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.

You could apply that logic to politicians down south too. They're all self serving. That will never change.

Exactly 💯.

Not locals that's for sure!!

It's only people from England that I know of who snap "cheap as chips" large newbuilds around £500/600k mark.

I grew up in Scotland and I own a £1m house. I didn’t stay in Scotland as a young adult because I kept moving (all over England and quite a bit of Europe) to where the best opportunities to further my career were. That’s how you get a well paid job.

I’m not surprised many of those living in expensive properties aren’t born and bred Scot’s. They’ll be doing what I did and move to find the best career opportunities. If you want to always stay with 5 mins walk of your mum that’s a choice you make, but it’s rare that that leads to a £1m house. You can’t be chippy that people make different life choices than you.

I would love to live near my own DM but couldn't afford a house the size we needed there. So we moved out of region. That's life.

I'm not interested, like others have also said, about living in a £1m house. It won't bring me eternal happiness and security anywhere close as being MF. I am not a materialistic person so just comfortable with the basics in life and live a humble life. If others choose a lavish lifestyle that's up to them. You're the one who is not happy with how the Scottish Government are operating. I don't have a problem with the situation. There are much worse countries to be born and raised in.

I’m not bothered about living in a £1m house either. I’m not at all materialistic. I just picked a school catchment, I have 2 asd children who would be disturbed by noisy neighbours so tenements were out of the question and so the houses that met that criteria were £1m. We don’t live in a mansion at all. Just a semi in a good school catchment. That = £1m in Edinburgh.

I am glad life worked out how you’d wanted but still very confused as to why anyone should be asked to feel sympathy for you. As you say, you have options and choices so you can do whatever you want - you have the education and the money and the career to have lots of choices on the table.

I immigrated ‘to’ Scotland - not to become rich, but to raise my family in a safe and beautiful place. I’m not rich but I have a lovely home and plenty of everything I need. Am guessing I live in one of the neighbourhoods you’d rule out of consideration, but for under £400K I have 4 bedrooms and a garden and lovely neighbours and nice (not fancy) schools.

Paying more than this is an option of course, but it’s a choice. You could sell up, buy any number of reasonable homes and be unaffected by this new tax on the super wealthy. Or you can stay put and and add it to your spreadsheet - I am sure you spend money on all sorts of things I can’t imagine (as is your right) so this doesn’t feel that different to me. Appreciate a mysterious tax of unknown quantity is unsettling but the premise of taxing the people who can most afford it more than the people who can’t seems obvious to me.

Absolutely agree that it’s not perfect and I’d love an easier route to get a GP appointment and better roads and all sorts - but these problems aren’t going to be solved by less money to work with.

@PurpleThistle7 has put it perfectly.

With choices at your disposal, you can do what you want. You could downsize if you are thinking smart and not be affected by a future "mansion tax". With a big imagination, you could avoid all the potential pitfalls you are concerned about OP.

Start thinking about what you can do to improve your situation, rather than what you can't do.

Well that brings to mind families do loose parents 1 in 20 kids will be bereaved of either a parent or sibling by the time they are 16.
Other families might well be hit by illness.

Which mean insurance might pay the house off but it also means the remaining parent struggling on to keep the house and everything else going.
While not wanting their kids to be upset by moving from their friends, moving school, or the neighbours who do the wee things to help the family.

My dd who attends a council school in Edinburgh in a good catchment, has been to 3 class house parties within the last year. All houses were recently bought and all were in the £900-£1M price bracket. They were in good areas but were just bog standard family homes that did not have a "wow" factor about them. A quick sales history will tell you that these same properties sold in the £400-£600 price bracket less than 10 years ago. This is why the mansion tax is so absurd for Edinburgh. The threshold needs to be higher or the idea scrapped altogether. No doubt my dd's class mates parents have huge mortgages and they don't need this added extra expense while trying to bring up a young family. These people are just normal. They may well have decent well paid degree jobs but their houses are certainly not "mansions".

My dd who attends a council school in Edinburgh in a good catchment, has been to 3 class house parties within the last year. All houses were recently bought and all were in the £900-£1M price bracket. They were in good areas but were just bog standard family homes that did not have a "wow" factor about them. A quick sales history will tell you that these same properties sold in the £400-£600 price bracket less than 10 years ago. This is why the mansion tax is so absurd for Edinburgh. The threshold needs to be higher or the idea scrapped altogether. No doubt my dd's class mates parents have huge mortgages and they don't need this added extra expense while trying to bring up a young family. These people are just normal. They may well have decent well paid degree jobs but their houses are certainly not "mansions".

How can people make decisions to sell or not if they don’t know the size of the tax? Also, we didn’t know about the tax when some of us bought our heavily mortgaged mansions at prices well under the mansion tax like that’s been set. What do you think is going to happen to the value of properties around this margin? But we can write that loss down too as we there’s no cost we can’t all bear on our spreadsheets..

It probably also devalues the house. Who is going to willingly buy a house that attracts extra tax?

If another house for a few grand less doesn't attract the same level of tax

Where should they move, exactly?

If £1m in Edinburgh doesn’t buy anything special, and a smaller home nearby, if you can even find one, still costs £700k–£900k, downsizing locally doesn’t make sense. Older homeowners should move far away from their support networks: family, friends, healthcare, and the community they’ve lived in and contributed to for decades? How is that fair or reasonable?

Many of these people bought ordinary homes years ago, paid their mortgages, and paid tax, often higher-rate tax, for decades. The 'wealth' they now sit on exists largely on paper because prices rose around them. A mansion tax would punish them just as much as you. You can’t really complain about being squeezed by high taxes then turn around and suggest/infer that it is ok to squeeze other ordinary people out of their homes and communities.

A big hoose in Berwick upon Tweed, 45 min train to Waverley. Lower income tax too.

How is this tax actually going to work? Will they be eyeballing Stockbridge and revaluing anywhere that looks pricey - or is it only when somewhere sells for over a million that the tax kicks in? That could mean neighbours in identical properties have different tax liabilities. But if they revalued a street of seemingly identical terraces how would they know which are worth more due to rear extensions? or worth less due to being in a state of disrepair?

I asked ChatGPT - apparently they will be revaluing all 'high value' properties. Another SNP administrative cock up in the making.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/news/2026/01/scottish-budget/

this is the best article I’ve found - says current valuations, so we get updated but nobody else does.

It’s a scandal also the LBTT in Scotland so much higher than England stamp duty. It makes it really difficult to move. Say you get offered a job and you need to move within Scotland that’s 50k cash on a 750k family home. It’s really unaffordable even to people with decent income. It’s all pretty depressing. Yet people keep voting SNP.

Looking at what they’re doing in England, the extra payments range from £2500-£7500 pa on top of council tax which is uncapped and due to rise by a high percent again this year and likely next year.

We’ve got no idea what Scot gov will do. Not pocket change to anyone…

People need to wake up and smell the roses. Mansion tax isn’t about fairness or wealth redistribution. Once the state starts taxing what people own rather than what they earn, it doesn’t stop there. The bands will creep other, more ordinary homeowners get pulled in, and owning a home becomes even less achievable than it is now. More people are pushed into long-term renting with less security and control, while more power shifts to institutions, corporates and the state. Meanwhile, the truly wealthy carry on largely untouched.

There are better ways to target genuine windfall gains or encourage people to move, but those require more thought and governments willing to take on the truly wealthy, big institutions, corporates, and land-bankers enjoying generous tax breaks. It’s far easier to use straw men and gaslighting to demonise ordinary taxpayers and retirees who did exactly what they were told - worked, saved, bought a home, and paid tax for decades.

People who vote SNP are the People who are low earners, benefiting from Scottish Child payment etc.
Not the People playing higher taxes etc.

You know most people wouldn't object to the higher taxes if it was invested wisely, into schools and the NHS.
Instead its blown on extra child payments and stuff.
How can it possibly be more expensive to have a child in Scotland than in London with London prices ?

Totally agree.
The band will never lift and yes lots of ordinary people will get caught up in this.

The Greens and Labour seem hellbent on 'distributing' middle class wealth to the feckless to such an extent where it'll get to the point where it's not worth working.