay more tax. When does it stop being fair enough?

LOL. That’s precisely why it’s not viable to introduce the proposed tax that the thread it about! The vast majority of those they would be attempting to charge will be either: 1) asset rich but cash poor elderly people who simply do not have the money to pay it; or 2) people whose budgets are already stretched to the maximum because they are paying extremely high taxes and housing costs and now (thanks to yet more economic mismanagement) being charged higher interest rates on those mortgages so do not have the disposable income to be able to pay this. This group would be being taxed on debt. Not a principle you’d think the lower earners would like to establish in law. Will they be happy if the Government subsequently decides to levy an annual tax on any outstanding credit card and loan balances?

@LifeOnEnceladus

i agree with most of your points but the French healthcare system is struggling too. Not enough GP’s. A&E having to close overnight due to staff shortages. Etc. German is probably the better model but people would probably be up in arms because not everyone gets equal treatment.

you are completely right on the tax system - and using automation to reduce tax evasion. People like to blame big corporates but most evasion is small traders/individuals

also agree importing a tried and tested system would be good as we seem incapable in this country of implementing IT projects!!

We aren't "fleecing" anyone! You tax where the money is, based on the effect it has on that person and how much they can afford. Anyone in a £10m house is literally not going to notice £2500 a year. It astonishes me that people carry water for multimillionaires.

The rest of your post is just catastrophising, but if house prices go down in the South relative to the North that would be a good thing.

The reason it affects people in London more (and only 1 in 50 of them) is because that's where all the rich people live.

The housing crisis can be fixed by building more houses, which will inevitably lead to lower house prices. Do you oppose that, too?

The problem is Labour really can’t see the consequences of tax rises, hence having to do more and more over the last two years.

It will have exactly the same impact that council tax bands do, which we seem to manage pretty well.

The "mansion tax" isn't actually Burnham's idea. It was in the Labour party's manifesto. Like it or not, the electorate voted for it.

Lowering it must be though? His and Healey’s.

@LifeOnEnceladus brilliant post & it’s a travesty as you say that the gov didn’t invest, invest, invest when borrowing was cheap.

I also find it quite dispiriting that so many are comfortable with the cuts to education & children in general as they are the workers of tmw.

I do think a lot of MPs would agree with you but the big problem is getting enough of the electorate to vote for it.

When I have said on other threads to means test the pension, make CB universal etc I’m often ripped apart.

Sadly that’s why it won’t happen and the country has been condemned to ongoing economic decline. Until we get some politicians brave enough to set out the economic case to outline that these policies are the only way to dig the UK out of the hole it is in and create and prospect of future prosperity the doom loop will continue.

Sociological research shows that the attitude of those in the elderly cohort who feel entitled to receive the huge and unaffordable state subsidies that they are receiving which condemn the rest of the UK economy to ongoing decline are only pervasive in that particular cohort. Those under the age of 60 have very different attitudes towards generational wealth and the social contract. However, if nothing changes until the current voting block of pensioners who always vote in their own self interest reduces in numbers (ie. they voted as a cohort for huge tax cuts and sale of state assets, policies creating asset price inflation etc during their working lives, and now they are retired instead vote as a cohort for far more generous pensioner welfare, high healthcare funding and higher taxes on the working population) then the UK economy will be in a dire and probably irretrievable position. Perhaps if a new policitical party was formed with rational economic policies that made a genuine pitch to everyone under 60 and explained the trade offs involved then people would get behind it, but given our political system and the lack of grasp of economics in the electorate and the shameless self-interest of politicians I don’t believe this will happen: I expect we will continue in perpetual decline until there is a fiscal crisis and then the steps that are forced upon us will be far more painful and the damage far worse than it had to be if sensible policies were implemented now, as many other comparable developed countries have done already to deal with similar structural problems. I feel so very sad for those who are young adults now, especially when they are blamed for the state of the appalling economy that they have inherited and maligned while they are having to work twice as hard for half the standard of living that their parents and grandparents enjoyed, while being maligned by those who created the situation!

Oh & I hate the fact so many seem to think all
our problems are because of the recent labour government, it’s been years of kicking the can down the road.

I’m not sure means testing the pension works if it means people think ‘sod it I won’t save’

I do think the triple lock needs to go and they need to base it on a percentage of minimum wage. given the constant rises in minimum wage we are seeing wages being depressed to that level (which is what has happened in other countries with a minimum wage)

they also need to stop issuing ILG’s - really stupid not to!

??

can you explain?

Totally agree. We have a toxic combination of an electorate who are primarily self-interested and have no sense of society so will only ever vote in their own (perceived) self-interest, politicians who are spineless and often have minimal grasp of economics themselves even if they did care about the good of the country rather than the next election (which the vast majority do not) and a political system that actively encourages short termism and playing hot potato with the serious issues that actually matter and structural changes that would transform things but not yield a benefit by the next general election.

That’s how we’ve ended up in the dire state we are in and why it will continue unless at least one (and probably more) of those things changes. I won’t hold my breath.

It’s a very sad state of affairs, and it doesn’t have to be this way. Many democratic countries have political systems that prevent this kind of dysfunction, but the UK always thinks its way is best despite the dire results of that, so the outlook is far from promising.

Was a threshold set out in the manifesto?

No system is perfect. Every country has its problems. There are few countries so insistent as the UK, however, in their refusal to learn the proven lessons from data from around the world and emulate the systems that actually work and create prosperity.

@ThisOldThang

"Now we're in danger"

So you think.

I disagree.

The housing market is already stuck - volumes are low. This latest tax will simply exacerbate the issue. Meanwhile, people’s circumstances change - think of the three ‘D’s for example.

Ah but Labour are going to build 1.5m new houses, I hear you cry….

Agree - but I don’t think the electorate would accept a system that isn’t free at the point of use or gives variable treatment depending on your insurance. Given how young the NHS is it’s kind of crazy how entrenched people are

I have no idea anything on it was in the manifesto but Starmer / Reeves said £2m.

This change is Burnham / Healey.

I think we should make it 250k.