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What on earth is Reeves thinking with all these ridiculous taxation ideas for housing; seemingly on top of council tax

The best thing to do is scrap Council Tax, scrap Stamp Duty and replace with a simple, percentage tax on property values.

I expect however that she'll attempt to introduce a new tax without abolishing either Council Tax or Stamp Duty, which would be the worst thing to do.

Erm, that's the proposal. Maybe not a simple, single % but otherwise what you ask:

"First, the stamp duty land tax should be replaced with a national proportional property tax, levied on house values above £500,000. This rate would be set by central government. An annual rate of 0.54%, with a 0.278% supplement on values over £1m would raise the same amount as stamp duty."

"Second, council tax should be replaced with a local proportional property tax, levied on house values up to £500,000 with a minimum annual payment of £800. The rate would be set by local authorities. A rate of 0.44% would raise the same amount of revenue as council tax."

(original policy document)

'Treasury officials consider shake-up that could see tax paid by sellers of homes worth more than £500,000.'


https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/aug/19/explainer-potential-property-tax-stamp-duty

Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.

Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.

Full details are in the proposal linked to in the Guardian article: https://www.ukonward.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Onward-A-Fairer-Property-Tax.pdf

As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.

Presumably on top of their council tax ?

Who’d buy in those circumstances ?

The national property tax proposed is for houses over £500k and is a replacement for stamp duty.

The original document says that only houses under £500K would pay the local tax (ie council tax) if I have understood it right

'Treasury officials consider shake-up that could see tax paid by sellers of homes worth more than £500,000.'


https://www.theguardian.com/money/2025/aug/19/explainer-potential-property-tax-stamp-duty

Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.

Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.

Full details are in the proposal linked to in the Guardian article: https://www.ukonward.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/Onward-A-Fairer-Property-Tax.pdf

As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.

Presumably on top of their council tax ?

Who’d buy in those circumstances ?

If must have taxes - and sadly I don't really see any alternative - then I prefer taxes which discourage the inefficient use of scarce resources.

I really don't like taxes that prevent the market from clearing*: like stamp duty.

Gently discouraging people from having homes larger than they actually need is probably a net benefit. (Are there losers? Sure there are. But the winners in terms of greater housing availability are surely more than the losers.)

* Yes, I know the market always clears.

Spains 10 year up by nearly 50 BP today !!

https://x.com/barchart/status/1957870202479366334?s=61

Spain's 30 year is well below ours.

So is their 10 year, even after today, but it is an interesting development none the less.

Japan’s 20 year bond auction was not a roaring success either

Are we rapidly coming to an inflexion point

https://x.com/_investinq/status/1957842078123110907?s=61

I think a sovereign debt crisis is inevitable. Too many countries are simply over borrowed and cannot afford to both pay the interest and maintain the services that their electorates expect. We are certainly one of them and the lack of confidence in our monetary structures means that we are already paying a premium on our borrowings compared to most western countries.

We may well see governments simply unable to borrow the money they need to pay the bills. The fact that our 10 year gilt rate is already somewhat higher than our base lending rate is ominous and they are heading in opposite directions. Given the importance of gilt rates to real borrowing, whether for mortgages or long term investment, I fear we are getting to the point when the Bank is losing control of base rates. The latest cut was extremely unwise.

The risk is that we go back to QE using new money to buy the gilts for us or we have a very serious dislocation in our economy as we try to close the gap between spending and the tax take. Neither is an attractive option.

I think this is about right. And both Labour and Tory are responsible for the coming sovereign debt crisis. In particular the current regime has proved completely unable to do the expenditure cutting and tax raising necessary to create confidence, and this with a stonking majority. In fact the massive majority seems to give dim backbenchers even greater irresponsibility.

I think it remains unlikely that the UK voters plan to put the Tories back in charge, which means that of the possible government configurations the highest probability is Reform majority or Reform minority (maybe 40-45%). But it is not possible at the moment to identify either the policies or the outstanding Reform person who could be the confidence creating Chancellor of the Exchequer from their ranks.

The autumn budget could well be the last chance for Labour to establish itself as the government to take control of out of control finances. It needs a greta deal of promise breaking, a clear narrative and excplanation, as etting out of the direction of travel which does more than meet ever moving bogus targets for debt, and balances the books before the next election.

Sadly consensus is impossible when political opportunism abounds.

The main parties all know what they need to do. However tinkering at the edges won’t cut it.

‘ Sir Ed Davey, asked by @TomSwarbrick1, whether the Lib Dems will continue to support the triple lock “whatever the cost may be”, replies: “We do”. However much it costs. When will this insanity end?’



https://x.com/benkentish/status/1957723272503812431?s=61