It’s ridiculous for many reasons. Firstly in many cases they would be taxing debt because they are not charging it only on actual equity/ assets, totally undermining the basis of our tax systems. Secondly it will of course push rents up enormously and distort the housing market further. Thirdly it will discourage people from maintaining and improving their homes. Fourthly it will be a complete mess administratively because so many people will appeal and it’s unclear how any legally reliable valuation could be determined without forced entry into people’s homes which would be a violation of basic privacy and property rights. The onus per the principles of our legal framework would be on the state to prove a property is worth over whatever the threshold, not on the individual to disprove it so it’s very hard to see how it can be enforceable. Fifthly it will raise very little money in comparison to its administrative costs. Sixthly very few of the properties that would be charged are mansions and many mansions won’t be charged it. If the tax is meant to be a mansion tax it should be charged on square footage given that house prices have no bearing on the cost of providing local services because houses in the same service area will be priced similarly per sq ft. Seventhly, of course once introduced the threshold will be frozen so that in a decade or two the majority of homes will be paying it. Eighthly, it is clearly nothing to do with funding local services but just yet another way to try to redistribute money from people who are already paying higher taxes and a higher proportion of the overall tax burden than in any other developed country, many of whom simply cannot afford it and, as economic research has shown, have less disposable income on average than those living in areas where housing is cheaper, so there’s no moral justification for it either. Ninethly, everybody who understands economics has pointed out that if you are going to have property taxes they need to be based on land value (according to authorised purpose) NOT the value of what is currently built in the land. Tenthly, this along with the raids on pensions, almost gleeful comments about putting large numbers of asylum seekers into wealthier areas in disproportionately sized complexes which will be even less possible to integrate than people staying in hotels, the punitive taxes crippling small businesses and higher earning professionals and the VAT on private school fees when combined make it very clear that the professional Northerner is determined to cripple London and the South East which will, in turn, destroy what’s left of the UK economy and the tax revenues currently produced in those two regions which are the only ones that make a positive net contribution to UK tax revenues.
Burnham’s hatred of aspiration and the middle class is extremely short sighted and his claim that he will create “growth in every postcode” is laughable given these policies. The only things growing are people’s tax bills and hatred of the incompetent and disingenuous Government. It seems that nothing has changed since the previous administration where it was admitted that the only conversations taking place were about who they could tax more to fill their ever increasing self-inflicted “black holes”. So much for “Government will tread lightly on your lives” and “the top priority will be growth”. In the last 2+ years pretty much every policy suggested or implemented by these economic amoebas has had the obvious and predicted effect of doing precisely the opposite of creating growth and then they sit there scratching their heads wondering why further taxes are accelerating the doom loop.
Just wait until the effect of the next bout of inflation that’s coming filters through to people’s food and energy costs and rents/ mortgages over the winter/ spring; then even those who are slower on the uptake will see the impact on their household budgets that this Government’s policies have exacerbated rather than trying to do anything to mitigate/ reduce the impact of global geopolitical problems by actually encouraging growth and investment. It’s unforgiveable for the Government to be making inane tiktok videos about what are, proportionately, irrelevances and waging petty class wars while the standard of living across the UK will tumble catastrophically next year if they continue to refuse to implement any sensible, growth-focused policies. This “mansion tax” is just the latest example of them trying to adopt Count Binface’s tax policy: “I will cut your taxes and raise everyone else’s”. Perhaps these incompetents didn’t realise that this was satire.