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?

In France it is much more usual to have a home in Paris/other city where you work and then a holiday home where you come from/by a coast. normally retiring to the holiday home.

but there are areas of France that are suffering from the Airbnb effect so they are trying to use tax to manage that

i also wonder if the other issue here is that land is harder to come by and it’s less usual to build your own house?

How much would it cost to employ and send out inspectors to each house? Local estate agents could be paid to send in valuations for houses.

If they outsource to local estate agents expect the cost to sky rocket as civil servants aren’t exactly renowned nor negotiating well

Most estate agents have no qualifications whatsoever. HMRC want a red book valuation by a Chartered Surveyor to validate anything anyone does - clearly when its the other way around any hapless individual will do to stick their finger in the air

Long ago I heard of a position called "Borough Surveyor."

That position required professional qualifications - these day its more 'Stath Lets Flats'

Define 'need' and why you get to decide it.

Perhaps she does need to. Perhaps she needs space for family visiting or turning spare rooms into a studio or a gym or a library. Perhaps she likes having space rather than being crammed into a studio flat. All perfectly valid reasons for living where she does.

And this accusation of 'hoarding' baffles me. Hoarding means keeping a large number of things for yourself, not living in the house you paid for. The accusation of hoarding always suggests to me 'you've got something I don't have and that I think YOU shouldn't have either.'

I was taking the piss out of the person that I replied to. They said that nobody needed to live in a house worth more than £1 million, while living in a house worth £750k.

In that case, apologies. That'll teach me not to scan and read quickly.

I didn’t know if the £750k poster was joking - £750k in some places would be a true mansion, much bigger and “hoardworthy” than what you could get for that in London.

If you have made your gold bars into a home for you and your family then you make a valid point.

I guess the straw the wood and the bricks ran out

It's noticeable that many posters are unwilling to admit that a person having a two-million pound asset has as much wealth as a person having a two-million pound asset.

I recall reading a story about a gold toilet.

Maybe that’s what PP has in mind.

A 2m house is very different to 2m gold bars

firstly it has a practical purpose - we live in our home and raise our families there

secondly, a lot of people will have a mortgage on their home so they don’t actually have a 2m asset

Also you don’t have to spend oodles of (taxed) money in maintaining your gold bars. A bit of polish, I suppose, but I have spent eye-watering amounts on maintenance, not improvements, to my house. Any price rise has been more than offset by the money I’ve had to lay out on chimney repair, new windows, various leaks, not to mention periodic painting and decorating…

Also, you are taxed on proceeds less cost when you sell the gold bar - not the full 2m

so should we all sell everything, live in a tent on a council car park and keep it all in cash? Or is that going to need to be taxed to?

A person who has a two-million pound asset is not entitled to moan about bring poor.

They might have the same £ value, but the tax system already recognises in various ways that property (principal residence) is a different type of asset - IHT for example

They are entitled to feel proud if they have worked their butts off for every single brick of that house. If they have gone without to realise their dreams. Anyone can do it, but very few do. It can take a lifetime, but some are determined.
Then you are punished for having what others could never do.
What happened when they tried to penalise those with a million pound pension pots? All the consultants and highly paid medical staff got in a right hissy.
whats the difference in wealth put into different places? It’s still wealth….

What makes you think I didn't work harder for my gold bars?

And what makes you think that asset price inflation is the result of hard work?

If house prices go up ten times as fast in Kensington as they do in Darlington, does that reflect badly on the laziness of Darlington homeowners?

But this tax isn’t on the increase in value of the property. And even if it were, why should you be taxed on something that is unrealised. And why limit it to 2m? Just because that’s what we’ve deemed is wealthy? Well £1m is a lot so why not set that as the threshold?

the gold bars analogy is terrible

You also don’t pay tax on a 2 million pound gold bar when you buy it.
You would pay nearly £154,000 tax if you bought a house of that value…
So you have already paid a huge amount of tax….

It means the Darlington person gets a lot more bang for their buck.
And probably better services and lots of lovely spending money left over

Once they have bled the homeowners dry they will be coming for your gold bars…..