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?

If we are talking about addressing an imbalance. A fair system for funding local services would surely start with cost per head, no? We all have access to, or use the services.

Also, a disproportionate (and growing) amount of council spending goes on adult and children's social care. Why should someone pay more towards that simply because their house is worth more? If the argument is that those with higher incomes should contribute more, this country already has a progressive income tax and National Insurance. So they have already made their contribution. Added to which the value of someone's home doesn't necessarily reflect their income or even how much they cost their council.

You want the poll tax 2 that nearly brought down a conservative government? They had to repeal it.

No one with any political memory would propose this. It would mean an 80 year old in a two million pound house would pay the same as a 20 year old in a small bedroom in an hmo. The unfairness brought it down first time around. And it means the young tend to pay more for less, than older people do.

And if burnham wants greater devolution then you can’t expect cross subsidising from low to high areas

what if one area decides to elect a council that only will do the basics and another elects a council that intends ti do all the bells and whistles? If the former just ends up subsidising the latter there’s no point

and government moving social and elderly care off their BS and onto local councils was terrible

The council tax at the moment is a kind of half way house between a progressive taxation system and the poll tax.

Like the poll tax it is skewed towards the wealthy, just not quite as much as the poll tax was.

Proper progressive banding would lower the tax for most of us, while making the wealthy pay more, more in line with things like income tax.

These issues with council tax being regressive are pretty much noted by all economists and think tanks.

It's just that no party has had either the will or the guts to do anything about it to date. Really Tony Blair should have done something about it when he came to power. But he was too busy riding the wave of a property boom.

So how do you tackle intergenerational inequality with the current welfare spend on older people and the cost to the NHS?

If nothing changes the inequality just grows. No idea what private school VAT has to do with that though!

It as always going to happen - and ultimately it will be rolled down so that ANYONE who owns their property will have to pay what is an additional property, because Labour will see that anyone who ‘owns’ is privileged, whether it’s a £100k flat in Scunthorpe or a £2m 3/4-bed in the SE.

We’ll all get used to it - though the timing with fuel/utility costs and mortgage rates is less than ideal for many households - but it WILL eventually trickle down to everyone. In many other countries they already have a property tax system, so people will look on from overseas and shrug at the fact we are outraged.

Just like a tourist tax in the UK will do nothing to impact bookings, a property tax won’t either.

People keep using the word fair.

Fair is everyone contributes to the cost of local services not just those in large or expensive homes.

I think most people definition of fair is other people pay more and I don’t

I’m a strong believer that for local services it’s really important you pay for what you use so you value the service provided. Sure there can be concessions but overall you should have a stake in the services

pushing down centralised services without central government funding is the problem

Exactly. His version of devolution is nothing of the sort, is logically incoherent and unworkable and would be fundamentally undemocratic and undermine the basis of our electoral system. It would also create a huge mess with confusion in the electorate about what areas of policy/ taxation/ spending they are voting for at each election, enormous waste of public funds and opportunities for corruption, while adding significantly to administrative costs, and provide none of the actual benefits of devolution. You’d think they’d have learned some lessons from Scotland and Wales!

For devolution to work you need to devolve spending AND tax raising powers to local areas for specific services. Local people can then vote on which local manifesto/ candidates provide the right balance of taxes they are prepared to pay for the services they want to have in their area. You then cut national taxes in proportion to the amount of national taxation currently spent on the services you are going to devolve, and national elections will only be on the taxation, spending and policies for the non-devolved issues.

I agree. I don’t think people quite grasp the scale and speed of the paradigm shift that is coming. I presume that since our governments have had no coherent plan to deal with issues which were foreseen 40-50 years ago and for which quite obvious solutions do actually exist, they have absolutely no plan for how they will manage this second industrial revolution and the scale of economic and social disruption that will be happening in the next 5-10 years, which is quite terrifying given the UK is in such a vulnerable position already.

I feel like we have too many layers of government as it is and it all costs

Maybe we can have an AI robot instead of an MP who studies all of its electorate and determines the best way to represent them - I mean could it be worse than what we currently have

This “fortune” is irrelevant if it is all a notional value of the house that you live in because you cannot realise any of that supposed wealth unless you fancy living in a tent.

Possibly, but I presume AI will have better things to do than take a job that no competent human even wants to do…

If it were a corporation - most of these idiots would be out.

Love the idea of even AI saying ‘nah, not touching that batshittery’

Your post reminded me of a Labour MP setting up something. Googled and found this

First AI MP Chatbot: Labour MP Mark Sewards made headlines as the first MP to create an interactive AI chatbot version of himself to handle constituent queries 24/7, which notably declined to answer whether Keir Starmer was a good prime minister

At least they’d have the option to vote for someone who isn’t an idiot. At the moment voters are presented with ballot papers which consists exclusively of a list of idiots and asked to pick one.

🤣

Not really.

You could have just said “No, I don’t have any coherent alternative policy proposals”, rather than posting lots of waffle which didn’t contain a single actual measure that you suggest is implemented to improve things by raising growth and living standards.

They’d never have been employed in the first place!

Make employing people easier.
Make running a business cheaper with lower energy costs (sort that mess out and everyone feels better)
Make everyone earn their keep.

We've got too many people relying on the welfare state and it's breaking us.

Yes this

This tax and the bond market are going to push house prices down, that is helping the house market?

Vote Reform then, Labour are not going to deliver this.