Mansion tax concerns

[Bilberrybeaut]

The Greens are proposing a mansion tax in the budget, with a rumoured proposed value of ‘mansion’ of £1m. I’m really concerned that this might happen. If it does it would be the final straw for us. We earn well and already pay hundreds of pounds more EACH MONTH in income tax than we would if we lived in England. Our stamp duty was tens of thousands more. A truly insane amount of money. I am taxed so highly that my marginal tax rate is 67% and yet the Greens think I’m not paying enough tax. How much is enough???

If they want to squeeze even more tax out of us we’ll leave. You cannot keep coming back to the same people with the begging bowl. It has got to the stage when they are taking the piss. We’ll go to England and be hundreds of £ better off every month.

At least if you have a private jet you are genuinely wealthy. A £1m in Edinburgh is nothing special.

Good for you - thats grat your doing well. We will be paying higher tax on it up here and to be honest, could really use the money.

We are thinking about going elsewhere if the SNP and the other bam pots get in again in May. It’s not just about the money, it’s the misogynistic, incompetent, lying politicians who take no responsibility for their actions

I'm sure that wouldn't just prompt even more whining and complaining about poorer public service provision.

How about realising people in the UK have been taking for granted a completely unrealistic and unsustainable standard of living for decades, and asking why they were happy for successive governments to run up national debt to fund it, debt which is now in excess of 100% of GDP, all while running one of the top half-dozen largest economies on the planet.

What's happening now is an inevitable consequence of living on the never-never for an eternity, only it isn't sustainable any longer, and yet the people who benefitted most from dirt-cheap borrowing and being pandered to by political parties obsessed with neoliberal ideas and nonsense like "trickle down", are the ones doing the most complaining.

although show me a competent politician these days anywhere in the world. Not a lot of them!

People are always fans of tax increases they don’t pay. No outrage about the income tax cuts that were announced?

What is happening is that there is more than enough money in this country to give everyone a home, food, education and health

but the capitalists have persuaded everyone that if a select few hold most of the money then the amount that trickles down will be more than if the same money was shared more evenly. And that clearly haven’t happened. Instead more and more is held at the top and those at the bottom struggle to survive

societies with fewer inequalities are happier and healthier but have fewer people living in million pound homes.

I would much rather that the band of every house was re-examined. The bands are based on the valuation of the house in 1991 and in many cases it doesn't reflect reality. I know of a house which is Band B but which should be a much higher band.

Yeah, I'd be concerned on a personal basis that we might go up a band but this is by far the biggest inequity to be addressed - folk in tiny two bed terraced new builds in a council tax band two levels higher than someone in much larger three bed semi that's older and hasn't been revalued.

I’d like to see Scandinavian tax and Scandinavian public services. It seems to me that the Scottish government likes to ape so many Scandinavian ideas but shy away from their tax system. Wonder why that could be?

£1m is a pretty nice property in a pretty nice area in Edinburgh 😂

You’d expect so wouldn’t you, and yet this is o/o £950k and needs work. It’s around the corner from a friend who assures me it looks even worse IRL:

https://espc.com/property/18a-queens-crescent-newington-edinburgh-eh9-2bb/36294142

Then you’ll have to move to Scandinavia! It does sound great but I doubt whether we’d ever manage to create such an economy.

We’re at a an incredibly different ‘starting point’ to the Scandinavian countries with the highest rates of drug deaths and deprivation in Europe, a non functioning healthcare system and declining educational standards. Our politicians of all parties are sub-par and, for the most part, appear to be motivated mainly by a desire to ensure their election/re- election at all costs rather than by the public good - and honesty and integrity appear to be almost absent from public life.

Additionally - and critically - we have very low numbers of net contributors, especially taking into account the large number of public service workers (with final salary pensions at the state’s cost). Compared to Greater London alone, for example, which has 10.5 m people, Scotland only has 5.6m. Of that 5.6m a tiny number are higher rate taxpayers - the majority of the Scottish population are not taxpayers at all (age and sickness). Pushing the tiny number of higher rate taxpayers too far is dangerous - they are the most mobile according to the IFS and may decamp over the border. They already contribute close to 70 per cent of all personal tax revenue.

The bottom line is we have too few contributors and too many takers. Approaching 10 per cent of adults are now claiming to be disabled from working. There is also no meaningful governmental engagement with business nor any clear strategy to enlarge the economy - we need a bigger pie to give everyone a share - not to reduce the slice of the only people baking even more! The Greens for example are complaining about and want to limit Scotland London flights. That’s how business is done. Do they think we’ll return to an agriculture economy and be able to live off the land alone?

To be fair this has been on sale for an awfully long time for a house in Newington. I think if it was going to be bought at that price it would have been by now.

The issue for me is not necessarily that they are introducing this policy at this threshold, but the overwhelming likelihood that they will never change the threshold. How many years before what are genuinely just average family homes in Edinburgh are dragged into eligibility? We bought this year for 750k - it's a 4 bed terraced house not a mansion - we'll probably end up paying this extra tax before too long. And no I don't need any tiny violins, I know we are fortunate to have what we have, but our mortgage is enormous and our marginal tax rates are already pretty staggering. We both work PT with no intention of going back to FT because why would we when we'd lose more than 60% of it to tax?

Ross Greer lives not far from me, still at home with mum and dad. He is a complete waste of space, went from school to uni and then dropped out to give us all the benefit of his extensive life experience to make policy. 🙄

The Greens are a total joke but the SNP currently need them to prop up the government.

Except that your £1m home would more than likely cost you more in England and cancel out any saving.

That's a pretty big property though and would be at least double where I live in England.

As a high earner (well dh is), whenever I have asked “where the incentive?” on here, I’ve been told how I should be delighted to be paying into the system and supporting the state. I’ve been told I’m mean for thinking inheritance tax is an unjust tax and I should count myself lucky. Everyone seems to be so generous with other people’s money!

Exactly this.

Whereas you’re just tight with other people’s (your DH’s) money?

May he never become redundant, or too sick to work, or leave you. Because then you might need state support, but you’d surely be too principled to accept it, wouldn’t you?

The average family in Edinburgh does not live in a 4 bed terrace house. Will go out on a limb and say that’s either a large Victorian home, or a fancy modern townhouse.

You must be loaded to afford a £750k house on part time wages!

I strongly disagree that Scotland has 'drastically different' needs to the rest of the UK. There are more remote regions in Scotland & higher average rates of alcohol & drugs abuse- that's about it. Can you name anything else that makes Scotland a more expensive country to run than the rest of the UK?
I know lots of people who have moved out of Scottish cities because they can't afford the house they want there. If I only needed to be in Edinburgh one day a week the Berwick or similar would be very appealing - it might not be as posh as Edinburgh but neither is Dalkeith or Penicuik.

Of course I'm not denying my living situation is fortunate compared to most. But my townhouse is most certainly not a mansion. My point, which I think maybe you missed, is more about fiscal drag and that this policy will, eventually, be coming for people in genuinely average family houses. Because they'll keep the £1m cliff edge in place.

On the second point, well it really depends what you mean by loaded. High income, high outgoings. We budget very carefully and couldn't have afforded a third child, for example. We certainly have much less disposable income than all of our parents do in their retirement, who were never top 5% earners, but just happened to be alive at the right time (and both sets had three kids, for what it's worth).

We all knew he’d still be living at home with his mum and dad didn’t we!!!

Mask’s right off now.

Where the hell do you live in England??? Because I have lived in most of the English cities and have never found house prices to be any different to Edinburgh. This is what I don’t get about the whole ‘house prices are more in England’ thing. Not true in my experience at all. Maybe true out of the city, but in my profession the jobs are all in the cities.