Rishi Rich and Hunt the C… appear to have no idea of the scale of the effect of mortgage rate rises on average earners, which are going to come due in the next year.
What can they do about it? Other than just give people money? (Which is an option.)
Cut income taxes, and reduce government spending to match.
The current problem they have, is less about what to actually do, and more about they way they speak. They appear not to give a sh!t that millions of people are going to be several hundred quid a month worse off, as evidenced by the PM’s interview this morning.
Neither Sunak nor Hunt has ever had to manage a household budget, in which there’s a high probability of having too much month left at the end of the money.
Problem is there is little Government expenditure that can be cut - and I wish I was kidding here but I literally can't think of any essential service (education, health, justice, social care) that hasn't already been cut to the bone.
Which is why there needs to be an honest and open discussion about the scope of government.
The political options are:
1. Accept that we all need to pay more to do the same. 2. Reduce government spending, by reducing scope of government activity. 3. Tax the “rich” until the pips squeak, where “rich” is the top 25% by income or ‘“wealth”, and generates many adverse effects.
We do need that honest debate, yes. And to keep YOU honest number 2 should also carry the warning of 'generates many adverse effects'.
As do the other options.
Hence the debate. If one of them had no adverse effects it'd be quite a short one.
Very many people believe there are 'painless' methods of raising tax and/or cutting spending.
Almost always involving other people rather than themselves.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
Reform on 10% now just 2% off of UKIP's voteshare in 2015, Farage may be tempted to return to lead them if that becomes consistent.
However plenty of time for Sunak and Hunt to win back voters from Reform with tax cuts and reductions in immigration
Except in reality... neither of those works, does it?
There is less than no money. So tax cuts are out of the question- the frozen thresholds means that taxes are going up, if anything. And immigration is the only thing keeping health, social care and the economy moving.
So what does Rishi do?
If inflation falls through the government's tight control of spending then that would allow for a cut in the basic rate especially, perhaps promise of raising the IHT threshold to £1 million for all estates if the Tories are re elected.
Economic migrants are certainly not all working in the NHS and migration remains a key concern for Tory to RefUK swing voters
If strawberry plants achieve sentience and send intergalactic starships to the Magellanic Clouds, and if Boris Johnson solves the P versus NP problem, the Tories might be re-elected.
Edit: ... and in any case most estates are 1m free of IHT, if they are of the Tory-approved nuclear family un-woke variety. So why bother changing?
Only the main property of married couples via transfer, not assets beyond the main property or for children of divorced couples or where one died before Osborne's tax reform.
The IHT threshold is still £325k, it should be raised to £1 million in my view and that should be in the Tory manifesto next year as a promise if they are re elected
The practical limit is 1m for approved politically correct families as far as most people realise - IHT is only ever an issue with the second death of the married couple.
£1M per person woiuld be absolutely outrageous and a further kick in the teeth of working people and a further sign that Tories and their elderly voters are parasitic leeches on society.
Only a whinging far left socialist like you would think removing decent middle class families out of IHT whether the parents are married or not and for all assets not just the main residence and leaving it only for the very rich was somehow 'outrageous.'
No that’s not true. I am a long way from being a far left socialist (although I like the occasional whinge) and I think capital is not taxed nearly enough and income, specifically earned income, far too much. We need to address this balance and cutting IHT is a step in the wrong direction.
If you want to tax wealth and capital far more and income less then you are a Liberal ideogically not a Conservative Tory really even if still not a Socialist (who would want to tax capital and income more to fund an expansion of the welfare state and public sector)
But, but I don’t wear sandals, even in this heat.
Sometimes @HYUFD , you should think about the size of tent you want your party to pitch. Right now it’s looking smaller than most of those at Glasto.
You are an Orange Book LD not a Tory.
63% want to raise the IHT threshold. 48% even want to scrap IHT completely, far higher than the current Tory poll rating
I think we need to tax inheritance properly to help out with the national debt. So no more transfer of the IHT tax free threshold to the surviving partner's estate. No more £1m threshold for those with children
Get rid of all the exemptions like 'gifts out of income'
To be clear I support IHT free transfers between the widowed spouse/civil partnership relationship etc but beyond the inheritors need to pay.
And let's make it 50% on anything over £200,000
👍👍👍
I'd simplify it, no tax on transfers between spouses, but every penny of inheritance gets taxed the same as money people have worked for gets taxed, including of course National Insurance.
Earned income should not be taxed less than unearned income.
Why should savers be penalised?
Person A works hard all their life and on retirement blows 3/4 of his savings on wine, women & song (the rest he wastes). His only child gets no inheritance.
Person B works hard all his life and on retirement lives modestly and leaves 1/2 his savings to his only child.
Why should the government want to discourage thriftiness and saving?
Saving isn't some unalloyed good. If everyone is thrifty all the time, the economy grinds to a halt. We need people to spend because spending creates jobs.
It's all very well saving and having your money used to invest, but investments are a bet on future spending. Spending is what drives the economy.
Besides, what's with the "penalising savers" thing?
The person who did the saving isn't getting taxed in any meaningful way, because they have gone to a place where there is no tax. (At least we assume that's the case. Maybe Hell is an eternal self assessment form.)
The people who end up with less money because of inheritance tax are the inheritors, who have generally neither saved, toiled nor spun for what they receive. That's not to be begrudged, but a world where a person's life chances depend more on inheritance and less on what they do is not a good one. You can't abolish the inheritance effect, but it's not really something to encourage, I reckon.
If your starting point is that taxes are a necessary unpleasantness to pay for a good society, then tax paid when you receive an inheritance is probably one of the less objectionable ones.
As I pointed out in the last thread for the average person unless they are in the top 10% or especially top 1% of earners capitalism is not doing much for them in terms of wage rises. House prices and capital in property and savings and shares have generally risen much more this century than average earnings.
So if the state confiscates all or most assets on the death of their owner which would have been inherited otherwise and reduces accumulation of wealth then support for capitalism beyond the top 10% of earners in the private sector will fall even further
The trouble with asset wealth, especially locked up in bricks and mortar, is you can't spend it, whereas a pay rise can pay for a new car which employs car workers or dining out which employs restaurant workers and Deliveroo riders. That is capitalism.
And capitalism and pay rises aren't delivering much for 90% of workers now, whereas assets and savings are delivering more for the average person
Many fewer people have either assets or savings today, then has been the case in the recent past.
That a diminishing number of people enjoy such benefits, is a huge problem for the country and its leaders.
Even in the 1960s most of the population rented. Now 65% of the population own a property with or without a mortgage and the value of those homes they own is still high even if their wages are rising on average significantly below inflation
Compare 2023 to 2003, or to 1993, and you’ll find the position is now much worse.
House prices for the 2/3 of the population who own a house with or without a mortgage are much higher than in 1993.
Main problem for those with mortgages is rising interest rates, just as it was for them in 1993 post Black Wednesday
Mortgage rates fell rapidly after Black Wednesday in 1993.
In fact they had been falling for nearly two years before Black Wednesday:
If they hadn't then the Conservatives would not have won in 1992.
'The UK’s withdrawal from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism on 16 September 1992 meant a rise in the base interest rate from 10 per cent to 12 per cent at 10.30am on that day; later that day there was a promise from John Major’s government to raise the rate further to 15 per cent.'
Even the 10% rate they fell too was still higher than the current UK interest rate level, even despite recent rises to 5% most recently
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
One of things that baffle me is the hostility to the possibility of paying even small amounts of inheritance tax at some future date compared with the lack of concern about paying many hundreds in income tax and NI every month through PAYE.
It similarly baffles me that any such tax that may happen in the future is regarded by critics as a "punishment" but considerably higher tax rates on income tax and NI for going to work is not considered punitive.
The Times is reporting that some Tory MPs are looking at the potential to bring back Liz Truss.
In which case they will all deserve to lose their seats, as they were projected too in the final polls before Truss resigned.
In October 2022 the Tories were projected to win less than 50 seats.
Fortunately as more Tory MPs voted for Sunak than Truss even last summer they won't succeed, party members don't have a say on any VONC in Rishi either
The Times is reporting that some Tory MPs are looking at the potential to bring back Liz Truss.
Not even surprised at this point. It's so on brand for 2023.
I suggest Rishi resigns as leader and then calls a GE, that way the Tories can pitch around half a dozen different messages from half a dozen leadership candidates who might conceivably become PM if the party wins, to have as wide appeal as possible.
NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 @NOELreports · 1h Wagner could lead attack on Kyiv from Belarus, British General Dannatt warns, speaking to Sky News
"If he has kept an effective fighting force around him then he presents a threat again to the Ukrainian flank closest to Kyiv where it all began," he said
Rishi Rich and Hunt the C… appear to have no idea of the scale of the effect of mortgage rate rises on average earners, which are going to come due in the next year.
What can they do about it? Other than just give people money? (Which is an option.)
Cut income taxes, and reduce government spending to match.
The current problem they have, is less about what to actually do, and more about they way they speak. They appear not to give a sh!t that millions of people are going to be several hundred quid a month worse off, as evidenced by the PM’s interview this morning.
Neither Sunak nor Hunt has ever had to manage a household budget, in which there’s a high probability of having too much month left at the end of the money.
Problem is there is little Government expenditure that can be cut - and I wish I was kidding here but I literally can't think of any essential service (education, health, justice, social care) that hasn't already been cut to the bone.
The problem is productivity. Improving services is seen in terms of hiring more people.
Problem is there isn't enough people like you and me around - and no public sector department can justify the cost of hiring us for a few years to automate pointless work away...
Rule 1 of Productivity Club -
1) You need to spend money *now*, to save money over years.
So is political terms
“We need to spend billions now on IT and management, so that services will be massively improved 2 elections from now.”
In permanent staff terms
“We need to spend billions *now*. Then, in a few years time you will have less people to manage. And a fair number of them will be earning more than you, the managers. And they won’t be biddable serfs, either”
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
The average property price in London is now over £650k at £737,512
So, someone with a 90% mortgage on an *average* home in London, is looking at an extra £1,500 *per month* in repayments. That’s £18,000 per year, which requires £30k in income assuming 40% marginal income tax.
Someone in the average home in London, is about to need to earn an extra £30k per year, just to afford mortgage interest rates going from 2% to 6%. Those numbers are totally horrific.
Having interest rates at virtually 0% for a generation has just been storing up this problem. When interst rates are basically free money, it enables people to borrow more, so price go up, rinse and repeat for 15 years, you then get to a stage where million quid homes are unremarkable properties.
Then interest rates return to historic norms (remember under Blair they were 5% pretty much throughout) & boom regular people can't earn enough to fund them.
Then add National Insurance to unearned income, while increasing income tax allowances. And, scrap the triple lock.
50% of the population will inherit substantial amounts, but work should pay for the 50% who will not inherit such sums.
I'm 56 and will likely inherit a lot of money over the next decade, but what use is to me now?
Bingo!
People dying in their 80s or 90s and passing onto their children an inheritance are leaving to "children" in their 50s, 60s or 70s themselves.
When it comes to children the people with children, actually children rather than adult children, are typically in their 20s, 30s or 40s and should not be expecting any inheritance as even if their parents have money their parents should be ideally alive for another couple of decades. They should be able to provide for their family, including their children, and getting a house, via their own wages, not an inheritance.
I suspect we will be receiving the first half of our inheritance later this year when my parents downsize.
For me that means twin A and B will have decent deposits for their first homes because I really don't need it.
The twins being able to afford a deposit from their own efforts, maybe if you want with support from yourself from your own efforts if you want to help, would be better than having to wait until the death of someone else, would it not?
Oh twin A has a deposit (rapidly increasing as she lives at home and doesn't actually spend much on anything). twin B will have the problem of paying back her student loans...
But my point was that it's perfectly possible for the money to bypass a generation and go to the generation that doesn't need it. Except a lot of people in the 50s/60s are discovering that their pensions are going to give them sod all in the future so they need the money and can't let it skip a generation..
NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 @NOELreports · 1h Wagner could lead attack on Kyiv from Belarus, British General Dannatt warns, speaking to Sky News
"If he has kept an effective fighting force around him then he presents a threat again to the Ukrainian flank closest to Kyiv where it all began," he said
Yes, an attempt to turn a moment of high weakness for Putin into uncertainty and distraction for Ukraine - all he has to do is sit there and they have to worry, since even if he lacked effective fighting force we know he will send human waves in to eat up resources, so they cannot discount it.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
It isn’t £1 million. It’s around £280,000.
To clarify, it takes the maximum IHT allowance up to £1m.
£650,000 is the transferable nil rate band. £350,000 the transferable allowance for main residences.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
One of things that baffle me is the hostility to the possibility of paying even small amounts of inheritance tax at some future date compared with the lack of concern about paying many hundreds in income tax and NI every month through PAYE.
I think it's a deep psychic thing combining 'the money's already been taxed' and 'I live on through the money I leave my kids' and 'you work hard all your life then they come and swipe it off you on your deathbed'. Those are the sentiments in the mix. It's the most disliked of all taxes when rationally it should be the least objectionable. But the very fact that the hatred of it is irrational makes it all the stronger and difficult (I'd say almost impossible) to dislodge. Even people who won't be impacted by it in a million years hate the idea of IHT. My Uncle Albert (car mechanic) used to rail against it on a regular basis. I would try and explain, contextualize, but to no avail. It was like a brick wall. Unlike on many other topics where he'd listen to me and sometimes be influenced for the better. But not on IHT. No sir.
Reform on 10% now just 2% off of UKIP's voteshare in 2015, Farage may be tempted to return to lead them if that becomes consistent.
However plenty of time for Sunak and Hunt to win back voters from Reform with tax cuts and reductions in immigration
Except in reality... neither of those works, does it?
There is less than no money. So tax cuts are out of the question- the frozen thresholds means that taxes are going up, if anything. And immigration is the only thing keeping health, social care and the economy moving.
So what does Rishi do?
If inflation falls through the government's tight control of spending then that would allow for a cut in the basic rate especially, perhaps promise of raising the IHT threshold to £1 million for all estates if the Tories are re elected.
Economic migrants are certainly not all working in the NHS and migration remains a key concern for Tory to RefUK swing voters
If strawberry plants achieve sentience and send intergalactic starships to the Magellanic Clouds, and if Boris Johnson solves the P versus NP problem, the Tories might be re-elected.
Edit: ... and in any case most estates are 1m free of IHT, if they are of the Tory-approved nuclear family un-woke variety. So why bother changing?
Only the main property of married couples via transfer, not assets beyond the main property or for children of divorced couples or where one died before Osborne's tax reform.
The IHT threshold is still £325k, it should be raised to £1 million in my view and that should be in the Tory manifesto next year as a promise if they are re elected
The practical limit is 1m for approved politically correct families as far as most people realise - IHT is only ever an issue with the second death of the married couple.
£1M per person woiuld be absolutely outrageous and a further kick in the teeth of working people and a further sign that Tories and their elderly voters are parasitic leeches on society.
Only a whinging far left socialist like you would think removing decent middle class families out of IHT whether the parents are married or not and for all assets not just the main residence and leaving it only for the very rich was somehow 'outrageous.'
No that’s not true. I am a long way from being a far left socialist (although I like the occasional whinge) and I think capital is not taxed nearly enough and income, specifically earned income, far too much. We need to address this balance and cutting IHT is a step in the wrong direction.
If you want to tax wealth and capital far more and income less then you are a Liberal ideogically not a Conservative Tory really even if still not a Socialist (who would want to tax capital and income more to fund an expansion of the welfare state and public sector)
But, but I don’t wear sandals, even in this heat.
Sometimes @HYUFD , you should think about the size of tent you want your party to pitch. Right now it’s looking smaller than most of those at Glasto.
You are an Orange Book LD not a Tory.
63% want to raise the IHT threshold. 48% even want to scrap IHT completely, far higher than the current Tory poll rating
I think we need to tax inheritance properly to help out with the national debt. So no more transfer of the IHT tax free threshold to the surviving partner's estate. No more £1m threshold for those with children
Get rid of all the exemptions like 'gifts out of income'
To be clear I support IHT free transfers between the widowed spouse/civil partnership relationship etc but beyond the inheritors need to pay.
And let's make it 50% on anything over £200,000
👍👍👍
I'd simplify it, no tax on transfers between spouses, but every penny of inheritance gets taxed the same as money people have worked for gets taxed, including of course National Insurance.
Earned income should not be taxed less than unearned income.
Why should savers be penalised?
Person A works hard all their life and on retirement blows 3/4 of his savings on wine, women & song (the rest he wastes). His only child gets no inheritance.
Person B works hard all his life and on retirement lives modestly and leaves 1/2 his savings to his only child.
Why should the government want to discourage thriftiness and saving?
Saving isn't some unalloyed good. If everyone is thrifty all the time, the economy grinds to a halt. We need people to spend because spending creates jobs.
It's all very well saving and having your money used to invest, but investments are a bet on future spending. Spending is what drives the economy.
Besides, what's with the "penalising savers" thing?
The person who did the saving isn't getting taxed in any meaningful way, because they have gone to a place where there is no tax. (At least we assume that's the case. Maybe Hell is an eternal self assessment form.)
The people who end up with less money because of inheritance tax are the inheritors, who have generally neither saved, toiled nor spun for what they receive. That's not to be begrudged, but a world where a person's life chances depend more on inheritance and less on what they do is not a good one. You can't abolish the inheritance effect, but it's not really something to encourage, I reckon.
If your starting point is that taxes are a necessary unpleasantness to pay for a good society, then tax paid when you receive an inheritance is probably one of the less objectionable ones.
As I pointed out in the last thread for the average person unless they are in the top 10% or especially top 1% of earners capitalism is not doing much for them in terms of wage rises. House prices and capital in property and savings and shares have generally risen much more this century than average earnings.
So if the state confiscates all or most assets on the death of their owner which would have been inherited otherwise and reduces accumulation of wealth then support for capitalism beyond the top 10% of earners in the private sector will fall even further
The trouble with asset wealth, especially locked up in bricks and mortar, is you can't spend it, whereas a pay rise can pay for a new car which employs car workers or dining out which employs restaurant workers and Deliveroo riders. That is capitalism.
And capitalism and pay rises aren't delivering much for 90% of workers now, whereas assets and savings are delivering more for the average person
Many fewer people have either assets or savings today, then has been the case in the recent past.
That a diminishing number of people enjoy such benefits, is a huge problem for the country and its leaders.
Even in the 1960s most of the population rented. Now 65% of the population own a property with or without a mortgage and the value of those homes they own is still high even if their wages are rising on average significantly below inflation
Compare 2023 to 2003, or to 1993, and you’ll find the position is now much worse.
House prices for the 2/3 of the population who own a house with or without a mortgage are much higher than in 1993.
Main problem for those with mortgages is rising interest rates, just as it was for them in 1993 post Black Wednesday
Mortgage rates fell rapidly after Black Wednesday in 1993.
In fact they had been falling for nearly two years before Black Wednesday:
If they hadn't then the Conservatives would not have won in 1992.
'The UK’s withdrawal from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism on 16 September 1992 meant a rise in the base interest rate from 10 per cent to 12 per cent at 10.30am on that day; later that day there was a promise from John Major’s government to raise the rate further to 15 per cent.'
Even the 10% rate they fell too was still higher than the current UK interest rate level, even despite recent rises to 5% most recently
And the following day the rate was back at 10%
Which then proceeded to fall to below 7% by the end of 1992.
And the further still in 1993.
The big and rapid rise in interest rates happened in 1988 and 1989 and helped bring Thatcher down.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
The average property price in London is now over £650k at £737,512
So, someone with a 90% mortgage on an *average* home in London, is looking at an extra £1,500 *per month* in repayments. That’s £18,000 per year, which requires £30k in income assuming 40% marginal income tax.
Someone in the average home in London, is about to need to earn an extra £30k per year, just to afford mortgage interest rates going from 2% to 6%. Those numbers are totally horrific.
Having interest rates at virtually 0% for a generation has just been storing up this problem. When interst rates are basically free money, it enables people to borrow more, so price go up, rinse and repeat for 15 years, you then get to a stage where million quid homes are unremarkable properties.
Then interest rates return to historic norms (remember under Blair they were 5% pretty much throughout) & boom people can't earn enough to fund them.
I suspect a lot of the problem was (and it's going to take a long time to unwind) was BTLers looking at the pitiful saving returns and investing in a few BTL properties instead where they overpaid because the rent was easily enough (regardless of how much over the odds they paid) to pay the interest on a 2% mortgage.
Things are very different now but we need to wait 12-18 months to see the market fallout before we know the reality of the market.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
One of things that baffle me is the hostility to the possibility of paying even small amounts of inheritance tax at some future date compared with the lack of concern about paying many hundreds in income tax and NI every month through PAYE.
IHT is one of the things I’ve moved steadily leftwards on over the years.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
One of things that baffle me is the hostility to the possibility of paying even small amounts of inheritance tax at some future date compared with the lack of concern about paying many hundreds in income tax and NI every month through PAYE.
IHT is one of the things I’ve moved steadily leftwards on over the years.
Frankly, for a hell of a lot of people in this country it would be a nice problem to have.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
One of things that baffle me is the hostility to the possibility of paying even small amounts of inheritance tax at some future date compared with the lack of concern about paying many hundreds in income tax and NI every month through PAYE.
It similarly baffles me that any such tax that may happen in the future is regarded by critics as a "punishment" but considerably higher tax rates on income tax and NI for going to work is not considered punitive.
I think there's some weird mentality in this country that property ownership should not be taxed and that income from property ownership should not be taxed but that actual work should be taxed.
It might be some hangover from serfdom or from reading too much Jane Austen.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
One of things that baffle me is the hostility to the possibility of paying even small amounts of inheritance tax at some future date compared with the lack of concern about paying many hundreds in income tax and NI every month through PAYE.
IHT is one of the things I’ve moved steadily leftwards on over the years.
Frankly, for a hell of a lot of people in this country it would be a nice problem to have.
How many estates actually pay any IHT?
The threshold for IHT is £325k, the average UK house price is now £372,812
Trump: Whatever documents a President decides to take with him, he has the absolute right to take them. He has the absolute right to keep them or he can give them back.. that’s the law https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1672763070421106695
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
The average property price in London is now over £650k at £737,512
So, someone with a 90% mortgage on an *average* home in London, is looking at an extra £1,500 *per month* in repayments. That’s £18,000 per year, which requires £30k in income assuming 40% marginal income tax.
Someone in the average home in London, is about to need to earn an extra £30k per year, just to afford mortgage interest rates going from 2% to 6%. Those numbers are totally horrific.
Having interest rates at virtually 0% for a generation has just been storing up this problem. When interst rates are basically free money, it enables people to borrow more, so price go up, rinse and repeat for 15 years, you then get to a stage where million quid homes are unremarkable properties.
Then interest rates return to historic norms (remember under Blair they were 5% pretty much throughout) & boom people can't earn enough to fund them.
I suspect a lot of the problem was (and it's going to take a long time to unwind) was BTLers looking at the pitiful saving returns and investing in a few BTL properties instead where they overpaid because the rent was easily enough (regardless of how much over the odds they paid) to pay the interest on a 2% mortgage.
Things are very different now but we need to wait 12-18 months to see the market fallout before we know the reality of the market.
The adjustment period, while mortgages are expensive, but so are houses, and landlords exiting the market drive up rents, are going to be horrific.
I can see a state in 5 years’ time, where property prices have dropped 30-40% in real terms, more social housing has been built, and investors have mostly sold up. That will be a much better place, but it’s going to be one hell of a ride between here and there.
The cat among the pigeons, is a lot of institutional wealth buying up property in the downturn, in an attempt to prop up prices. If that continues, there will need to be an awful lot of housebuilding in the next few years.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
One of things that baffle me is the hostility to the possibility of paying even small amounts of inheritance tax at some future date compared with the lack of concern about paying many hundreds in income tax and NI every month through PAYE.
Maybe because people view inheritance as less selfish than income. Income is for yourself. Inheritance is for others.
You guys must be exhausted after such a busy day on the battlefields of Eastern Europe. On some much deserved RnR I hope now.
Bravo Zulu to the lads. There was a very efficient tactical redeployment from Wagner are homeless derelicts who can't take Bakhmut to Wagner are going to do an 800km combined arms operation to Moscow and topple the government of the Russian Federation.
Yep, great joint effort by the Russian imperialists and convicts.
Meanwhile, for complicated reasons I went to church this morning. Small village, fewer than 10 people in the congregation.
Some observations:
The vicar managed to name check three other religions, all for derogatory reasons (Jews, Brahmins, Muslims), he bewailed the fact that Christians can't wear crucifixes to work when Muslims can wear hijabs, and said that Jesus didn't come to bring peace and explained why this was.
So an interesting encounter with parochial muscular Christianity in this country.
I hope you told him he was talking bullshit about the crucifix thing.
I pondered explaining the difference between jewellery and religious garb but couldn't quite remember whether (was it?) BA had actually banned the crucifix on religious grounds.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
The average property price in London is now over £650k at £737,512
So, someone with a 90% mortgage on an *average* home in London, is looking at an extra £1,500 *per month* in repayments. That’s £18,000 per year, which requires £30k in income assuming 40% marginal income tax.
Someone in the average home in London, is about to need to earn an extra £30k per year, just to afford mortgage interest rates going from 2% to 6%. Those numbers are totally horrific.
Having interest rates at virtually 0% for a generation has just been storing up this problem. When interst rates are basically free money, it enables people to borrow more, so price go up, rinse and repeat for 15 years, you then get to a stage where million quid homes are unremarkable properties.
Then interest rates return to historic norms (remember under Blair they were 5% pretty much throughout) & boom regular people can't earn enough to fund them.
From the other side of the that bubble, however, the interest rate collapse to 0.49% (on our off-set mortgage) enabled us to clear our initial mortgage debt. We then re-borrowed another £40k at 0.49% interest for a complete renovation which we then paid off.
Result, seven years after the GFC. we lived mortgage and debt free in a renovated house. I bet we weren't the only ones who used low interest rates to clear debts and accumulate and improve the property asset. Our property is finished to a standard which, even in East Ham, will attract buyers and that's the case generally. People present properties to a higher standard than before and want that reflected in asking prices.
Trump: Whatever documents a President decides to take with him, he has the absolute right to take them. He has the absolute right to keep them or he can give them back.. that’s the law https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1672763070421106695
He's totally barmy - he genuinely seems to believe, based on other remarks, that a President can do anything, and his own statements on the documents indicates this whole stupid affair comes down to him believing that if it was provided to him that makes it his now, and he doesn't want anyone touching his stuff. People joke about it but he has the mentality of a toddler.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
The average property price in London is now over £650k at £737,512
So, someone with a 90% mortgage on an *average* home in London, is looking at an extra £1,500 *per month* in repayments. That’s £18,000 per year, which requires £30k in income assuming 40% marginal income tax.
Someone in the average home in London, is about to need to earn an extra £30k per year, just to afford mortgage interest rates going from 2% to 6%. Those numbers are totally horrific.
Completely unaffordable, as distinct from merely eyewateringly expensive, accommodation is only what renters have had to put up with in London for years. Nobody sheds a tear for despairing young people being relieved of the majority of their take home pay for a room in a grotty HMO, and mortgage payers aren't a special and morally superior class of human being.
Anyway, there are an awful lot of people who are going to be forced to renew their mortgages at unaffordable repayment levels over the next year or two, with millions more praying that interest rates come back down again before they have to do likewise. If, say, 5% does turn out to be the new normal, however, then what? Businesses aren't going to be jacking up wages like many are at the moment as soon as inflation is brought under control. The existing mortgage debtors thus can't look for their pain to be inflated away, and new entrants will be locked out of the market by the unaffordable costs of repayment.
I suspect that this all ends in a significant collapse in property prices, and a lot of existing borrowers either being bankrupted or ending up as a new generation of mortgage prisoners: shunted onto interest-only payments by the banks, and unable ever to move because of negative equity.
Meanwhile, for complicated reasons I went to church this morning. Small village, fewer than 10 people in the congregation.
Some observations:
The vicar managed to name check three other religions, all for derogatory reasons (Jews, Brahmins, Muslims), he bewailed the fact that Christians can't wear crucifixes to work when Muslims can wear hijabs, and said that Jesus didn't come to bring peace and explained why this was.
So an interesting encounter with parochial muscular Christianity in this country.
Did you speak up or let it go?
As mentioned I let it go. I was a guest and pondered but eventually decided against. No doubt another tick in the religious debit column.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
The average property price in London is now over £650k at £737,512
So, someone with a 90% mortgage on an *average* home in London, is looking at an extra £1,500 *per month* in repayments. That’s £18,000 per year, which requires £30k in income assuming 40% marginal income tax.
Someone in the average home in London, is about to need to earn an extra £30k per year, just to afford mortgage interest rates going from 2% to 6%. Those numbers are totally horrific.
Having interest rates at virtually 0% for a generation has just been storing up this problem. When interst rates are basically free money, it enables people to borrow more, so price go up, rinse and repeat for 15 years, you then get to a stage where million quid homes are unremarkable properties.
Then interest rates return to historic norms (remember under Blair they were 5% pretty much throughout) & boom people can't earn enough to fund them.
I suspect a lot of the problem was (and it's going to take a long time to unwind) was BTLers looking at the pitiful saving returns and investing in a few BTL properties instead where they overpaid because the rent was easily enough (regardless of how much over the odds they paid) to pay the interest on a 2% mortgage.
Things are very different now but we need to wait 12-18 months to see the market fallout before we know the reality of the market.
The adjustment period, while mortgages are expensive, but so are houses, and landlords exiting the market drive up rents, are going to be horrific.
I can see a state in 5 years’ time, where property prices have dropped 30-40% in real terms, more social housing has been built, and investors have mostly sold up. That will be a much better place, but it’s going to be one hell of a ride between here and there.
The cat among the pigeons, is a lot of institutional wealth buying up property in the downturn, in an attempt to prop up prices. If that continues, there will need to be an awful lot of housebuilding in the next few years.
Institutions are also heavily invested in the big city commercial properties and leasing are coming up for renewals, with hybrid work etc, that is also another area there could be a big shit show.
Meanwhile, for complicated reasons I went to church this morning. Small village, fewer than 10 people in the congregation.
Some observations:
The vicar managed to name check three other religions, all for derogatory reasons (Jews, Brahmins, Muslims), he bewailed the fact that Christians can't wear crucifixes to work when Muslims can wear hijabs, and said that Jesus didn't come to bring peace and explained why this was.
So an interesting encounter with parochial muscular Christianity in this country.
Sounds like a traditional Conservative C of E vicar of the old school, a few of whom are still about in rural Parishes especially.
A long way from the Labour voting trendy left liberal vicars in most liberal Catholic C of E churches in our big cities and many of our larger towns
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
One of things that baffle me is the hostility to the possibility of paying even small amounts of inheritance tax at some future date compared with the lack of concern about paying many hundreds in income tax and NI every month through PAYE.
IHT is one of the things I’ve moved steadily leftwards on over the years.
Frankly, for a hell of a lot of people in this country it would be a nice problem to have.
How many estates actually pay any IHT?
The threshold for IHT is £325k, the average UK house price is now £372,812
The meaning of "average" is important here. "Arithmetic mean" (which is inflated by a long tail of mansions), "median" (the one in the middle) or "mode" (the one that occurs most often)?
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
One of things that baffle me is the hostility to the possibility of paying even small amounts of inheritance tax at some future date compared with the lack of concern about paying many hundreds in income tax and NI every month through PAYE.
It similarly baffles me that any such tax that may happen in the future is regarded by critics as a "punishment" but considerably higher tax rates on income tax and NI for going to work is not considered punitive.
I think there's some weird mentality in this country that property ownership should not be taxed and that income from property ownership should not be taxed but that actual work should be taxed.
It might be some hangover from serfdom or from reading too much Jane Austen.
I managed to get Longbourn Estate into an essay about Estates in land just yesterday, though I had to go on a bit of a detour and now I'm wondering if I can actually spare the words... Probably not!
NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 @NOELreports · 1h Wagner could lead attack on Kyiv from Belarus, British General Dannatt warns, speaking to Sky News
"If he has kept an effective fighting force around him then he presents a threat again to the Ukrainian flank closest to Kyiv where it all began," he said
Yes, an attempt to turn a moment of high weakness for Putin into uncertainty and distraction for Ukraine - all he has to do is sit there and they have to worry, since even if he lacked effective fighting force we know he will send human waves in to eat up resources, so they cannot discount it.
Wagner lost the 'human waves' when the convict well ran dry.
You guys must be exhausted after such a busy day on the battlefields of Eastern Europe. On some much deserved RnR I hope now.
Bravo Zulu to the lads. There was a very efficient tactical redeployment from Wagner are homeless derelicts who can't take Bakhmut to Wagner are going to do an 800km combined arms operation to Moscow and topple the government of the Russian Federation.
Yep, great joint effort by the Russian imperialists and convicts.
🔹3 х Mi-8MTPR [EW helicopters] 🔹1 х Mi-8 🔹1 х Ka-52 🔹1 х Mi-35 🔹1 х Il-18 VZPU [airborne secure control point aircraft]
And the smarm by DA is, shockingly, pretty dumb in that the fact Wagner was able to go where they did and do what they did was taken as a damning indictment of the preparedness of the regular forces, rather than indication Wagner was the bee's knees. The most effective army in the world shouldn't have been able to waltz in like that virtually unimpeded - even armchair expects know that.
NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 @NOELreports · 1h Wagner could lead attack on Kyiv from Belarus, British General Dannatt warns, speaking to Sky News
"If he has kept an effective fighting force around him then he presents a threat again to the Ukrainian flank closest to Kyiv where it all began," he said
Yes, an attempt to turn a moment of high weakness for Putin into uncertainty and distraction for Ukraine - all he has to do is sit there and they have to worry, since even if he lacked effective fighting force we know he will send human waves in to eat up resources, so they cannot discount it.
Wagner lost the 'human waves' when the convict well ran dry.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
One of things that baffle me is the hostility to the possibility of paying even small amounts of inheritance tax at some future date compared with the lack of concern about paying many hundreds in income tax and NI every month through PAYE.
IHT is one of the things I’ve moved steadily leftwards on over the years.
Frankly, for a hell of a lot of people in this country it would be a nice problem to have.
How many estates actually pay any IHT?
The threshold for IHT is £325k, the average UK house price is now £372,812
The meaning of "average" is important here. "Arithmetic mean" (which is inflated by a long tail of mansions), "median" (the one in the middle) or "mode" (the one that occurs most often)?
Whichever, far more estates are now subject to IHT than previously and certainly would be if it weren't for the relief on the main property for married couples Osborne introduced
Households will pay a £170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of “slyly” shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
Absolutely useless once again from Rishi and Jeremy.
They have absolutely no understanding of the issues and pressures that ordinary people face.
The sooner they get the hammering at the election they deserve the better. Absolute clown show.
I’ve no enthusiasm for starmer or labour but, by god, this lot just don’t get how dire things are for many many people at the moment.
Good morning
Sunak and Hunt are following a policy of inflation reduction and at the same time do have net zero responsibilities
This news, together with yesterday's suggestion they may overrule pay review bodies, may well be responsible but it is politically tone deaf and a Starmer majority is looking a certainty
However, Starmer and Reeves will face the same economic winter and how they deal with it will be fascinating
The issue isn’t the net zero responsibility but the reneging on a commitment to help people during a cost of living crisis. It is also an open goal for the opposition.
Reeves and Starmer will find the goodwill they have when they come to power will evaporate very very quickly if they cannot get on top of these issues.
Indeed. I think goodwill towards LAB in general will evaporate very very very quickly within six months. LAB have no idea!
I keep trying to keep my pessimism in check and remind myself that we can't fully judge how Labour claims it is going to approach our desperate problems until we get an election manifesto, but I'd agree that the signs do not look encouraging. Reeves' platform, from what little we've heard so far (which seems to centre around an aversion to almost all further changes to rates of taxation, apart from a larger windfall tax on fossil fuel extraction and the abolition of tax breaks for private schools,) sounds suspiciously like continuity Toryism, plus a few quid scraped together to build some extra wind turbines.
They appear to have decided that the needs and wishes of core Conservative voters are much more important than those of core Labour voters, and will reap a well-deserved harvest of apathy and disillusionment if and when this becomes obvious. It's all very well saying that we're headed for a change election, but what happens when the voters realise that the principal change on offer is to who's going to be appearing on television to try to justify all this crap, whilst the rotten system is kept practically intact?
Nandy on Sky has just now said they would have to see the pay review bodies recommendations to assess if they were affordable prompting Trevor Philips to say
'So you are on the same page as the government'
He went on to ask her to outline one measure Labour would take to combat inflation and her response was to see banks paid savers a fair rate of interest !!!!!!
As I have said before you can change who is in no 10, but you cannot change the economics
The key is to get into Government first.
Once in Government the key is to emphasise what a hideous disaster we have inherited, it's far worse than anticipated (worked for Cameron and Osborne).
In Government they can U turn to their hearts content if they achieve a healthy majority. If they remain in a minority their hands are tied.
The key is trade with Europe. They could, early doors, call an EU Referendum worded something like "We left the European Union and are not rejoining, however the vote in 2016 was ambiguous as to what Leaving meant. Therefore, would you;
a) prefer a Tory hard Brexit which has seen our great nation crumble into the sea and your standard of living crash and burn. Or,
b) demand the Labour Government seeks a close economic arrangement with the EU, but as a distinct 3rd party.
Are you really suggesting Labour will be looking at an EU Referendum in their first term ?
No. We have left.
However, Labour in Government do need to sell a sensible post Brexit arrangement with the EU as a third party. This could be EEA, or Single Market or Norway plus, but it has to include frictionless trade and FOM, but we still retain our "sovereignty", whatever that means.
I despise referenda, but Cameron set the precedent. So any significant change requires a referendum.. if they can't sell BINO now, when can they sell it?
NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 @NOELreports · 1h Wagner could lead attack on Kyiv from Belarus, British General Dannatt warns, speaking to Sky News
"If he has kept an effective fighting force around him then he presents a threat again to the Ukrainian flank closest to Kyiv where it all began," he said
Yes, an attempt to turn a moment of high weakness for Putin into uncertainty and distraction for Ukraine - all he has to do is sit there and they have to worry, since even if he lacked effective fighting force we know he will send human waves in to eat up resources, so they cannot discount it.
Wagner lost the 'human waves' when the convict well ran dry.
NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 @NOELreports · 1h Wagner could lead attack on Kyiv from Belarus, British General Dannatt warns, speaking to Sky News
"If he has kept an effective fighting force around him then he presents a threat again to the Ukrainian flank closest to Kyiv where it all began," he said
Yes, an attempt to turn a moment of high weakness for Putin into uncertainty and distraction for Ukraine - all he has to do is sit there and they have to worry, since even if he lacked effective fighting force we know he will send human waves in to eat up resources, so they cannot discount it.
Wagner lost the 'human waves' when the convict well ran dry.
Belarus has prisons to tap.
Its a much, much smaller country than Russia.
True, but he only needs enough forces to make Ukraine need to prepare just in case he does something nuts.
You guys must be exhausted after such a busy day on the battlefields of Eastern Europe. On some much deserved RnR I hope now.
Bravo Zulu to the lads. There was a very efficient tactical redeployment from Wagner are homeless derelicts who can't take Bakhmut to Wagner are going to do an 800km combined arms operation to Moscow and topple the government of the Russian Federation.
Yep, great joint effort by the Russian imperialists and convicts.
🔹3 х Mi-8MTPR [EW helicopters] 🔹1 х Mi-8 🔹1 х Ka-52 🔹1 х Mi-35 🔹1 х Il-18 VZPU [airborne secure control point aircraft]
That was a good day’s work, at least as far as the Ukranians are concerned.
The Il-18, in particular, is going to be a real pain to replace. IIRC there are only a handful of these.
The Russian AF has already has problems getting enough serviceable aircraft into theatre, and with enough experienced crews to operate them. There’s not going to be many spares for that Il-18 crew.
Meanwhile, for complicated reasons I went to church this morning. Small village, fewer than 10 people in the congregation.
Some observations:
The vicar managed to name check three other religions, all for derogatory reasons (Jews, Brahmins, Muslims), he bewailed the fact that Christians can't wear crucifixes to work when Muslims can wear hijabs, and said that Jesus didn't come to bring peace and explained why this was.
So an interesting encounter with parochial muscular Christianity in this country.
Sounds like a traditional Conservative C of E vicar of the old school, a few of whom are still about in rural Parishes especially.
A long way from the Labour voting trendy left liberal vicars in most liberal Catholic C of E churches in our big cities and many of our larger towns
I think you've nailed it.
I imagine he thinks Jesus was something like this:
Reform on 10% now just 2% off of UKIP's voteshare in 2015, Farage may be tempted to return to lead them if that becomes consistent.
However plenty of time for Sunak and Hunt to win back voters from Reform with tax cuts and reductions in immigration
Except in reality... neither of those works, does it?
There is less than no money. So tax cuts are out of the question- the frozen thresholds means that taxes are going up, if anything. And immigration is the only thing keeping health, social care and the economy moving.
So what does Rishi do?
If inflation falls through the government's tight control of spending then that would allow for a cut in the basic rate especially, perhaps promise of raising the IHT threshold to £1 million for all estates if the Tories are re elected.
Economic migrants are certainly not all working in the NHS and migration remains a key concern for Tory to RefUK swing voters
If strawberry plants achieve sentience and send intergalactic starships to the Magellanic Clouds, and if Boris Johnson solves the P versus NP problem, the Tories might be re-elected.
Edit: ... and in any case most estates are 1m free of IHT, if they are of the Tory-approved nuclear family un-woke variety. So why bother changing?
Only the main property of married couples via transfer, not assets beyond the main property or for children of divorced couples or where one died before Osborne's tax reform.
The IHT threshold is still £325k, it should be raised to £1 million in my view and that should be in the Tory manifesto next year as a promise if they are re elected
The practical limit is 1m for approved politically correct families as far as most people realise - IHT is only ever an issue with the second death of the married couple.
£1M per person woiuld be absolutely outrageous and a further kick in the teeth of working people and a further sign that Tories and their elderly voters are parasitic leeches on society.
Only a whinging far left socialist like you would think removing decent middle class families out of IHT whether the parents are married or not and for all assets not just the main residence and leaving it only for the very rich was somehow 'outrageous.'
No that’s not true. I am a long way from being a far left socialist (although I like the occasional whinge) and I think capital is not taxed nearly enough and income, specifically earned income, far too much. We need to address this balance and cutting IHT is a step in the wrong direction.
If you want to tax wealth and capital far more and income less then you are a Liberal ideogically not a Conservative Tory really even if still not a Socialist (who would want to tax capital and income more to fund an expansion of the welfare state and public sector)
But, but I don’t wear sandals, even in this heat.
Sometimes @HYUFD , you should think about the size of tent you want your party to pitch. Right now it’s looking smaller than most of those at Glasto.
You are an Orange Book LD not a Tory.
63% want to raise the IHT threshold. 48% even want to scrap IHT completely, far higher than the current Tory poll rating
I think we need to tax inheritance properly to help out with the national debt. So no more transfer of the IHT tax free threshold to the surviving partner's estate. No more £1m threshold for those with children
Get rid of all the exemptions like 'gifts out of income'
To be clear I support IHT free transfers between the widowed spouse/civil partnership relationship etc but beyond the inheritors need to pay.
And let's make it 50% on anything over £200,000
👍👍👍
I'd simplify it, no tax on transfers between spouses, but every penny of inheritance gets taxed the same as money people have worked for gets taxed, including of course National Insurance.
Earned income should not be taxed less than unearned income.
Why should savers be penalised?
Person A works hard all their life and on retirement blows 3/4 of his savings on wine, women & song (the rest he wastes). His only child gets no inheritance.
Person B works hard all his life and on retirement lives modestly and leaves 1/2 his savings to his only child.
Why should the government want to discourage thriftiness and saving?
Saving isn't some unalloyed good. If everyone is thrifty all the time, the economy grinds to a halt. We need people to spend because spending creates jobs.
It's all very well saving and having your money used to invest, but investments are a bet on future spending. Spending is what drives the economy.
That is very true and the present spending is surprising in view of the COL crisis
Savers have already been penalised over the last decade of low interest rates. There has been little incentive to squirrel money away given the returns.
Higher interest rates don’t only take money out of the econ9my from borrowers but also fr9m savers.
We need a balance between spend and save. People saving for their retirement and latter years is a benefit as it reduces what the govt needs to pay out in terms of additional benefits.
It also makes sense to have six months salary saved in case of unemployment and savings for emergencies.
Saving is not all bad.
To be honest I'm struggling to think of a time where cash savings have beat inflation in the last 15 years regardless of interest rate. I think you'd have consistently lost money in real terms almost all of the time. And NSI premium bonds are almost always shit.
It's stocks and shares ISAs/pensions and assets where you can save to generate a real return, or betting of course.
The KeirStarmerNextPM bond maturing Oct 24 is yielding 20% on your principal. Not too shabby.
Not 100 % guaranteed though. Election win = yes. Accident or health issue = small but not zero probability.
Households will pay a £170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of “slyly” shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
Absolutely useless once again from Rishi and Jeremy.
They have absolutely no understanding of the issues and pressures that ordinary people face.
The sooner they get the hammering at the election they deserve the better. Absolute clown show.
I’ve no enthusiasm for starmer or labour but, by god, this lot just don’t get how dire things are for many many people at the moment.
Good morning
Sunak and Hunt are following a policy of inflation reduction and at the same time do have net zero responsibilities
This news, together with yesterday's suggestion they may overrule pay review bodies, may well be responsible but it is politically tone deaf and a Starmer majority is looking a certainty
However, Starmer and Reeves will face the same economic winter and how they deal with it will be fascinating
The issue isn’t the net zero responsibility but the reneging on a commitment to help people during a cost of living crisis. It is also an open goal for the opposition.
Reeves and Starmer will find the goodwill they have when they come to power will evaporate very very quickly if they cannot get on top of these issues.
Indeed. I think goodwill towards LAB in general will evaporate very very very quickly within six months. LAB have no idea!
I keep trying to keep my pessimism in check and remind myself that we can't fully judge how Labour claims it is going to approach our desperate problems until we get an election manifesto, but I'd agree that the signs do not look encouraging. Reeves' platform, from what little we've heard so far (which seems to centre around an aversion to almost all further changes to rates of taxation, apart from a larger windfall tax on fossil fuel extraction and the abolition of tax breaks for private schools,) sounds suspiciously like continuity Toryism, plus a few quid scraped together to build some extra wind turbines.
They appear to have decided that the needs and wishes of core Conservative voters are much more important than those of core Labour voters, and will reap a well-deserved harvest of apathy and disillusionment if and when this becomes obvious. It's all very well saying that we're headed for a change election, but what happens when the voters realise that the principal change on offer is to who's going to be appearing on television to try to justify all this crap, whilst the rotten system is kept practically intact?
Nandy on Sky has just now said they would have to see the pay review bodies recommendations to assess if they were affordable prompting Trevor Philips to say
'So you are on the same page as the government'
He went on to ask her to outline one measure Labour would take to combat inflation and her response was to see banks paid savers a fair rate of interest !!!!!!
As I have said before you can change who is in no 10, but you cannot change the economics
The key is to get into Government first.
Once in Government the key is to emphasise what a hideous disaster we have inherited, it's far worse than anticipated (worked for Cameron and Osborne).
In Government they can U turn to their hearts content if they achieve a healthy majority. If they remain in a minority their hands are tied.
The key is trade with Europe. They could, early doors, call an EU Referendum worded something like "We left the European Union and are not rejoining, however the vote in 2016 was ambiguous as to what Leaving meant. Therefore, would you;
a) prefer a Tory hard Brexit which has seen our great nation crumble into the sea and your standard of living crash and burn. Or,
b) demand the Labour Government seeks a close economic arrangement with the EU, but as a distinct 3rd party.
Are you really suggesting Labour will be looking at an EU Referendum in their first term ?
No. We have left.
However, Labour in Government do need to sell a sensible post Brexit arrangement with the EU as a third party. This could be EEA, or Single Market or Norway plus, but it has to include frictionless trade and FOM, but we still retain our "sovereignty", whatever that means.
I despise referenda, but Cameron set the precedent. So any significant change requires a referendum.. if they can't sell BINO now, when can they sell it?
I would be very surprised if we didn’t end the decade with a government that openly supports some form of closer relationship with Europe.
Trump: Whatever documents a President decides to take with him, he has the absolute right to take them. He has the absolute right to keep them or he can give them back.. that’s the law https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1672763070421106695
He's totally barmy - he genuinely seems to believe, based on other remarks, that a President can do anything, and his own statements on the documents indicates this whole stupid affair comes down to him believing that if it was provided to him that makes it his now, and he doesn't want anyone touching his stuff. People joke about it but he has the mentality of a toddler.
I don’t think he does believe that. Or, rather, I don’t think he consistently believes it, but he changes his views willy-nilly. If he thought he could keep the documents, he could have sued to keep them. Instead, he indulged in subterfuge, hiding the documents he wanted. That implies at some level he knew he couldn’t keep them.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
The average property price in London is now over £650k at £737,512
So, someone with a 90% mortgage on an *average* home in London, is looking at an extra £1,500 *per month* in repayments. That’s £18,000 per year, which requires £30k in income assuming 40% marginal income tax.
Someone in the average home in London, is about to need to earn an extra £30k per year, just to afford mortgage interest rates going from 2% to 6%. Those numbers are totally horrific.
Having interest rates at virtually 0% for a generation has just been storing up this problem. When interst rates are basically free money, it enables people to borrow more, so price go up, rinse and repeat for 15 years, you then get to a stage where million quid homes are unremarkable properties.
Then interest rates return to historic norms (remember under Blair they were 5% pretty much throughout) & boom regular people can't earn enough to fund them.
From the other side of the that bubble, however, the interest rate collapse to 0.49% (on our off-set mortgage) enabled us to clear our initial mortgage debt. We then re-borrowed another £40k at 0.49% interest for a complete renovation which we then paid off.
Result, seven years after the GFC. we lived mortgage and debt free in a renovated house. I bet we weren't the only ones who used low interest rates to clear debts and accumulate and improve the property asset. Our property is finished to a standard which, even in East Ham, will attract buyers and that's the case generally. People present properties to a higher standard than before and want that reflected in asking prices.
Absolutely....it depends how early on in the ponzi you were / how greedy you got.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
The average property price in London is now over £650k at £737,512
So, someone with a 90% mortgage on an *average* home in London, is looking at an extra £1,500 *per month* in repayments. That’s £18,000 per year, which requires £30k in income assuming 40% marginal income tax.
Someone in the average home in London, is about to need to earn an extra £30k per year, just to afford mortgage interest rates going from 2% to 6%. Those numbers are totally horrific.
My take on this is that the government won't help people in this position. They aren't going to help rich people with high incomes who will be able to find somewhere to live, they will just help people at risk of ending up in the homeless queue.
If you think about London... they all vote Labour anyway. And in the home counties, most tory supporters have paid off their mortgages.
Whenever this comes up there is a consensus of opinion that high earning professionals are politically insignificant, there is little support for their causes (the 100k marginal tax thing, private school fees). People with expensive houses and large mortgages are in for a very difficult few years.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
One of things that baffle me is the hostility to the possibility of paying even small amounts of inheritance tax at some future date compared with the lack of concern about paying many hundreds in income tax and NI every month through PAYE.
IHT is one of the things I’ve moved steadily leftwards on over the years.
Frankly, for a hell of a lot of people in this country it would be a nice problem to have.
How many estates actually pay any IHT?
The threshold for IHT is £325k, the average UK house price is now £372,812
The meaning of "average" is important here. "Arithmetic mean" (which is inflated by a long tail of mansions), "median" (the one in the middle) or "mode" (the one that occurs most often)?
One could also have a geometric mean, a trimmed mean, a Winsorised mean…
Meanwhile, for complicated reasons I went to church this morning. Small village, fewer than 10 people in the congregation.
Some observations:
The vicar managed to name check three other religions, all for derogatory reasons (Jews, Brahmins, Muslims), he bewailed the fact that Christians can't wear crucifixes to work when Muslims can wear hijabs, and said that Jesus didn't come to bring peace and explained why this was.
So an interesting encounter with parochial muscular Christianity in this country.
Did you speak up or let it go?
As mentioned I let it go. I was a guest and pondered but eventually decided against. No doubt another tick in the religious debit column.
Not your PB persona then. I wonder which is the real Captain Topping. Both, I suppose. People can be incredibly complex. No, people *are* incredibly complex. One of the reasons I'm a GAI skeptic. Chances of building a 'you' that on one day throws its weight around on a discussion site, picking fights, joining fights, starting them if there isn't one, then the next day goes to church and sits there quiet as a mouse through the vicar's long and dodgy sermon? ... close to zero imo.
Meanwhile, for complicated reasons I went to church this morning. Small village, fewer than 10 people in the congregation.
Some observations:
The vicar managed to name check three other religions, all for derogatory reasons (Jews, Brahmins, Muslims), he bewailed the fact that Christians can't wear crucifixes to work when Muslims can wear hijabs, and said that Jesus didn't come to bring peace and explained why this was.
So an interesting encounter with parochial muscular Christianity in this country.
I hope you told him he was talking bullshit about the crucifix thing.
I pondered explaining the difference between jewellery and religious garb but couldn't quite remember whether (was it?) BA had actually banned the crucifix on religious grounds.
BA banned all jewellery full stop. Eweida argued that that was indirect discrimination against her as a Christian as it included crucifixes. The Tribunal and the U.K. appeal courts held that it was not. They held there was a qualitative difference between the place of a worn crucifix in the Christian tradition and the Hijab in the Islamic tradition. If it can prove it’s a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim (eg ensuring health and safety by stopping loose clothing and jewellery getting caught in machinery) then an employer could also ban head coverings including hijabs. However, the ECHR, in essence, said protecting BA’s corporate image through a blanket ban on all jewellery, however discrete, was not a proportionate means of achieving a legitimate aim where it interfered with Eweida's right to wear a small unobtrusive expression of her faith.
Meanwhile, for complicated reasons I went to church this morning. Small village, fewer than 10 people in the congregation.
Some observations:
The vicar managed to name check three other religions, all for derogatory reasons (Jews, Brahmins, Muslims), he bewailed the fact that Christians can't wear crucifixes to work when Muslims can wear hijabs, and said that Jesus didn't come to bring peace and explained why this was.
So an interesting encounter with parochial muscular Christianity in this country.
Sounds like a traditional Conservative C of E vicar of the old school, a few of whom are still about in rural Parishes especially.
A long way from the Labour voting trendy left liberal vicars in most liberal Catholic C of E churches in our big cities and many of our larger towns
I think you've nailed it.
I imagine he thinks Jesus was something like this:
That actually misses out my favourite South Park Jesus moment, simply for its genuineness Jesus: God doesn't want you spend all your time being afraid of hell, or praising His name. God wants you to spend your time helping others, and living a good, happy life. That's how you live for Him.
His church services don't follow the limited praising of the name though.
"There’s a mortgage catastrophe coming – and it will prove Liz Truss right The ‘sensibles’ believed higher taxes would stop interest rate hikes. They were calamitously wrong Allister Heath"
NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 @NOELreports · 1h Wagner could lead attack on Kyiv from Belarus, British General Dannatt warns, speaking to Sky News
"If he has kept an effective fighting force around him then he presents a threat again to the Ukrainian flank closest to Kyiv where it all began," he said
Yes, an attempt to turn a moment of high weakness for Putin into uncertainty and distraction for Ukraine - all he has to do is sit there and they have to worry, since even if he lacked effective fighting force we know he will send human waves in to eat up resources, so they cannot discount it.
Wagner lost the 'human waves' when the convict well ran dry.
Belarus has prisons to tap.
Its a much, much smaller country than Russia.
True, but he only needs enough forces to make Ukraine need to prepare just in case he does something nuts.
But they wouldn't be elsewhere.
Whatever way its looked at Wagner is now much less of a threat to Ukraine than it was a week ago.
Households will pay a £170-a-year green levy on energy bills in the coming days, with Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt accused of “slyly” shifting costs back to consumers.
The Telegraph has learned that the two-year suspension of green levies announced last autumn is to end from the beginning of July, after just nine months.
Absolutely useless once again from Rishi and Jeremy.
They have absolutely no understanding of the issues and pressures that ordinary people face.
The sooner they get the hammering at the election they deserve the better. Absolute clown show.
I’ve no enthusiasm for starmer or labour but, by god, this lot just don’t get how dire things are for many many people at the moment.
Good morning
Sunak and Hunt are following a policy of inflation reduction and at the same time do have net zero responsibilities
This news, together with yesterday's suggestion they may overrule pay review bodies, may well be responsible but it is politically tone deaf and a Starmer majority is looking a certainty
However, Starmer and Reeves will face the same economic winter and how they deal with it will be fascinating
The issue isn’t the net zero responsibility but the reneging on a commitment to help people during a cost of living crisis. It is also an open goal for the opposition.
Reeves and Starmer will find the goodwill they have when they come to power will evaporate very very quickly if they cannot get on top of these issues.
Indeed. I think goodwill towards LAB in general will evaporate very very very quickly within six months. LAB have no idea!
I keep trying to keep my pessimism in check and remind myself that we can't fully judge how Labour claims it is going to approach our desperate problems until we get an election manifesto, but I'd agree that the signs do not look encouraging. Reeves' platform, from what little we've heard so far (which seems to centre around an aversion to almost all further changes to rates of taxation, apart from a larger windfall tax on fossil fuel extraction and the abolition of tax breaks for private schools,) sounds suspiciously like continuity Toryism, plus a few quid scraped together to build some extra wind turbines.
They appear to have decided that the needs and wishes of core Conservative voters are much more important than those of core Labour voters, and will reap a well-deserved harvest of apathy and disillusionment if and when this becomes obvious. It's all very well saying that we're headed for a change election, but what happens when the voters realise that the principal change on offer is to who's going to be appearing on television to try to justify all this crap, whilst the rotten system is kept practically intact?
Nandy on Sky has just now said they would have to see the pay review bodies recommendations to assess if they were affordable prompting Trevor Philips to say
'So you are on the same page as the government'
He went on to ask her to outline one measure Labour would take to combat inflation and her response was to see banks paid savers a fair rate of interest !!!!!!
As I have said before you can change who is in no 10, but you cannot change the economics
The key is to get into Government first.
Once in Government the key is to emphasise what a hideous disaster we have inherited, it's far worse than anticipated (worked for Cameron and Osborne).
In Government they can U turn to their hearts content if they achieve a healthy majority. If they remain in a minority their hands are tied.
The key is trade with Europe. They could, early doors, call an EU Referendum worded something like "We left the European Union and are not rejoining, however the vote in 2016 was ambiguous as to what Leaving meant. Therefore, would you;
a) prefer a Tory hard Brexit which has seen our great nation crumble into the sea and your standard of living crash and burn. Or,
b) demand the Labour Government seeks a close economic arrangement with the EU, but as a distinct 3rd party.
Are you really suggesting Labour will be looking at an EU Referendum in their first term ?
No. We have left.
However, Labour in Government do need to sell a sensible post Brexit arrangement with the EU as a third party. This could be EEA, or Single Market or Norway plus, but it has to include frictionless trade and FOM, but we still retain our "sovereignty", whatever that means.
I despise referenda, but Cameron set the precedent. So any significant change requires a referendum.. if they can't sell BINO now, when can they sell it?
I would be very surprised if we didn’t end the decade with a government that openly supports some form of closer relationship with Europe.
It will happen over time, as the animosity wears off and is replaced by pragmatism, and the leading politicians replaced.
IMHO the UK red lines are going to be FoM (of people), and dynamic alignment (as opposed to equivalence) of standards.
The Bank of England, with the Treasury’s blessing, unleashed £450bn of QE during 18 months of lockdown – more than during the previous decade, a major cause of current price pressure.
"There’s a mortgage catastrophe coming – and it will prove Liz Truss right The ‘sensibles’ believed higher taxes would stop interest rate hikes. They were calamitously wrong Allister Heath"
Nothing was going to stop the interest rate hikes. The only difference is the rate of increase (slightly slower) and the eventually top rate which I believe will still be less than if Truss was in power. Peak rates are now likely to be 6.5% were Truss in power I suspect they could be 7.5%..
Trump: Whatever documents a President decides to take with him, he has the absolute right to take them. He has the absolute right to keep them or he can give them back.. that’s the law https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1672763070421106695
He's totally barmy - he genuinely seems to believe, based on other remarks, that a President can do anything, and his own statements on the documents indicates this whole stupid affair comes down to him believing that if it was provided to him that makes it his now, and he doesn't want anyone touching his stuff. People joke about it but he has the mentality of a toddler.
I don’t think he does believe that. Or, rather, I don’t think he consistently believes it, but he changes his views willy-nilly. If he thought he could keep the documents, he could have sued to keep them. Instead, he indulged in subterfuge, hiding the documents he wanted. That implies at some level he knew he couldn’t keep them.
His mental state is hard to parse, which makes proving intent in some of his legal cases very tricky since who the heck knows what he thinks or believes, and thus knows about what is legal or not, where that is relevant.
The subterfuge really is the key in this documents case, since as you note it makes it hard to argue he did not know what he was doing, and even if he disagrees with the DOJ's interpretation of the law, that doesn't mean you can just ignore or frustrate subpoenas and the like.
NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 @NOELreports · 1h Wagner could lead attack on Kyiv from Belarus, British General Dannatt warns, speaking to Sky News
"If he has kept an effective fighting force around him then he presents a threat again to the Ukrainian flank closest to Kyiv where it all began," he said
Yes, an attempt to turn a moment of high weakness for Putin into uncertainty and distraction for Ukraine - all he has to do is sit there and they have to worry, since even if he lacked effective fighting force we know he will send human waves in to eat up resources, so they cannot discount it.
The Times is reporting that some Tory MPs are looking at the potential to bring back Liz Truss.
You all fucking laughed at me when I suggested this.
Even last summer before her administration produced one of the worst budgets ever and the Tories fell to 19% under her leadership, Truss only received 113 Tory MPs backing her in last summer's Tory leadership contest to 137 Tory MPs for Sunak.
So zero chance of her supporters managing to win a VONC to topple Sunak and replace him, Sunak of course received 197 Tory MPs backing him last autumn when he became PM
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
One of things that baffle me is the hostility to the possibility of paying even small amounts of inheritance tax at some future date compared with the lack of concern about paying many hundreds in income tax and NI every month through PAYE.
IHT is one of the things I’ve moved steadily leftwards on over the years.
Frankly, for a hell of a lot of people in this country it would be a nice problem to have.
How many estates actually pay any IHT?
The threshold for IHT is £325k, the average UK house price is now £372,812
The meaning of "average" is important here. "Arithmetic mean" (which is inflated by a long tail of mansions), "median" (the one in the middle) or "mode" (the one that occurs most often)?
One could also have a geometric mean, a trimmed mean, a Winsorised mean…
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
One of things that baffle me is the hostility to the possibility of paying even small amounts of inheritance tax at some future date compared with the lack of concern about paying many hundreds in income tax and NI every month through PAYE.
I think it's a deep psychic thing combining 'the money's already been taxed' and 'I live on through the money I leave my kids' and 'you work hard all your life then they come and swipe it off you on your deathbed'. Those are the sentiments in the mix. It's the most disliked of all taxes when rationally it should be the least objectionable. But the very fact that the hatred of it is irrational makes it all the stronger and difficult (I'd say almost impossible) to dislodge. Even people who won't be impacted by it in a million years hate the idea of IHT. My Uncle Albert (car mechanic) used to rail against it on a regular basis. I would try and explain, contextualize, but to no avail. It was like a brick wall. Unlike on many other topics where he'd listen to me and sometimes be influenced for the better. But not on IHT. No sir.
The point is, for many of us, there isn't a 'good' tax. But I recognise that the state needs money to do stuff. I can't defend IHT philosophically, but nor can I defend income tax or VAT. So glumly I frame it as something up with which I must put.
The Bank of England, with the Treasury’s blessing, unleashed £450bn of QE during 18 months of lockdown – more than during the previous decade, a major cause of current price pressure.
Who could have foreseen that printing such massive amounts of money in a short space of time might have some downstream effects......opens economics 101 textbook....
"There’s a mortgage catastrophe coming – and it will prove Liz Truss right The ‘sensibles’ believed higher taxes would stop interest rate hikes. They were calamitously wrong Allister Heath"
So what would have happened with Trussian economics being applied.
Lower taxes and higher spending would have led to a lower sterling rate, more economic activity, higher inflation - pay, consumer price, property price.
NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 @NOELreports · 1h Wagner could lead attack on Kyiv from Belarus, British General Dannatt warns, speaking to Sky News
"If he has kept an effective fighting force around him then he presents a threat again to the Ukrainian flank closest to Kyiv where it all began," he said
Yes, an attempt to turn a moment of high weakness for Putin into uncertainty and distraction for Ukraine - all he has to do is sit there and they have to worry, since even if he lacked effective fighting force we know he will send human waves in to eat up resources, so they cannot discount it.
Wagner lost the 'human waves' when the convict well ran dry.
Belarus has prisons to tap.
Its a much, much smaller country than Russia.
True, but he only needs enough forces to make Ukraine need to prepare just in case he does something nuts.
But they wouldn't be elsewhere.
Whatever way its looked at Wagner is now much less of a threat to Ukraine than it was a week ago.
Not saying it would work - but if they are going to try to make some use out of this whole affair, and at least keep Ukraine guessing, it may be all they have to try. They did successfully imply Belarus might invade in order to divert some resources once before.
"There’s a mortgage catastrophe coming – and it will prove Liz Truss right The ‘sensibles’ believed higher taxes would stop interest rate hikes. They were calamitously wrong Allister Heath"
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
One of things that baffle me is the hostility to the possibility of paying even small amounts of inheritance tax at some future date compared with the lack of concern about paying many hundreds in income tax and NI every month through PAYE.
Maybe because people view inheritance as less selfish than income. Income is for yourself. Inheritance is for others.
Inheritance is someone else's income though, and income that they haven't lifted a finger to earn. I've got children and I put money aside for them every month so I understand and applaud the motive, but we are heading for one hell of a divided society in the next few decades where your chances in life will depend more on your inherited wealth than talent or hard work, and if anyone thinks that's going to be a harmonious setup they're bonkers. IHT does a little to lean against those dynamics and so it shouldn't be watered down further.
NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 @NOELreports · 1h Wagner could lead attack on Kyiv from Belarus, British General Dannatt warns, speaking to Sky News
"If he has kept an effective fighting force around him then he presents a threat again to the Ukrainian flank closest to Kyiv where it all began," he said
Yes, an attempt to turn a moment of high weakness for Putin into uncertainty and distraction for Ukraine - all he has to do is sit there and they have to worry, since even if he lacked effective fighting force we know he will send human waves in to eat up resources, so they cannot discount it.
Wagner lost the 'human waves' when the convict well ran dry.
Belarus has prisons to tap.
Its a much, much smaller country than Russia.
True, but he only needs enough forces to make Ukraine need to prepare just in case he does something nuts.
But they wouldn't be elsewhere.
Whatever way its looked at Wagner is now much less of a threat to Ukraine than it was a week ago.
Not saying it would work - but if they are going to try to make some use out of this whole affair, and at least keep Ukraine guessing, it may be all they have to try. They did successfully imply Belarus might invade in order to divert some resources once before.
How many front line units does it divert though ?
Training and refitting units have always been used to guard low risk areas.
Then add National Insurance to unearned income, while increasing income tax allowances. And, scrap the triple lock.
50% of the population will inherit substantial amounts, but work should pay for the 50% who will not inherit such sums.
I'm 56 and will likely inherit a lot of money over the next decade, but what use is to me now?
It is down to corporations to increase pay for those in the bottom 50% of earners, beyond ensuring a reasonable minimum wage that is not the role of government.
Yes government can cut tax for lower earners and put some funds to subsidise apprenticeships and skills training to make workers more productive and higher paid buy it is corporations who are responsible for making their profits and distributing them fairly amongst their workforce
There is a lot of money available to subsidize apprenticeships - the issue is that a lot of companies don't wish to invest the time and money training people up because another firm will instantly grab the trained workers.
For instance Hitachi no longer train welders because as soon as they do Bombardier and Siemens offer them more money to leave...
Yet BA still trains pilots, because they have a training bond scheme. We’ll train you on plane type X, at a cost of £25k, but you need to work for us for three years afterwards.
Bombardier and Siemens also train apprentices, some of whom will go to work for Hitachi.
Businesses I have worked in have done something similar for the costs of funding additional vocational qualifications such as MBA’s.
Work for us for three years or pay us the cost of the course if you leave before then.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
The average property price in London is now over £650k at £737,512
So, someone with a 90% mortgage on an *average* home in London, is looking at an extra £1,500 *per month* in repayments. That’s £18,000 per year, which requires £30k in income assuming 40% marginal income tax.
Someone in the average home in London, is about to need to earn an extra £30k per year, just to afford mortgage interest rates going from 2% to 6%. Those numbers are totally horrific.
Having interest rates at virtually 0% for a generation has just been storing up this problem. When interst rates are basically free money, it enables people to borrow more, so price go up, rinse and repeat for 15 years, you then get to a stage where million quid homes are unremarkable properties.
Then interest rates return to historic norms (remember under Blair they were 5% pretty much throughout) & boom people can't earn enough to fund them.
I suspect a lot of the problem was (and it's going to take a long time to unwind) was BTLers looking at the pitiful saving returns and investing in a few BTL properties instead where they overpaid because the rent was easily enough (regardless of how much over the odds they paid) to pay the interest on a 2% mortgage.
Things are very different now but we need to wait 12-18 months to see the market fallout before we know the reality of the market.
The adjustment period, while mortgages are expensive, but so are houses, and landlords exiting the market drive up rents, are going to be horrific.
I can see a state in 5 years’ time, where property prices have dropped 30-40% in real terms, more social housing has been built, and investors have mostly sold up. That will be a much better place, but it’s going to be one hell of a ride between here and there.
The cat among the pigeons, is a lot of institutional wealth buying up property in the downturn, in an attempt to prop up prices. If that continues, there will need to be an awful lot of housebuilding in the next few years.
Institutions are also heavily invested in the big city commercial properties and leasing are coming up for renewals, with hybrid work etc, that is also another area there could be a big shit show.
Commercial property is a whole other kettle of fish! Landlords are already preferring to leave property empty, rather than rent at lower rates and take the hit on valuation that results. At some point, that correction has to happen, and it’s going to be a big correction, especially at the expensive end of the market. Sensible commercial landlords will be working out which properties can most easily be converted to residential use. I suspect the population of the City of London is about to explode.
Reform on 10% now just 2% off of UKIP's voteshare in 2015, Farage may be tempted to return to lead them if that becomes consistent.
However plenty of time for Sunak and Hunt to win back voters from Reform with tax cuts and reductions in immigration
Except in reality... neither of those works, does it?
There is less than no money. So tax cuts are out of the question- the frozen thresholds means that taxes are going up, if anything. And immigration is the only thing keeping health, social care and the economy moving.
So what does Rishi do?
If inflation falls through the government's tight control of spending then that would allow for a cut in the basic rate especially, perhaps promise of raising the IHT threshold to £1 million for all estates if the Tories are re elected.
Economic migrants are certainly not all working in the NHS and migration remains a key concern for Tory to RefUK swing voters
If strawberry plants achieve sentience and send intergalactic starships to the Magellanic Clouds, and if Boris Johnson solves the P versus NP problem, the Tories might be re-elected.
Edit: ... and in any case most estates are 1m free of IHT, if they are of the Tory-approved nuclear family un-woke variety. So why bother changing?
Only the main property of married couples via transfer, not assets beyond the main property or for children of divorced couples or where one died before Osborne's tax reform.
The IHT threshold is still £325k, it should be raised to £1 million in my view and that should be in the Tory manifesto next year as a promise if they are re elected
The practical limit is 1m for approved politically correct families as far as most people realise - IHT is only ever an issue with the second death of the married couple.
£1M per person woiuld be absolutely outrageous and a further kick in the teeth of working people and a further sign that Tories and their elderly voters are parasitic leeches on society.
Only a whinging far left socialist like you would think removing decent middle class families out of IHT whether the parents are married or not and for all assets not just the main residence and leaving it only for the very rich was somehow 'outrageous.'
No that’s not true. I am a long way from being a far left socialist (although I like the occasional whinge) and I think capital is not taxed nearly enough and income, specifically earned income, far too much. We need to address this balance and cutting IHT is a step in the wrong direction.
If you want to tax wealth and capital far more and income less then you are a Liberal ideogically not a Conservative Tory really even if still not a Socialist (who would want to tax capital and income more to fund an expansion of the welfare state and public sector)
But, but I don’t wear sandals, even in this heat.
Sometimes @HYUFD , you should think about the size of tent you want your party to pitch. Right now it’s looking smaller than most of those at Glasto.
You are an Orange Book LD not a Tory.
63% want to raise the IHT threshold. 48% even want to scrap IHT completely, far higher than the current Tory poll rating
I think we need to tax inheritance properly to help out with the national debt. So no more transfer of the IHT tax free threshold to the surviving partner's estate. No more £1m threshold for those with children
Get rid of all the exemptions like 'gifts out of income'
To be clear I support IHT free transfers between the widowed spouse/civil partnership relationship etc but beyond the inheritors need to pay.
And let's make it 50% on anything over £200,000
👍👍👍
I'd simplify it, no tax on transfers between spouses, but every penny of inheritance gets taxed the same as money people have worked for gets taxed, including of course National Insurance.
Earned income should not be taxed less than unearned income.
Why should savers be penalised?
Person A works hard all their life and on retirement blows 3/4 of his savings on wine, women & song (the rest he wastes). His only child gets no inheritance.
Person B works hard all his life and on retirement lives modestly and leaves 1/2 his savings to his only child.
Why should the government want to discourage thriftiness and saving?
Saving isn't some unalloyed good. If everyone is thrifty all the time, the economy grinds to a halt. We need people to spend because spending creates jobs.
It's all very well saving and having your money used to invest, but investments are a bet on future spending. Spending is what drives the economy.
That is very true and the present spending is surprising in view of the COL crisis
Savers have already been penalised over the last decade of low interest rates. There has been little incentive to squirrel money away given the returns.
Higher interest rates don’t only take money out of the econ9my from borrowers but also fr9m savers.
We need a balance between spend and save. People saving for their retirement and latter years is a benefit as it reduces what the govt needs to pay out in terms of additional benefits.
It also makes sense to have six months salary saved in case of unemployment and savings for emergencies.
Saving is not all bad.
To be honest I'm struggling to think of a time where cash savings have beat inflation in the last 15 years regardless of interest rate. I think you'd have consistently lost money in real terms almost all of the time. And NSI premium bonds are almost always shit.
It's stocks and shares ISAs/pensions and assets where you can save to generate a real return, or betting of course.
The KeirStarmerNextPM bond maturing Oct 24 is yielding 20% on your principal. Not too shabby.
Not 100 % guaranteed though. Election win = yes. Accident or health issue = small but not zero probability.
NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 @NOELreports · 1h Wagner could lead attack on Kyiv from Belarus, British General Dannatt warns, speaking to Sky News
"If he has kept an effective fighting force around him then he presents a threat again to the Ukrainian flank closest to Kyiv where it all began," he said
Yes, an attempt to turn a moment of high weakness for Putin into uncertainty and distraction for Ukraine - all he has to do is sit there and they have to worry, since even if he lacked effective fighting force we know he will send human waves in to eat up resources, so they cannot discount it.
Wagner lost the 'human waves' when the convict well ran dry.
Belarus has prisons to tap.
Its a much, much smaller country than Russia.
True, but he only needs enough forces to make Ukraine need to prepare just in case he does something nuts.
There's no difference between stationing mercenaries in Belarus and sending part of the regular Russian army there. Regardless, any theoretical invasion force requires a lot of personnel, and they all need feeding, clothing, paying and supplying with kit. Russia no longer has the capacity to do that, otherwise it wouldn't have given up all its gains in northern Ukraine last year and run away.
The Russian army is only fighting in the South and East because it lacks the capacity to maintain another front. Diverting substantial resources to Belarus to prepare to re-invade from there would merely strip the forces already struggling to hold the Ukrainians back, and likely result in the loss of the territories Russia already controls. Besides which, IANAE but I'd imagine that Kyiv at least is surrounded by many layers of concentric defences after its narrow escape in 2022, and would therefore require many fewer troops to hold than Russia would need to deploy to attempt a capture.
Russia splitting its already degraded forces in a vain effort to force Ukraine to do likewise is a futile strategy and it won't work.
NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 @NOELreports · 1h Wagner could lead attack on Kyiv from Belarus, British General Dannatt warns, speaking to Sky News
"If he has kept an effective fighting force around him then he presents a threat again to the Ukrainian flank closest to Kyiv where it all began," he said
Yes, an attempt to turn a moment of high weakness for Putin into uncertainty and distraction for Ukraine - all he has to do is sit there and they have to worry, since even if he lacked effective fighting force we know he will send human waves in to eat up resources, so they cannot discount it.
Wagner lost the 'human waves' when the convict well ran dry.
Belarus has prisons to tap.
Its a much, much smaller country than Russia.
True, but he only needs enough forces to make Ukraine need to prepare just in case he does something nuts.
But they wouldn't be elsewhere.
Whatever way its looked at Wagner is now much less of a threat to Ukraine than it was a week ago.
Not saying it would work - but if they are going to try to make some use out of this whole affair, and at least keep Ukraine guessing, it may be all they have to try. They did successfully imply Belarus might invade in order to divert some resources once before.
How many front line units does it divert though ?
Training and refitting units have always been used to guard low risk areas.
They're trying to make a positive out of a total shit show, any number would be better than none!
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
The average property price in London is now over £650k at £737,512
So, someone with a 90% mortgage on an *average* home in London, is looking at an extra £1,500 *per month* in repayments. That’s £18,000 per year, which requires £30k in income assuming 40% marginal income tax.
Someone in the average home in London, is about to need to earn an extra £30k per year, just to afford mortgage interest rates going from 2% to 6%. Those numbers are totally horrific.
Having interest rates at virtually 0% for a generation has just been storing up this problem. When interst rates are basically free money, it enables people to borrow more, so price go up, rinse and repeat for 15 years, you then get to a stage where million quid homes are unremarkable properties.
Then interest rates return to historic norms (remember under Blair they were 5% pretty much throughout) & boom people can't earn enough to fund them.
I suspect a lot of the problem was (and it's going to take a long time to unwind) was BTLers looking at the pitiful saving returns and investing in a few BTL properties instead where they overpaid because the rent was easily enough (regardless of how much over the odds they paid) to pay the interest on a 2% mortgage.
Things are very different now but we need to wait 12-18 months to see the market fallout before we know the reality of the market.
The adjustment period, while mortgages are expensive, but so are houses, and landlords exiting the market drive up rents, are going to be horrific.
I can see a state in 5 years’ time, where property prices have dropped 30-40% in real terms, more social housing has been built, and investors have mostly sold up. That will be a much better place, but it’s going to be one hell of a ride between here and there.
The cat among the pigeons, is a lot of institutional wealth buying up property in the downturn, in an attempt to prop up prices. If that continues, there will need to be an awful lot of housebuilding in the next few years.
Institutions are also heavily invested in the big city commercial properties and leasing are coming up for renewals, with hybrid work etc, that is also another area there could be a big shit show.
Commercial property is a whole other kettle of fish! Landlords are already preferring to leave property empty, rather than rent at lower rates and take the hit on valuation that results. At some point, that correction has to happen, and it’s going to be a big correction, especially at the expensive end of the market. Sensible commercial landlords will be working out which properties can most easily be converted to residential use. I suspect the population of the City of London is about to explode.
My understanding that in many cases it is non-trivial (sometimes impossible) and very expensive to make such conversions, even before considering overcoming whatever red tape there is.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
The average property price in London is now over £650k at £737,512
So, someone with a 90% mortgage on an *average* home in London, is looking at an extra £1,500 *per month* in repayments. That’s £18,000 per year, which requires £30k in income assuming 40% marginal income tax.
Someone in the average home in London, is about to need to earn an extra £30k per year, just to afford mortgage interest rates going from 2% to 6%. Those numbers are totally horrific.
My take on this is that the government won't help people in this position. They aren't going to help rich people with high incomes who will be able to find somewhere to live, they will just help people at risk of ending up in the homeless queue.
If you think about London... they all vote Labour anyway. And in the home counties, most tory supporters have paid off their mortgages.
Whenever this comes up there is a consensus of opinion that high earning professionals are politically insignificant, there is little support for their causes (the 100k marginal tax thing, private school fees). People with expensive houses and large mortgages are in for a very difficult few years.
A good post. My view (from outside London) is too many allowed themselves to be caught in the upsizing trend when the Covid property price boom kicked off. Get yourself that 5 bed detached with room for a garden office, everyone is doing it.
Clearly the full impact of the rate rises won’t be felt yet given most probably fixed for 5 years, but there will be a class of professional people who made very big errors in being tempted by the max they were told they could borrow and failing to keep a good LTV. I am not tremendously convinced that any help will be on the way for that particular type of scenario.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
One of things that baffle me is the hostility to the possibility of paying even small amounts of inheritance tax at some future date compared with the lack of concern about paying many hundreds in income tax and NI every month through PAYE.
IHT is one of the things I’ve moved steadily leftwards on over the years.
Frankly, for a hell of a lot of people in this country it would be a nice problem to have.
How many estates actually pay any IHT?
The threshold for IHT is £325k, the average UK house price is now £372,812
The meaning of "average" is important here. "Arithmetic mean" (which is inflated by a long tail of mansions), "median" (the one in the middle) or "mode" (the one that occurs most often)?
One could also have a geometric mean, a trimmed mean, a Winsorised mean…
NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 @NOELreports · 1h Wagner could lead attack on Kyiv from Belarus, British General Dannatt warns, speaking to Sky News
"If he has kept an effective fighting force around him then he presents a threat again to the Ukrainian flank closest to Kyiv where it all began," he said
Yes, an attempt to turn a moment of high weakness for Putin into uncertainty and distraction for Ukraine - all he has to do is sit there and they have to worry, since even if he lacked effective fighting force we know he will send human waves in to eat up resources, so they cannot discount it.
Aside from the fact that Wagner is *supposed* to being absorbed into the Russian Army. Which leaves you with Grant Mitchel on his own.
And the lack of logistics via Belarus.
If the Russian could create even *a threat* via Belarus, they would have done so, a long time back.
The Bank of England, with the Treasury’s blessing, unleashed £450bn of QE during 18 months of lockdown – more than during the previous decade, a major cause of current price pressure.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
The average property price in London is now over £650k at £737,512
So, someone with a 90% mortgage on an *average* home in London, is looking at an extra £1,500 *per month* in repayments. That’s £18,000 per year, which requires £30k in income assuming 40% marginal income tax.
Someone in the average home in London, is about to need to earn an extra £30k per year, just to afford mortgage interest rates going from 2% to 6%. Those numbers are totally horrific.
Having interest rates at virtually 0% for a generation has just been storing up this problem. When interst rates are basically free money, it enables people to borrow more, so price go up, rinse and repeat for 15 years, you then get to a stage where million quid homes are unremarkable properties.
Then interest rates return to historic norms (remember under Blair they were 5% pretty much throughout) & boom people can't earn enough to fund them.
I suspect a lot of the problem was (and it's going to take a long time to unwind) was BTLers looking at the pitiful saving returns and investing in a few BTL properties instead where they overpaid because the rent was easily enough (regardless of how much over the odds they paid) to pay the interest on a 2% mortgage.
Things are very different now but we need to wait 12-18 months to see the market fallout before we know the reality of the market.
The adjustment period, while mortgages are expensive, but so are houses, and landlords exiting the market drive up rents, are going to be horrific.
I can see a state in 5 years’ time, where property prices have dropped 30-40% in real terms, more social housing has been built, and investors have mostly sold up. That will be a much better place, but it’s going to be one hell of a ride between here and there.
The cat among the pigeons, is a lot of institutional wealth buying up property in the downturn, in an attempt to prop up prices. If that continues, there will need to be an awful lot of housebuilding in the next few years.
Institutions are also heavily invested in the big city commercial properties and leasing are coming up for renewals, with hybrid work etc, that is also another area there could be a big shit show.
Commercial property is a whole other kettle of fish! Landlords are already preferring to leave property empty, rather than rent at lower rates and take the hit on valuation that results. At some point, that correction has to happen, and it’s going to be a big correction, especially at the expensive end of the market. Sensible commercial landlords will be working out which properties can most easily be converted to residential use. I suspect the population of the City of London is about to explode.
Perhaps we can put lots of illegal migrants up in the City of London if it is about to have lots of empty properties and as the government is shifting from putting them up in provincial hotels? After all the City of London district area voted overwhelmingly Remain, clearly loves immigration and has lots of services available to support them
NOELREPORTS 🇪🇺 🇺🇦 @NOELreports · 1h Wagner could lead attack on Kyiv from Belarus, British General Dannatt warns, speaking to Sky News
"If he has kept an effective fighting force around him then he presents a threat again to the Ukrainian flank closest to Kyiv where it all began," he said
Yes, an attempt to turn a moment of high weakness for Putin into uncertainty and distraction for Ukraine - all he has to do is sit there and they have to worry, since even if he lacked effective fighting force we know he will send human waves in to eat up resources, so they cannot discount it.
Wagner lost the 'human waves' when the convict well ran dry.
Belarus has prisons to tap.
Its a much, much smaller country than Russia.
True, but he only needs enough forces to make Ukraine need to prepare just in case he does something nuts.
But they wouldn't be elsewhere.
Whatever way its looked at Wagner is now much less of a threat to Ukraine than it was a week ago.
If Wagner is absorbed into the regular army, then it is pretty certain that they won’t make the Russian Army move up from third best army in Ukraine to second.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
One of things that baffle me is the hostility to the possibility of paying even small amounts of inheritance tax at some future date compared with the lack of concern about paying many hundreds in income tax and NI every month through PAYE.
IHT is one of the things I’ve moved steadily leftwards on over the years.
Frankly, for a hell of a lot of people in this country it would be a nice problem to have.
How many estates actually pay any IHT?
The threshold for IHT is £325k, the average UK house price is now £372,812
The meaning of "average" is important here. "Arithmetic mean" (which is inflated by a long tail of mansions), "median" (the one in the middle) or "mode" (the one that occurs most often)?
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
The average property price in London is now over £650k at £737,512
So, someone with a 90% mortgage on an *average* home in London, is looking at an extra £1,500 *per month* in repayments. That’s £18,000 per year, which requires £30k in income assuming 40% marginal income tax.
Someone in the average home in London, is about to need to earn an extra £30k per year, just to afford mortgage interest rates going from 2% to 6%. Those numbers are totally horrific.
Having interest rates at virtually 0% for a generation has just been storing up this problem. When interst rates are basically free money, it enables people to borrow more, so price go up, rinse and repeat for 15 years, you then get to a stage where million quid homes are unremarkable properties.
Then interest rates return to historic norms (remember under Blair they were 5% pretty much throughout) & boom people can't earn enough to fund them.
I suspect a lot of the problem was (and it's going to take a long time to unwind) was BTLers looking at the pitiful saving returns and investing in a few BTL properties instead where they overpaid because the rent was easily enough (regardless of how much over the odds they paid) to pay the interest on a 2% mortgage.
Things are very different now but we need to wait 12-18 months to see the market fallout before we know the reality of the market.
The adjustment period, while mortgages are expensive, but so are houses, and landlords exiting the market drive up rents, are going to be horrific.
I can see a state in 5 years’ time, where property prices have dropped 30-40% in real terms, more social housing has been built, and investors have mostly sold up. That will be a much better place, but it’s going to be one hell of a ride between here and there.
The cat among the pigeons, is a lot of institutional wealth buying up property in the downturn, in an attempt to prop up prices. If that continues, there will need to be an awful lot of housebuilding in the next few years.
Institutions are also heavily invested in the big city commercial properties and leasing are coming up for renewals, with hybrid work etc, that is also another area there could be a big shit show.
Commercial property is a whole other kettle of fish! Landlords are already preferring to leave property empty, rather than rent at lower rates and take the hit on valuation that results. At some point, that correction has to happen, and it’s going to be a big correction, especially at the expensive end of the market. Sensible commercial landlords will be working out which properties can most easily be converted to residential use. I suspect the population of the City of London is about to explode.
Except how many unwanted office buildings are going to be suitable to conversion in the first place? Can then buildings be retrofitted to create dozens of self-contained apartments, each with its own separate entrance, its own separate power and water supply, its own kitchen, bathroom, drainage? Are the water and sewerage systems to which all these buildings are connected able to cope with the extra demand?
It might not be possible to convert half these unwanted properties successfully - and an incoming Labour Government (because the Conservatives sure as hell won't do it) is going to have to make sure that impractical and unsuitable conversions are vetoed by planning regulations. We must ensure that prospective buyers and tenants are protected from having shoddy and possibly dangerous properties marketed to them for a fortune, merely in order to line the pockets of rapacious developers who got caught out when the commercial market went tits up.
'The right-on white liberals of Hamtramck, Michigan, were delighted by the symbolism when the town elected an all-Muslim council — the first in America. They are slightly less elated since the council banned the LGBT flag from public buildings and Muslim supporters tweeted their glee about living in a “fagless city”.
The dejected white liberal former mayor said: “There’s a sense of betrayal. We supported you when you were threatened, and now our rights are threatened and you’re the one doing the threatening.”'
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
The average property price in London is now over £650k at £737,512
So, someone with a 90% mortgage on an *average* home in London, is looking at an extra £1,500 *per month* in repayments. That’s £18,000 per year, which requires £30k in income assuming 40% marginal income tax.
Someone in the average home in London, is about to need to earn an extra £30k per year, just to afford mortgage interest rates going from 2% to 6%. Those numbers are totally horrific.
Having interest rates at virtually 0% for a generation has just been storing up this problem. When interst rates are basically free money, it enables people to borrow more, so price go up, rinse and repeat for 15 years, you then get to a stage where million quid homes are unremarkable properties.
Then interest rates return to historic norms (remember under Blair they were 5% pretty much throughout) & boom people can't earn enough to fund them.
I suspect a lot of the problem was (and it's going to take a long time to unwind) was BTLers looking at the pitiful saving returns and investing in a few BTL properties instead where they overpaid because the rent was easily enough (regardless of how much over the odds they paid) to pay the interest on a 2% mortgage.
Things are very different now but we need to wait 12-18 months to see the market fallout before we know the reality of the market.
The adjustment period, while mortgages are expensive, but so are houses, and landlords exiting the market drive up rents, are going to be horrific.
I can see a state in 5 years’ time, where property prices have dropped 30-40% in real terms, more social housing has been built, and investors have mostly sold up. That will be a much better place, but it’s going to be one hell of a ride between here and there.
The cat among the pigeons, is a lot of institutional wealth buying up property in the downturn, in an attempt to prop up prices. If that continues, there will need to be an awful lot of housebuilding in the next few years.
Institutions are also heavily invested in the big city commercial properties and leasing are coming up for renewals, with hybrid work etc, that is also another area there could be a big shit show.
Commercial property is a whole other kettle of fish! Landlords are already preferring to leave property empty, rather than rent at lower rates and take the hit on valuation that results. At some point, that correction has to happen, and it’s going to be a big correction, especially at the expensive end of the market. Sensible commercial landlords will be working out which properties can most easily be converted to residential use. I suspect the population of the City of London is about to explode.
My understanding that in many cases it is non-trivial (sometimes impossible) and very expensive to make such conversions, even before considering overcoming whatever red tape there is.
Yes, it’s often way more difficult than you think it would be. Utilities and services often need to be removed and re-designed from scratch.
An office block doesn’t need a 1,000t water tank on the roof to allow everyone a shower between 6am and 8am, it only needs than one a/c setup per floor, and no-one cares if windows don’t open.
The Bank of England, with the Treasury’s blessing, unleashed £450bn of QE during 18 months of lockdown – more than during the previous decade, a major cause of current price pressure.
Meanwhile, for complicated reasons I went to church this morning. Small village, fewer than 10 people in the congregation.
Some observations:
The vicar managed to name check three other religions, all for derogatory reasons (Jews, Brahmins, Muslims), he bewailed the fact that Christians can't wear crucifixes to work when Muslims can wear hijabs, and said that Jesus didn't come to bring peace and explained why this was.
So an interesting encounter with parochial muscular Christianity in this country.
Did you speak up or let it go?
As mentioned I let it go. I was a guest and pondered but eventually decided against. No doubt another tick in the religious debit column.
Not your PB persona then. I wonder which is the real Captain Topping. Both, I suppose. People can be incredibly complex. No, people *are* incredibly complex. One of the reasons I'm a GAI skeptic. Chances of building a 'you' that on one day throws its weight around on a discussion site, picking fights, joining fights, starting them if there isn't one, then the next day goes to church and sits there quiet as a mouse through the vicar's long and dodgy sermon? ... close to zero imo.
Yeah I thought I'd be a bit of a dick if I marched into the church as a guest and started shouting the odds. Leave them to it was my thought.
But I respect you if you would have chosen the bit of a dick route.
Then add National Insurance to unearned income, while increasing income tax allowances. And, scrap the triple lock.
50% of the population will inherit substantial amounts, but work should pay for the 50% who will not inherit such sums.
I'm 56 and will likely inherit a lot of money over the next decade, but what use is to me now?
It is down to corporations to increase pay for those in the bottom 50% of earners, beyond ensuring a reasonable minimum wage that is not the role of government.
Yes government can cut tax for lower earners and put some funds to subsidise apprenticeships and skills training to make workers more productive and higher paid buy it is corporations who are responsible for making their profits and distributing them fairly amongst their workforce
There is a lot of money available to subsidize apprenticeships - the issue is that a lot of companies don't wish to invest the time and money training people up because another firm will instantly grab the trained workers.
For instance Hitachi no longer train welders because as soon as they do Bombardier and Siemens offer them more money to leave...
Yet BA still trains pilots, because they have a training bond scheme. We’ll train you on plane type X, at a cost of £25k, but you need to work for us for three years afterwards.
Bombardier and Siemens also train apprentices, some of whom will go to work for Hitachi.
Not sure which Bombardier it is because they sold their rail division to Alstom in 2021. Litchurch Lane and all the depots are now part of the Alstom empire.
Of course Hitachi could simply make it worth their while to stay rather than run up,the white flag.
@HYUFD's understanding of the ERM crisis is completely upside down. The interest rate rises on Black Wednesday were done to defend the exchange rate band we had committed to, and when that failed, we withdrew and cut rates.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
The average property price in London is now over £650k at £737,512
So, someone with a 90% mortgage on an *average* home in London, is looking at an extra £1,500 *per month* in repayments. That’s £18,000 per year, which requires £30k in income assuming 40% marginal income tax.
Someone in the average home in London, is about to need to earn an extra £30k per year, just to afford mortgage interest rates going from 2% to 6%. Those numbers are totally horrific.
Having interest rates at virtually 0% for a generation has just been storing up this problem. When interst rates are basically free money, it enables people to borrow more, so price go up, rinse and repeat for 15 years, you then get to a stage where million quid homes are unremarkable properties.
Then interest rates return to historic norms (remember under Blair they were 5% pretty much throughout) & boom people can't earn enough to fund them.
I suspect a lot of the problem was (and it's going to take a long time to unwind) was BTLers looking at the pitiful saving returns and investing in a few BTL properties instead where they overpaid because the rent was easily enough (regardless of how much over the odds they paid) to pay the interest on a 2% mortgage.
Things are very different now but we need to wait 12-18 months to see the market fallout before we know the reality of the market.
The adjustment period, while mortgages are expensive, but so are houses, and landlords exiting the market drive up rents, are going to be horrific.
I can see a state in 5 years’ time, where property prices have dropped 30-40% in real terms, more social housing has been built, and investors have mostly sold up. That will be a much better place, but it’s going to be one hell of a ride between here and there.
The cat among the pigeons, is a lot of institutional wealth buying up property in the downturn, in an attempt to prop up prices. If that continues, there will need to be an awful lot of housebuilding in the next few years.
Institutions are also heavily invested in the big city commercial properties and leasing are coming up for renewals, with hybrid work etc, that is also another area there could be a big shit show.
Commercial property is a whole other kettle of fish! Landlords are already preferring to leave property empty, rather than rent at lower rates and take the hit on valuation that results. At some point, that correction has to happen, and it’s going to be a big correction, especially at the expensive end of the market. Sensible commercial landlords will be working out which properties can most easily be converted to residential use. I suspect the population of the City of London is about to explode.
My understanding that in many cases it is non-trivial (sometimes impossible) and very expensive to make such conversions, even before considering overcoming whatever red tape there is.
Yes, it’s often way more difficult than you think it would be. Utilities and services often need to be removed and re-designed from scratch.
An office block doesn’t need a 1,000t water tank on the roof to allow everyone a shower between 6am and 8am, it only needs than one a/c setup per floor, and no-one cares if windows don’t open.
A full half an hour on Dutch radio this morning about the travails of and prospects for the SNP. In Dutch but with all the interviews carried in English without translation, so confident are they in their listeners' language skills.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
The average property price in London is now over £650k at £737,512
So, someone with a 90% mortgage on an *average* home in London, is looking at an extra £1,500 *per month* in repayments. That’s £18,000 per year, which requires £30k in income assuming 40% marginal income tax.
Someone in the average home in London, is about to need to earn an extra £30k per year, just to afford mortgage interest rates going from 2% to 6%. Those numbers are totally horrific.
My take on this is that the government won't help people in this position. They aren't going to help rich people with high incomes who will be able to find somewhere to live, they will just help people at risk of ending up in the homeless queue.
If you think about London... they all vote Labour anyway. And in the home counties, most tory supporters have paid off their mortgages.
Whenever this comes up there is a consensus of opinion that high earning professionals are politically insignificant, there is little support for their causes (the 100k marginal tax thing, private school fees). People with expensive houses and large mortgages are in for a very difficult few years.
Private schools are an interesting one. There’s a lot of private schools in the Home Counties, mostly charging day fees in the £10k-£12k range. So many people are going to have to make the choice between downsizing the house or paying the school fees, with the resultant increase in pressure on state schools in these areas.
"There’s a mortgage catastrophe coming – and it will prove Liz Truss right The ‘sensibles’ believed higher taxes would stop interest rate hikes. They were calamitously wrong Allister Heath"
Wow. Something's clearly going on here. But whether it's the genuine early rumblings of a counter-revolution, or the British Right is teetering on the edge of some kind of group psychosis I cannot tell.
A full half an hour on Dutch radio this morning about the travails of and prospects for the SNP. In Dutch but with all the interviews carried in English without translation, so confident are they in their listeners' language skills.
The interviewees should have trolled them by using lots of Scots dialect.
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
The average property price in London is now over £650k at £737,512
So, someone with a 90% mortgage on an *average* home in London, is looking at an extra £1,500 *per month* in repayments. That’s £18,000 per year, which requires £30k in income assuming 40% marginal income tax.
Someone in the average home in London, is about to need to earn an extra £30k per year, just to afford mortgage interest rates going from 2% to 6%. Those numbers are totally horrific.
My take on this is that the government won't help people in this position. They aren't going to help rich people with high incomes who will be able to find somewhere to live, they will just help people at risk of ending up in the homeless queue.
If you think about London... they all vote Labour anyway. And in the home counties, most tory supporters have paid off their mortgages.
Whenever this comes up there is a consensus of opinion that high earning professionals are politically insignificant, there is little support for their causes (the 100k marginal tax thing, private school fees). People with expensive houses and large mortgages are in for a very difficult few years.
A good post. My view (from outside London) is too many allowed themselves to be caught in the upsizing trend when the Covid property price boom kicked off. Get yourself that 5 bed detached with room for a garden office, everyone is doing it.
Clearly the full impact of the rate rises won’t be felt yet given most probably fixed for 5 years, but there will be a class of professional people who made very big errors in being tempted by the max they were told they could borrow and failing to keep a good LTV. I am not tremendously convinced that any help will be on the way for that particular type of scenario.
I think that there is a category of people in London who acquired large properties on interest only mortgages. A 400k mortgage on 2% interest rates is £665 per month - happy days. If it is now 7% then it is now £2300 per month, which is probably similar to what it costs to rent the same property. So it just means that the party is over and they have to cut back on their expenditure dramatically but it is probably not the end of the world. In a lot of ways they had a massively advantageous position to start with, being able to live in London for a trivial amount each month.
Some people in this position will have stretched themselves too far and will be in deep trouble but I don't expect them to be a significant number
WRT IHT, it was certainly a mistake to push up main residence relief to £1m. But, we are where we are.
I'd scrap the exemptions for business property relief, farmland, woodland, works of art, country houses etc., and end the practice whereby life assurance and pensions can be placed in trust for named individuals, rather than forming part of the estate. All of those allowances are tax shelters, which inflate asset prices for that very reason.
No it wasn't, without that IHT main residence relief policy announced at the 2007 Tory conference by Osborne there would have been no Tory poll bounce post conference and Brown would have called a snap general election in late 2007 and probably won a small majority. Cameron may even then have been replaced as Conservative leader by David Davis.
It was not introduced by Osborne until 2015. What you're thinking of is the transferable nil rate band (which only reflected good IHT planning in the first place). There was never any need to to increase main residence relief to £1m. An allowance of £650,000 was quite enough to inherit a good sum.
One of things that baffle me is the hostility to the possibility of paying even small amounts of inheritance tax at some future date compared with the lack of concern about paying many hundreds in income tax and NI every month through PAYE.
IHT is one of the things I’ve moved steadily leftwards on over the years.
Frankly, for a hell of a lot of people in this country it would be a nice problem to have.
How many estates actually pay any IHT?
The threshold for IHT is £325k, the average UK house price is now £372,812
The meaning of "average" is important here. "Arithmetic mean" (which is inflated by a long tail of mansions), "median" (the one in the middle) or "mode" (the one that occurs most often)?
I very much doubt that is the mode price!
The modal price is probably zero as a result of simple transfers of ownership.
Reform on 10% now just 2% off of UKIP's voteshare in 2015, Farage may be tempted to return to lead them if that becomes consistent.
However plenty of time for Sunak and Hunt to win back voters from Reform with tax cuts and reductions in immigration
Except in reality... neither of those works, does it?
There is less than no money. So tax cuts are out of the question- the frozen thresholds means that taxes are going up, if anything. And immigration is the only thing keeping health, social care and the economy moving.
So what does Rishi do?
If inflation falls through the government's tight control of spending then that would allow for a cut in the basic rate especially, perhaps promise of raising the IHT threshold to £1 million for all estates if the Tories are re elected.
Economic migrants are certainly not all working in the NHS and migration remains a key concern for Tory to RefUK swing voters
If strawberry plants achieve sentience and send intergalactic starships to the Magellanic Clouds, and if Boris Johnson solves the P versus NP problem, the Tories might be re-elected.
Edit: ... and in any case most estates are 1m free of IHT, if they are of the Tory-approved nuclear family un-woke variety. So why bother changing?
Only the main property of married couples via transfer, not assets beyond the main property or for children of divorced couples or where one died before Osborne's tax reform.
The IHT threshold is still £325k, it should be raised to £1 million in my view and that should be in the Tory manifesto next year as a promise if they are re elected
The practical limit is 1m for approved politically correct families as far as most people realise - IHT is only ever an issue with the second death of the married couple.
£1M per person woiuld be absolutely outrageous and a further kick in the teeth of working people and a further sign that Tories and their elderly voters are parasitic leeches on society.
Only a whinging far left socialist like you would think removing decent middle class families out of IHT whether the parents are married or not and for all assets not just the main residence and leaving it only for the very rich was somehow 'outrageous.'
No that’s not true. I am a long way from being a far left socialist (although I like the occasional whinge) and I think capital is not taxed nearly enough and income, specifically earned income, far too much. We need to address this balance and cutting IHT is a step in the wrong direction.
If you want to tax wealth and capital far more and income less then you are a Liberal ideogically not a Conservative Tory really even if still not a Socialist (who would want to tax capital and income more to fund an expansion of the welfare state and public sector)
But, but I don’t wear sandals, even in this heat.
Sometimes @HYUFD , you should think about the size of tent you want your party to pitch. Right now it’s looking smaller than most of those at Glasto.
You are an Orange Book LD not a Tory.
63% want to raise the IHT threshold. 48% even want to scrap IHT completely, far higher than the current Tory poll rating
I think we need to tax inheritance properly to help out with the national debt. So no more transfer of the IHT tax free threshold to the surviving partner's estate. No more £1m threshold for those with children
Get rid of all the exemptions like 'gifts out of income'
To be clear I support IHT free transfers between the widowed spouse/civil partnership relationship etc but beyond the inheritors need to pay.
And let's make it 50% on anything over £200,000
👍👍👍
I'd simplify it, no tax on transfers between spouses, but every penny of inheritance gets taxed the same as money people have worked for gets taxed, including of course National Insurance.
Earned income should not be taxed less than unearned income.
Why should savers be penalised?
Person A works hard all their life and on retirement blows 3/4 of his savings on wine, women & song (the rest he wastes). His only child gets no inheritance.
Person B works hard all his life and on retirement lives modestly and leaves 1/2 his savings to his only child.
Why should the government want to discourage thriftiness and saving?
Saving isn't some unalloyed good. If everyone is thrifty all the time, the economy grinds to a halt. We need people to spend because spending creates jobs.
It's all very well saving and having your money used to invest, but investments are a bet on future spending. Spending is what drives the economy.
Besides, what's with the "penalising savers" thing?
The person who did the saving isn't getting taxed in any meaningful way, because they have gone to a place where there is no tax. (At least we assume that's the case. Maybe Hell is an eternal self assessment form.)
The people who end up with less money because of inheritance tax are the inheritors, who have generally neither saved, toiled nor spun for what they receive. That's not to be begrudged, but a world where a person's life chances depend more on inheritance and less on what they do is not a good one. You can't abolish the inheritance effect, but it's not really something to encourage, I reckon.
If your starting point is that taxes are a necessary unpleasantness to pay for a good society, then tax paid when you receive an inheritance is probably one of the less objectionable ones.
As I pointed out in the last thread for the average person unless they are in the top 10% or especially top 1% of earners capitalism is not doing much for them in terms of wage rises. House prices and capital in property and savings and shares have generally risen much more this century than average earnings.
So if the state confiscates all or most assets on the death of their owner which would have been inherited otherwise and reduces accumulation of wealth then support for capitalism beyond the top 10% of earners in the private sector will fall even further
The trouble with asset wealth, especially locked up in bricks and mortar, is you can't spend it, whereas a pay rise can pay for a new car which employs car workers or dining out which employs restaurant workers and Deliveroo riders. That is capitalism.
And capitalism and pay rises aren't delivering much for 90% of workers now, whereas assets and savings are delivering more for the average person
Capitalism is delivering for workers. We're caught in a cycle of inflation and bad policy the now, but capitalism is still good. What we're doing as a country now isn't the only way to do capitalism. We just need to adjust course, not abandon ship.
Exclude government completely and just leave the economy to the market and unless you are an investment banker, FTSE 100 company ceo or director, tech executive or Premier League footballer capitalism isn't doing a great deal for you now. For most workers their pay is rising well below inflation. At least if they own a property that still likely has a high value even if falling a bit and their savings will be boosted by rising interest rates
I'm curious to know what your solution is.
Knowing you, it's probably feudalism. It is, isn't it?
Inheritance in part and feudalism was not all bad, most peasants had a hut and a smallholding for food. There was more stability and less anxiety even if life expectancy was lower and if the work was hard in the fields it was normally there.
There was a church and inn in almost every village and town (many villages no longer even have a pub or church with services each Sunday)
If I walked across the village green to St James's church at 1100 hours I would be in a congregation of about half a dozen. As a capitalist you have to agree that church is not economically viable- close it down, deconsecrate and sell it off for housing!
No, the congregation's reward regardless of size will be eternal life with Christ who managed with just 12 followers originally
It happened to my childhood church. And it had a beautiful bell tower. The CoE were quite happy to offload that ironically during a time of massive population increase. Oh and they sold off the bells.
Comments
Almost always involving other people rather than themselves.
Even the 10% rate they fell too was still higher than the current UK interest rate level, even despite recent rises to 5% most recently
In October 2022 the Tories were projected to win less than 50 seats.
Fortunately as more Tory MPs voted for Sunak than Truss even last summer they won't succeed, party members don't have a say on any VONC in Rishi either
@NOELreports
·
1h
Wagner could lead attack on Kyiv from Belarus, British General Dannatt warns, speaking to Sky News
"If he has kept an effective fighting force around him then he presents a threat again to the Ukrainian flank closest to Kyiv where it all began," he said
1) You need to spend money *now*, to save money over years.
So is political terms
“We need to spend billions now on IT and management, so that services will be massively improved 2 elections from now.”
In permanent staff terms
“We need to spend billions *now*. Then, in a few years time you will have less people to manage. And a fair number of them will be earning more than you, the managers. And they won’t be biddable serfs, either”
Then interest rates return to historic norms (remember under Blair they were 5% pretty much throughout) & boom regular people can't earn enough to fund them.
twin B will have the problem of paying back her student loans...
But my point was that it's perfectly possible for the money to bypass a generation and go to the generation that doesn't need it. Except a lot of people in the 50s/60s are discovering that their pensions are going to give them sod all in the future so they need the money and can't let it skip a generation..
£650,000 is the transferable nil rate band. £350,000 the transferable allowance for main residences.
Which then proceeded to fall to below 7% by the end of 1992.
And the further still in 1993.
The big and rapid rise in interest rates happened in 1988 and 1989 and helped bring Thatcher down.
Things are very different now but we need to wait 12-18 months to see the market fallout before we know the reality of the market.
How many estates actually pay any IHT?
It might be some hangover from serfdom or from reading too much Jane Austen.
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/news/house-price-index/
Trump: Whatever documents a President decides to take with him, he has the absolute right to take them. He has the absolute right to keep them or he can give them back.. that’s the law
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1672763070421106695
I can see a state in 5 years’ time, where property prices have dropped 30-40% in real terms, more social housing has been built, and investors have mostly sold up. That will be a much better place, but it’s going to be one hell of a ride between here and there.
The cat among the pigeons, is a lot of institutional wealth buying up property in the downturn, in an attempt to prop up prices. If that continues, there will need to be an awful lot of housebuilding in the next few years.
https://twitter.com/EuromaidanPress/status/1672652831436808199
Russian military-linked channel Fighterbomber lists Wagner-inflicted losses of the Russian air force:
🔹3 х Mi-8MTPR [EW helicopters]
🔹1 х Mi-8
🔹1 х Ka-52
🔹1 х Mi-35
🔹1 х Il-18 VZPU [airborne secure control point aircraft]
Result, seven years after the GFC. we lived mortgage and debt free in a renovated house. I bet we weren't the only ones who used low interest rates to clear debts and accumulate and improve the property asset. Our property is finished to a standard which, even in East Ham, will attract buyers and that's the case generally. People present properties to a higher standard than before and want that reflected in asking prices.
Anyway, there are an awful lot of people who are going to be forced to renew their mortgages at unaffordable repayment levels over the next year or two, with millions more praying that interest rates come back down again before they have to do likewise. If, say, 5% does turn out to be the new normal, however, then what? Businesses aren't going to be jacking up wages like many are at the moment as soon as inflation is brought under control. The existing mortgage debtors thus can't look for their pain to be inflated away, and new entrants will be locked out of the market by the unaffordable costs of repayment.
I suspect that this all ends in a significant collapse in property prices, and a lot of existing borrowers either being bankrupted or ending up as a new generation of mortgage prisoners: shunted onto interest-only payments by the banks, and unable ever to move because of negative equity.
However, Labour in Government do need to sell a sensible post Brexit arrangement with the EU as a third party. This could be EEA, or Single Market or Norway plus, but it has to include frictionless trade and FOM, but we still retain our "sovereignty", whatever that means.
I despise referenda, but Cameron set the precedent. So any significant change requires a referendum.. if they can't sell BINO now, when can they sell it?
The Il-18, in particular, is going to be a real pain to replace. IIRC there are only a handful of these.
The Russian AF has already has problems getting enough serviceable aircraft into theatre, and with enough experienced crews to operate them. There’s not going to be many spares for that Il-18 crew.
https://youtu.be/_0dgZwp5KMo?t=303
If you think about London... they all vote Labour anyway. And in the home counties, most tory supporters have paid off their mortgages.
Whenever this comes up there is a consensus of opinion that high earning professionals are politically insignificant, there is little support for their causes (the 100k marginal tax thing, private school fees). People with expensive houses and large mortgages are in for a very difficult few years.
21h
Elon Musk Wealth
2012: $2 billion
2023: $234.3 billion
Mark Zuckerberg Wealth
2009: $2 billion
2023: $105 billion
Federal Minimum Wage
2009: $7.25
2023: $7.25
The cage match we should pay attention to is the one the billionaire class is waging against the working class.
https://twitter.com/GunnelsWarren/status/1672619461688401925
https://twitter.com/BBCWorld/status/1671806217721618433
Jesus: God doesn't want you spend all your time being afraid of hell, or praising His name. God wants you to spend your time helping others, and living a good, happy life. That's how you live for Him.
His church services don't follow the limited praising of the name though.
The ‘sensibles’ believed higher taxes would stop interest rate hikes. They were calamitously wrong
Allister Heath"
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/06/14/truss-right-looming-british-mortgage-catastrophe-proves-it/
Whatever way its looked at Wagner is now much less of a threat to Ukraine than it was a week ago.
IMHO the UK red lines are going to be FoM (of people), and dynamic alignment (as opposed to equivalence) of standards.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2023/06/25/bank-england-must-hold-fire-interest-rate-rises/
The subterfuge really is the key in this documents case, since as you note it makes it hard to argue he did not know what he was doing, and even if he disagrees with the DOJ's interpretation of the law, that doesn't mean you can just ignore or frustrate subpoenas and the like.
Now we're laughing at the Tory loons.
Unfortunately. In their case it ain't funny.
So zero chance of her supporters managing to win a VONC to topple Sunak and replace him, Sunak of course received 197 Tory MPs backing him last autumn when he became PM
Even if one goes past you and you turn your nose up at it, it'll come back round again at some point...
Lower taxes and higher spending would have led to a lower sterling rate, more economic activity, higher inflation - pay, consumer price, property price.
Then what happens ?
Training and refitting units have always been used to guard low risk areas.
Work for us for three years or pay us the cost of the course if you leave before then.
[ducks]
The Russian army is only fighting in the South and East because it lacks the capacity to maintain another front. Diverting substantial resources to Belarus to prepare to re-invade from there would merely strip the forces already struggling to hold the Ukrainians back, and likely result in the loss of the territories Russia already controls. Besides which, IANAE but I'd imagine that Kyiv at least is surrounded by many layers of concentric defences after its narrow escape in 2022, and would therefore require many fewer troops to hold than Russia would need to deploy to attempt a capture.
Russia splitting its already degraded forces in a vain effort to force Ukraine to do likewise is a futile strategy and it won't work.
Clearly the full impact of the rate rises won’t be felt yet given most probably fixed for 5 years, but there will be a class of professional people who made very big errors in being tempted by the max they were told they could borrow and failing to keep a good LTV. I am not tremendously convinced that any help will be on the way for that particular type of scenario.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w17_9VIqKLk&t=1s
And the lack of logistics via Belarus.
If the Russian could create even *a threat* via Belarus, they would have done so, a long time back.
1) Property price inflation
2) The trade deficit
The UK really does have little to show for the £895bn total QE.
It might not be possible to convert half these unwanted properties successfully - and an incoming Labour Government (because the Conservatives sure as hell won't do it) is going to have to make sure that impractical and unsuitable conversions are vetoed by planning regulations. We must ensure that prospective buyers and tenants are protected from having shoddy and possibly dangerous properties marketed to them for a fortune, merely in order to line the pockets of rapacious developers who got caught out when the commercial market went tits up.
The dejected white liberal former mayor said: “There’s a sense of betrayal. We supported you when you were threatened, and now our rights are threatened and you’re the one doing the threatening.”'
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/great-vegan-rollout-halted-salty-sugary-ultra-processed-tracks-comment-rh3fjqg3k
An office block doesn’t need a 1,000t water tank on the roof to allow everyone a shower between 6am and 8am, it only needs than one a/c setup per floor, and no-one cares if windows don’t open.
But I respect you if you would have chosen the bit of a dick route.
Of course Hitachi could simply make it worth their while to stay rather than run up,the white flag.
Some people in this position will have stretched themselves too far and will be in deep trouble but I don't expect them to be a significant number
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/St_Mary's_Church,_Wythall