Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
If must have taxes - and sadly I don't really see any alternative - then I prefer taxes which discourage the inefficient use of scarce resources.
I really don't like taxes that prevent the market from clearing*: like stamp duty.
Gently discouraging people from having homes larger than they actually need is probably a net benefit. (Are there losers? Sure there are. But the winners in terms of greater housing availability are surely more than the losers.)
* Yes, I know the market always clears.
But how does CGT on primary residence encourage older people to downsize? Surely it does the opposite as they'll just lock in and pass their primary residence on tax free up to £1m.
Old people very rarely actually do downsize, unless its for health reasons. People without a mortgage are generally settled and happy in their homes and don't want to move.
We should simply be building lots more family homes for people to move into, rather than magically expecting old people to uproot their lives by downsizing which doesn't happen, so young people have no actual homes to move into.
Property taxes are about as unpopular as they come. So of course Reeves is going to wade into it.
Imposing CGT or a sale levy will kill liquidity, hence stopping boomers selling the family home, hence stopping young couples starting a family from buying the bigger home, hence blocking people from buying starter homes.
An illiquid housing market is exactly what we need to avoid. There need to be fewer property taxes, not more.
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
The national property tax proposed is for houses over £500k and is a replacement for stamp duty.
The original document says that only houses under £500K would pay the local tax (ie council tax) if I have understood it right
Lol 0.54% of £500,000 is currently less than my council tax and my property isn't worth £500,000. This would lead to some bizarre situations in Nottinghamshire.
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
If must have taxes - and sadly I don't really see any alternative - then I prefer taxes which discourage the inefficient use of scarce resources.
I really don't like taxes that prevent the market from clearing*: like stamp duty.
Gently discouraging people from having homes larger than they actually need is probably a net benefit. (Are there losers? Sure there are. But the winners in terms of greater housing availability are surely more than the losers.)
* Yes, I know the market always clears.
But how does CGT on primary residence encourage older people to downsize? Surely it does the opposite as they'll just lock in and pass their primary residence on tax free up to £1m.
Old people very rarely actually do downsize, unless its for health reasons. People without a mortgage are generally settled and happy in their homes and don't want to move.
We should simply be building lots more family homes for people to move into, rather than magically expecting old people to uproot their lives by downsizing which doesn't happen, so young people have no actual homes to move into.
What on earth is Reeves thinking with all these ridiculous taxation ideas for housing; seemingly on top of council tax
The best thing to do is scrap Council Tax, scrap Stamp Duty and replace with a simple, percentage tax on property values.
I expect however that she'll attempt to introduce a new tax without abolishing either Council Tax or Stamp Duty, which would be the worst thing to do.
Erm, that's the proposal. Maybe not a simple, single % but otherwise what you ask:
"First, the stamp duty land tax should be replaced with a national proportional property tax, levied on house values above £500,000. This rate would be set by central government. An annual rate of 0.54%, with a 0.278% supplement on values over £1m would raise the same amount as stamp duty."
"Second, council tax should be replaced with a local proportional property tax, levied on house values up to £500,000 with a minimum annual payment of £800. The rate would be set by local authorities. A rate of 0.44% would raise the same amount of revenue as council tax."
(original policy document)
That's the original proposal, which is a good one. Please give me any link that says this is what Reeves is proposing, which is a different matter.
I won't hold my breath on Reeves doing the right thing, or count any chickens before they're hatched.
A rather gruesome sight in our garden: amid a heap of feathers a pigeon's body with a decapitated head and no head to be found. No sign of the corpse having been eaten. Could it be a fox?
Probably - our garden camera caught a fox with a magpie firmly in its mouth
Lot of kite flying on property taxes in the press today clearly. Looks like different Treasury officials have been briefing the Guardian & the Times on the various policies they want to stab in the back early.
Rachel Reeves is considering hitting the owners of high-value properties with capital gains tax when they sell their homes
The chancellor is considering using the Autumn Budget to end the current exemption from capital gains tax that people enjoy when they sell their 'primary' residence
Under the plans the current exemption from capital gains tax, known as private residence relief, would come to an end for properties above a certain threshold
Higher-rate taxpayers would pay 24% of any gain they make from the increase in the value of their properties while basic rate taxpayers would have to pay 18%
Yeah, no one would sell, in the hope that Labour get kicked out and it changes back next election. Not gonna work
Yup it will completely destroy any liquidity in the housing market because older people in mid sized houses will refuse to sell, why pay 24% CGT when they can pass up £1m on tax free.
Honestly, I can't see it happening anyway, this is just kite flying. A tax like this would completely destroy Labour's chances for a generation. Property taxes always go down very, very poorly with voters.
If Labour are really stuck for money perhaps they could consider not giving Mauritius several billion to take chunks of Britain, plus five billion a year on asylum seekers, plus tens of billions on welfare for foreigners, and on and on
But they won't do that because, reasons, human rights, traitors. This stuff is going to see them ANNIHILATED at the next GE
What on earth is Reeves thinking with all these ridiculous taxation ideas for housing; seemingly on top of council tax
The best thing to do is scrap Council Tax, scrap Stamp Duty and replace with a simple, percentage tax on property values.
I expect however that she'll attempt to introduce a new tax without abolishing either Council Tax or Stamp Duty, which would be the worst thing to do.
Indeed.
Just make sure you don't do the retarded California thing and base it all on last transacion price, which means my friend Joe has a property tax bill about 10% of mine, despite living in a mansion in one of the most expensive parts of LA.
Which also discourages downsizing, one of my many aunts/uncles bought a very large house in LA in 1970 something, they've owned it ever since, it even survived the recent fires. They now have no kids living there, out of the three they have only one lives within driving distance. One has moved to the UK permanently and the other lives in Florida. They don't get many visitors and yet they have probably 7 or 8 bedrooms (at least that's what I remember), a swimming pool, tennis court etc... for just the two of them. The purchase price of their house was peanuts in the 70s, the annual property tax is basically nothing for them.
What on earth is Reeves thinking with all these ridiculous taxation ideas for housing; seemingly on top of council tax
The best thing to do is scrap Council Tax, scrap Stamp Duty and replace with a simple, percentage tax on property values.
I expect however that she'll attempt to introduce a new tax without abolishing either Council Tax or Stamp Duty, which would be the worst thing to do.
Indeed.
Just make sure you don't do the retarded California thing and base it all on last transacion price, which means my friend Joe has a property tax bill about 10% of mine, despite living in a mansion in one of the most expensive parts of LA.
Another positive about this is it incentivises people to improve the housing stock. Buy a shell in a poor part of town; turn it into a masterpiece but pay low taxes on it throughout the time you live there.
As long as that tax is indexed to local house prices it works.
The sellers having made a five hundred percent profit on their home after 25 years coughing up would be more equitable than the poor old buyer having to front stamp duty at purchase.
This policy would be devastating for Labour in London and home counties marginal Labour seats, the AVERAGE London house price is now over £500k, the same in Hertfordshire
As it stands ANY government taxation kite is shot down by the hostile media and the Conservatives. I have no problem with a sales tax for a property that I have potentially nominally profited by £600,000 over 25 years (mortgage interest repayments notwithstanding).
We now seem to operate in a culture where we demand better social and civil services, better and more expensive defence but without any attempts at a taxation quid pro quo.
Rachel Reeves is considering hitting the owners of high-value properties with capital gains tax when they sell their homes
The chancellor is considering using the Autumn Budget to end the current exemption from capital gains tax that people enjoy when they sell their 'primary' residence
Under the plans the current exemption from capital gains tax, known as private residence relief, would come to an end for properties above a certain threshold
Higher-rate taxpayers would pay 24% of any gain they make from the increase in the value of their properties while basic rate taxpayers would have to pay 18%
Unless there is rollover relief that means no one will ever sell houses… because if you are selling a house then you are likely to want to trade up and/or move to a similar value property. But if you lose 24% of the capital flagon you can only afford a less expensive property…
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
If must have taxes - and sadly I don't really see any alternative - then I prefer taxes which discourage the inefficient use of scarce resources.
I really don't like taxes that prevent the market from clearing*: like stamp duty.
Gently discouraging people from having homes larger than they actually need is probably a net benefit. (Are there losers? Sure there are. But the winners in terms of greater housing availability are surely more than the losers.)
* Yes, I know the market always clears.
But how does CGT on primary residence encourage older people to downsize? Surely it does the opposite as they'll just lock in and pass their primary residence on tax free up to £1m.
Old people very rarely actually do downsize, unless its for health reasons. People without a mortgage are generally settled and happy in their homes and don't want to move.
We should simply be building lots more family homes for people to move into, rather than magically expecting old people to uproot their lives by downsizing which doesn't happen, so young people have no actual homes to move into.
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
If must have taxes - and sadly I don't really see any alternative - then I prefer taxes which discourage the inefficient use of scarce resources.
I really don't like taxes that prevent the market from clearing*: like stamp duty.
Gently discouraging people from having homes larger than they actually need is probably a net benefit. (Are there losers? Sure there are. But the winners in terms of greater housing availability are surely more than the losers.)
* Yes, I know the market always clears.
But how does CGT on primary residence encourage older people to downsize? Surely it does the opposite as they'll just lock in and pass their primary residence on tax free up to £1m.
Old people very rarely actually do downsize, unless its for health reasons. People without a mortgage are generally settled and happy in their homes and don't want to move.
We should simply be building lots more family homes for people to move into, rather than magically expecting old people to uproot their lives by downsizing which doesn't happen, so young people have no actual homes to move into.
"CGT on primary residence"
Where has that been mentioned?
It's in The Times. I literally just read it and came onto PB to see the reaction.
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
If must have taxes - and sadly I don't really see any alternative - then I prefer taxes which discourage the inefficient use of scarce resources.
I really don't like taxes that prevent the market from clearing*: like stamp duty.
Gently discouraging people from having homes larger than they actually need is probably a net benefit. (Are there losers? Sure there are. But the winners in terms of greater housing availability are surely more than the losers.)
* Yes, I know the market always clears.
But how does CGT on primary residence encourage older people to downsize? Surely it does the opposite as they'll just lock in and pass their primary residence on tax free up to £1m.
Old people very rarely actually do downsize, unless its for health reasons. People without a mortgage are generally settled and happy in their homes and don't want to move.
We should simply be building lots more family homes for people to move into, rather than magically expecting old people to uproot their lives by downsizing which doesn't happen, so young people have no actual homes to move into.
I would suggest another longer term solution - focus on medical research into dementia as that drives a lot of the need for care homes
From Alzheimer's UK:
Dementia research is already lagging some way behind other comparable diseases when it comes to government funding.
The economic impact of dementia to our society each year is £26 billion, more than cancer and chronic heart disease combined, with over 80% of the cost carried by social and informal care.
In 2017/18, government investment in dementia research was just £82.5m, equivalent to 0.3% of the total annual cost of dementia. By contrast, government funding for cancer research stood at £269 million in 2015/16 – 1.6% of cancer’s £16.4 billion annual cost to the UK.
It will surprise no one to discover the Vatican is last on the list, but it still managed to register two births. Do they have birthright citizenship, do you know?
The sentence "Families will find even less of granny’s inheritance trickling down." reveals an odd assumption which most of us make without thinking about it. Why should we model our society on the assumption that money will come down from our grandparents, bearing in mind that many people don't have rich grandparents, and they may have had complex relationships with multiple descendants.
Certainly the State should step in where needed. But assisting people in looking after themselves where they can needs to be part of the solution.
One advantage of taxing inheritance as income by the recipient is that it is inherently redistribute. Either it is paid as tax by the wealthy, or passed to those on lower incomes, like grandkids etc.
I agree that it is insanity to tax the estate rather than the recipient.
If I'm not in danger of oversharing... When my mother died, my sister and I received an inheritance. The estate paid inheritance tax, then we each got half of what was left. Fine. It's not a joy paying tax, but someone has to pay tax. I'm OK with that.
Now, my father has died, earlier in the year. (No condolences necessary!) However, he was living in the US and the inheritance is partly in IRAs. There's no tax on the estate, but when we cash in the IRAs in the US and bring the money into the UK, we have to pay income tax. (I'm simplifying. There's more complicated family details.)
This has given me experience of taxing the estate versus taxing the personal income.
Because I have a well-paid job, I will pay lots of income tax on my share from my father. My sister gets the same share, but she's a housewife (with a husband with a well-paid job), so she'll pay much less income tax on her share. We get equal shares before tax, but I get substantially less after tax.
I earn more than my office mate, so I pay more in income tax. That feels fair. Yet it feels unfair that I am "meant" to get an equal share of an inheritance, but get less. The estate tax felt fair. The tax was paid and we split the rest. This doesn't.
These are first world problems, I'm getting a chunk of money - woo! Maybe I'm just pissed because I'm losing out, but that's my gut reaction to why you should tax the estate rather than the recipient.
My suggestion:
Do a deed of variation so that you sister gets *all* of the US inheritance.
She can then make a PET gift of your share to you (on the assumption she survives 7 years this will be tax free).
Intriguing!
There are ways of reducing the tax burden by leaving money in the US. Of course, the US is a stable democracy with a healthy economy, so that would be a perfectly safe thing to do. It's not like the US is going to elect a President who collapses the value of the dollar and supercharges inflation or anything. The US isn't going to slap a tax on remittances leaving the country all of a sudden. Nothing to worry about at all.
A rather gruesome sight in our garden: amid a heap of feathers a pigeon's body with a decapitated head and no head to be found. No sign of the corpse having been eaten. Could it be a fox?
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
If must have taxes - and sadly I don't really see any alternative - then I prefer taxes which discourage the inefficient use of scarce resources.
I really don't like taxes that prevent the market from clearing*: like stamp duty.
Gently discouraging people from having homes larger than they actually need is probably a net benefit. (Are there losers? Sure there are. But the winners in terms of greater housing availability are surely more than the losers.)
* Yes, I know the market always clears.
But how does CGT on primary residence encourage older people to downsize? Surely it does the opposite as they'll just lock in and pass their primary residence on tax free up to £1m.
Old people very rarely actually do downsize, unless its for health reasons. People without a mortgage are generally settled and happy in their homes and don't want to move.
We should simply be building lots more family homes for people to move into, rather than magically expecting old people to uproot their lives by downsizing which doesn't happen, so young people have no actual homes to move into.
I would suggest another longer term solution - focus on medical research into dementia as that drives a lot of the need for care homes
From Alzheimer's UK:
Dementia research is already lagging some way behind other comparable diseases when it comes to government funding.
The economic impact of dementia to our society each year is £26 billion, more than cancer and chronic heart disease combined, with over 80% of the cost carried by social and informal care.
In 2017/18, government investment in dementia research was just £82.5m, equivalent to 0.3% of the total annual cost of dementia. By contrast, government funding for cancer research stood at £269 million in 2015/16 – 1.6% of cancer’s £16.4 billion annual cost to the UK.
What on earth is Reeves thinking with all these ridiculous taxation ideas for housing; seemingly on top of council tax
The best thing to do is scrap Council Tax, scrap Stamp Duty and replace with a simple, percentage tax on property values.
I expect however that she'll attempt to introduce a new tax without abolishing either Council Tax or Stamp Duty, which would be the worst thing to do.
Erm, that's the proposal. Maybe not a simple, single % but otherwise what you ask:
"First, the stamp duty land tax should be replaced with a national proportional property tax, levied on house values above £500,000. This rate would be set by central government. An annual rate of 0.54%, with a 0.278% supplement on values over £1m would raise the same amount as stamp duty."
"Second, council tax should be replaced with a local proportional property tax, levied on house values up to £500,000 with a minimum annual payment of £800. The rate would be set by local authorities. A rate of 0.44% would raise the same amount of revenue as council tax."
(original policy document)
Hah ok, that'd be a massive winner here in Nottinghamshire where I reckon the council tax as a % of value is probably just about the highest in the country. But can't see that proposed by Reeves or err "Treasury officials"
The sellers having made a five hundred percent profit on their home after 25 years coughing up would be more equitable than the poor old buyer having to front stamp duty at purchase.
It will just be added to the asking price and the buyer pays it in higher mortgage charges
Stamp duty is a ridiculous tax.
Bear in mind at the moment this proposal is simply kite flying which has been taken as gospel government policy, although I suspect the government will venture down that avenue regardless.
All these proposals are just tinkering around the edges. In opposition the Labour Party were remiss in discounting an extra penny or two on income tax or VAT.
To @Big_G_NorthWales ’s point, at the moment the buyers pay the stamp duty but can’t finance it with mortgage. So it’s an improvement if they can now finance it.
But the reality is the sellers can’t simply “add it to price”. They will sell for the maximum they can buy that is driven by financing availability not any target price they have in mind
Two things will happen
Sellers will include and overprice internals ie carpets, curtains, furniture etc to keep it away when marginal
Higher price owners will collectively add it to their asking prices or simply will not sell
It's the way markets work
Also it won't apply in Wales where we already have Land Transaction Tax [LTT]
Most higher value sellers are selling for a reason. Very few are driven purely by price.
What on earth is Reeves thinking with all these ridiculous taxation ideas for housing; seemingly on top of council tax
The best thing to do is scrap Council Tax, scrap Stamp Duty and replace with a simple, percentage tax on property values.
I expect however that she'll attempt to introduce a new tax without abolishing either Council Tax or Stamp Duty, which would be the worst thing to do.
Indeed.
Just make sure you don't do the retarded California thing and base it all on last transacion price, which means my friend Joe has a property tax bill about 10% of mine, despite living in a mansion in one of the most expensive parts of LA.
Another positive about this is it incentivises people to improve the housing stock. Buy a shell in a poor part of town; turn it into a masterpiece but pay low taxes on it throughout the time you live there.
As long as that tax is indexed to local house prices it works.
It doesn't work, though, because the tax burden falls almost entirely on people who bought in the last few years.
The sellers having made a five hundred percent profit on their home after 25 years coughing up would be more equitable than the poor old buyer having to front stamp duty at purchase.
This policy would be devastating for Labour in London and home counties marginal Labour seats, the AVERAGE London house price is now over £500k, the same in Hertfordshire
As it stands ANY government taxation kite is shot down by the hostile media and the Conservatives. I have no problem with a sales tax for a property that I have potentially nominally profited by £600,000 over 25 years (mortgage interest repayments notwithstanding).
We now seem to operate in a culture where we demand better social and civil services, better and more expensive defence but without any attempts at a taxation quid pro quo.
We want our cake and we want to eat it.
There have been years where my property went up in value by more than the wage I was being paid. The former attracts no tax, the latter does. Do we want to incentivise people to work, or to indulge in property speculation?
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
The national property tax proposed is for houses over £500k and is a replacement for stamp duty.
The original document says that only houses under £500K would pay the local tax (ie council tax) if I have understood it right
Lol 0.54% of £500,000 is currently less than my council tax and my property isn't worth £500,000. This would lead to some bizarre situations in Nottinghamshire.
The claim is that a 0.44% local tax on the value under £500k with a floor of £800 would raise the same amount as council tax currently does. I assume the author has done the work on this - the document is published by a right-ish think tank.
A rather gruesome sight in our garden: amid a heap of feathers a pigeon's body with a decapitated head and no head to be found. No sign of the corpse having been eaten. Could it be a fox?
Immigrants? They get the blame for everything else.
What on earth is Reeves thinking with all these ridiculous taxation ideas for housing; seemingly on top of council tax
The best thing to do is scrap Council Tax, scrap Stamp Duty and replace with a simple, percentage tax on property values.
I expect however that she'll attempt to introduce a new tax without abolishing either Council Tax or Stamp Duty, which would be the worst thing to do.
Indeed.
Just make sure you don't do the retarded California thing and base it all on last transacion price, which means my friend Joe has a property tax bill about 10% of mine, despite living in a mansion in one of the most expensive parts of LA.
I quite like that model! I’m still operating on a 2008 base for my tax (plus 2.5% pa)
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
If must have taxes - and sadly I don't really see any alternative - then I prefer taxes which discourage the inefficient use of scarce resources.
I really don't like taxes that prevent the market from clearing*: like stamp duty.
Gently discouraging people from having homes larger than they actually need is probably a net benefit. (Are there losers? Sure there are. But the winners in terms of greater housing availability are surely more than the losers.)
* Yes, I know the market always clears.
But how does CGT on primary residence encourage older people to downsize? Surely it does the opposite as they'll just lock in and pass their primary residence on tax free up to £1m.
Old people very rarely actually do downsize, unless its for health reasons. People without a mortgage are generally settled and happy in their homes and don't want to move.
We should simply be building lots more family homes for people to move into, rather than magically expecting old people to uproot their lives by downsizing which doesn't happen, so young people have no actual homes to move into.
"CGT on primary residence"
Where has that been mentioned?
It's in The Times. I literally just read it and came onto PB to see the reaction.
Well, I suppose if they have accepted that the Labour party will be wiped out down to a dozen seats at 2029 then it might be a good idea to introduce?
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
If must have taxes - and sadly I don't really see any alternative - then I prefer taxes which discourage the inefficient use of scarce resources.
I really don't like taxes that prevent the market from clearing*: like stamp duty.
Gently discouraging people from having homes larger than they actually need is probably a net benefit. (Are there losers? Sure there are. But the winners in terms of greater housing availability are surely more than the losers.)
* Yes, I know the market always clears.
But how does CGT on primary residence encourage older people to downsize? Surely it does the opposite as they'll just lock in and pass their primary residence on tax free up to £1m.
Old people very rarely actually do downsize, unless its for health reasons. People without a mortgage are generally settled and happy in their homes and don't want to move.
We should simply be building lots more family homes for people to move into, rather than magically expecting old people to uproot their lives by downsizing which doesn't happen, so young people have no actual homes to move into.
"CGT on primary residence"
Where has that been mentioned?
It's in The Times. I literally just read it and came onto PB to see the reaction.
I'm mixed on this. Making housing a rubbish investment - other than to live in - is a good thing, kills off a lot of demand. OTOH, also stops transactions as people cling on.
As ever, a simple annual property tax indexed to your postcode HPI and based on the last transaction price is the solution.
The sellers having made a five hundred percent profit on their home after 25 years coughing up would be more equitable than the poor old buyer having to front stamp duty at purchase.
It will just be added to the asking price and the buyer pays it in higher mortgage charges
Stamp duty is a ridiculous tax.
Bear in mind at the moment this proposal is simply kite flying which has been taken as gospel government policy, although I suspect the government will venture down that avenue regardless.
All these proposals are just tinkering around the edges. In opposition the Labour Party were remiss in discounting an extra penny or two on income tax or VAT.
To @Big_G_NorthWales ’s point, at the moment the buyers pay the stamp duty but can’t finance it with mortgage. So it’s an improvement if they can now finance it.
But the reality is the sellers can’t simply “add it to price”. They will sell for the maximum they can buy that is driven by financing availability not any target price they have in mind
Two things will happen
Sellers will include and overprice internals ie carpets, curtains, furniture etc to keep it away when marginal
Higher price owners will collectively add it to their asking prices or simply will not sell
It's the way markets work
Also it won't apply in Wales where we already have Land Transaction Tax [LTT]
Most higher value sellers are selling for a reason. Very few are driven purely by price.
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
If must have taxes - and sadly I don't really see any alternative - then I prefer taxes which discourage the inefficient use of scarce resources.
I really don't like taxes that prevent the market from clearing*: like stamp duty.
Gently discouraging people from having homes larger than they actually need is probably a net benefit. (Are there losers? Sure there are. But the winners in terms of greater housing availability are surely more than the losers.)
* Yes, I know the market always clears.
But how does CGT on primary residence encourage older people to downsize? Surely it does the opposite as they'll just lock in and pass their primary residence on tax free up to £1m.
Old people very rarely actually do downsize, unless its for health reasons. People without a mortgage are generally settled and happy in their homes and don't want to move.
We should simply be building lots more family homes for people to move into, rather than magically expecting old people to uproot their lives by downsizing which doesn't happen, so young people have no actual homes to move into.
What on earth is Reeves thinking with all these ridiculous taxation ideas for housing; seemingly on top of council tax
The best thing to do is scrap Council Tax, scrap Stamp Duty and replace with a simple, percentage tax on property values.
I expect however that she'll attempt to introduce a new tax without abolishing either Council Tax or Stamp Duty, which would be the worst thing to do.
Indeed.
Just make sure you don't do the retarded California thing and base it all on last transacion price, which means my friend Joe has a property tax bill about 10% of mine, despite living in a mansion in one of the most expensive parts of LA.
Another positive about this is it incentivises people to improve the housing stock. Buy a shell in a poor part of town; turn it into a masterpiece but pay low taxes on it throughout the time you live there.
As long as that tax is indexed to local house prices it works.
It doesn't work, though, because the tax burden falls almost entirely on people who bought in the last few years.
You can index the payments, which will solve that problem.
It will surprise no one to discover the Vatican is last on the list, but it still managed to register two births. Do they have birthright citizenship, do you know?
A rather gruesome sight in our garden: amid a heap of feathers a pigeon's body with a decapitated head and no head to be found. No sign of the corpse having been eaten. Could it be a fox?
The sellers having made a five hundred percent profit on their home after 25 years coughing up would be more equitable than the poor old buyer having to front stamp duty at purchase.
This policy would be devastating for Labour in London and home counties marginal Labour seats, the AVERAGE London house price is now over £500k, the same in Hertfordshire
As it stands ANY government taxation kite is shot down by the hostile media and the Conservatives. I have no problem with a sales tax for a property that I have potentially nominally profited by £600,000 over 25 years (mortgage interest repayments notwithstanding).
We now seem to operate in a culture where we demand better social and civil services, better and more expensive defence but without any attempts at a taxation quid pro quo.
We want our cake and we want to eat it.
There have been years where my property went up in value by more than the wage I was being paid. The former attracts no tax, the latter does. Do we want to incentivise people to work, or to indulge in property speculation?
Anyone who suggests charging capital gains tax on private homes is signing their political obituary
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
If must have taxes - and sadly I don't really see any alternative - then I prefer taxes which discourage the inefficient use of scarce resources.
I really don't like taxes that prevent the market from clearing*: like stamp duty.
Gently discouraging people from having homes larger than they actually need is probably a net benefit. (Are there losers? Sure there are. But the winners in terms of greater housing availability are surely more than the losers.)
* Yes, I know the market always clears.
But how does CGT on primary residence encourage older people to downsize? Surely it does the opposite as they'll just lock in and pass their primary residence on tax free up to £1m.
Old people very rarely actually do downsize, unless its for health reasons. People without a mortgage are generally settled and happy in their homes and don't want to move.
We should simply be building lots more family homes for people to move into, rather than magically expecting old people to uproot their lives by downsizing which doesn't happen, so young people have no actual homes to move into.
Quite a few downsize by their late 70s, they don't want the hassle of a large detached house to run and would prefer a flat or bungalow, especially if they are a widow or widower too
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
The national property tax proposed is for houses over £500k and is a replacement for stamp duty.
The original document says that only houses under £500K would pay the local tax (ie council tax) if I have understood it right
Lol 0.54% of £500,000 is currently less than my council tax and my property isn't worth £500,000. This would lead to some bizarre situations in Nottinghamshire.
The claim is that a 0.44% local tax on the value under £500k with a floor of £800 would raise the same amount as council tax currently does. I assume the author has done the work on this - the document is published by a right-ish think tank.
Nottinghamshire residents would be delighted. The council would need a whole huge chunk more central grant though.
She loves history, churches, geology, poetry, and surreal jokes
Which is kinda handy as these are many of my favourite things as well
Did you go up it? It costs, but it's worth it. Some of the paintings open up and you can look down...
It's just so incredibly beautiful
I've only beem once before, and that was about 25 years ago. So this was almost like my first visit
Stunning. Just stunning. When I first went in I thought, OK, this is like one of the great French cathedrals - Amiens or Reims - very lovely, but lacking Noom
And then we got to the Octagon and the Noom comes from the sheer effrontery of the architecture. The absurd, dreamy idea of this floating geometrical ceiling-from-heaven, my God the Noom kicks in then. Oh yes. Verily, and yea
Also, the Lady Chapel. Also, the fact it was founded in about 670AD by an Anglo-Saxon princess. Also, the Anglo-Saxon warlords and bishops interred in one of the prettier chantries, including some earl who died at the Battle of Maldon. Also, the presence nearby of Grimes Graves in the Breckland (which we both visited for the first time)
We had a brilliant day out. England can still wildly surprise on the upside, and then some. 90 minutes from the North Circular!
Ely must be in the top ten most-beautiful-cathedrals in the world
I believe when it was built, Ely was surrounded by water. Imagine approaching it in medieval times. The cathedral mirrored by its own reflection. Must have been stupendous.
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
If must have taxes - and sadly I don't really see any alternative - then I prefer taxes which discourage the inefficient use of scarce resources.
I really don't like taxes that prevent the market from clearing*: like stamp duty.
Gently discouraging people from having homes larger than they actually need is probably a net benefit. (Are there losers? Sure there are. But the winners in terms of greater housing availability are surely more than the losers.)
* Yes, I know the market always clears.
But how does CGT on primary residence encourage older people to downsize? Surely it does the opposite as they'll just lock in and pass their primary residence on tax free up to £1m.
Old people very rarely actually do downsize, unless its for health reasons. People without a mortgage are generally settled and happy in their homes and don't want to move.
We should simply be building lots more family homes for people to move into, rather than magically expecting old people to uproot their lives by downsizing which doesn't happen, so young people have no actual homes to move into.
Quite a few downsize by their late 70s, they don't want the hassle of a large detached house to run and would prefer a flat or bungalow, especially if they are a widow or widower too
What on earth is Reeves thinking with all these ridiculous taxation ideas for housing; seemingly on top of council tax
The best thing to do is scrap Council Tax, scrap Stamp Duty and replace with a simple, percentage tax on property values.
I expect however that she'll attempt to introduce a new tax without abolishing either Council Tax or Stamp Duty, which would be the worst thing to do.
Indeed.
Just make sure you don't do the retarded California thing and base it all on last transacion price, which means my friend Joe has a property tax bill about 10% of mine, despite living in a mansion in one of the most expensive parts of LA.
Another positive about this is it incentivises people to improve the housing stock. Buy a shell in a poor part of town; turn it into a masterpiece but pay low taxes on it throughout the time you live there.
As long as that tax is indexed to local house prices it works.
It doesn't work, though, because the tax burden falls almost entirely on people who bought in the last few years.
I'm suggesting you would always link the tax to the local HPI.
So you buy for £100k. You make £50k improvements. House prices increase by 25%. You pay tax on £125k, even though the house is worth £150k.
The sentence "Families will find even less of granny’s inheritance trickling down." reveals an odd assumption which most of us make without thinking about it. Why should we model our society on the assumption that money will come down from our grandparents, bearing in mind that many people don't have rich grandparents, and they may have had complex relationships with multiple descendants.
Certainly the State should step in where needed. But assisting people in looking after themselves where they can needs to be part of the solution.
One advantage of taxing inheritance as income by the recipient is that it is inherently redistribute. Either it is paid as tax by the wealthy, or passed to those on lower incomes, like grandkids etc.
I agree that it is insanity to tax the estate rather than the recipient.
If I'm not in danger of oversharing... When my mother died, my sister and I received an inheritance. The estate paid inheritance tax, then we each got half of what was left. Fine. It's not a joy paying tax, but someone has to pay tax. I'm OK with that.
Now, my father has died, earlier in the year. (No condolences necessary!) However, he was living in the US and the inheritance is partly in IRAs. There's no tax on the estate, but when we cash in the IRAs in the US and bring the money into the UK, we have to pay income tax. (I'm simplifying. There's more complicated family details.)
This has given me experience of taxing the estate versus taxing the personal income.
Because I have a well-paid job, I will pay lots of income tax on my share from my father. My sister gets the same share, but she's a housewife (with a husband with a well-paid job), so she'll pay much less income tax on her share. We get equal shares before tax, but I get substantially less after tax.
I earn more than my office mate, so I pay more in income tax. That feels fair. Yet it feels unfair that I am "meant" to get an equal share of an inheritance, but get less. The estate tax felt fair. The tax was paid and we split the rest. This doesn't.
These are first world problems, I'm getting a chunk of money - woo! Maybe I'm just pissed because I'm losing out, but that's my gut reaction to why you should tax the estate rather than the recipient.
My suggestion:
Do a deed of variation so that you sister gets *all* of the US inheritance.
She can then make a PET gift of your share to you (on the assumption she survives 7 years this will be tax free).
Intriguing!
There are ways of reducing the tax burden by leaving money in the US. Of course, the US is a stable democracy with a healthy economy, so that would be a perfectly safe thing to do. It's not like the US is going to elect a President who collapses the value of the dollar and supercharges inflation or anything. The US isn't going to slap a tax on remittances leaving the country all of a sudden. Nothing to worry about at all.
You could also avoid the PET risk by varying the payments out of the tax-paid UK inheritance
The sellers having made a five hundred percent profit on their home after 25 years coughing up would be more equitable than the poor old buyer having to front stamp duty at purchase.
This policy would be devastating for Labour in London and home counties marginal Labour seats, the AVERAGE London house price is now over £500k, the same in Hertfordshire
As it stands ANY government taxation kite is shot down by the hostile media and the Conservatives. I have no problem with a sales tax for a property that I have potentially nominally profited by £600,000 over 25 years (mortgage interest repayments notwithstanding).
We now seem to operate in a culture where we demand better social and civil services, better and more expensive defence but without any attempts at a taxation quid pro quo.
We want our cake and we want to eat it.
Well Labour MPs wanted a wealth tax of 2% on those with assets over £10 million, with minimal electoral impact. A restoration of the additional rate income tax for those on over £150k would also affect few, even if neither would be great for growth Labour and Green and SNP and Plaid and LD voters and even centrist voters and some Tory and Reform voters would back it as a fair way to provide more funds for public services.
Instead calamity Rachel seems to want to whack a new tax on those home owners with homes of the average house price in London and some home counties, an act of political suicide for Labour MPs in marginals there
What on earth is Reeves thinking with all these ridiculous taxation ideas for housing; seemingly on top of council tax
The best thing to do is scrap Council Tax, scrap Stamp Duty and replace with a simple, percentage tax on property values.
I expect however that she'll attempt to introduce a new tax without abolishing either Council Tax or Stamp Duty, which would be the worst thing to do.
Indeed.
Just make sure you don't do the retarded California thing and base it all on last transacion price, which means my friend Joe has a property tax bill about 10% of mine, despite living in a mansion in one of the most expensive parts of LA.
Another positive about this is it incentivises people to improve the housing stock. Buy a shell in a poor part of town; turn it into a masterpiece but pay low taxes on it throughout the time you live there.
As long as that tax is indexed to local house prices it works.
It doesn't work, though, because the tax burden falls almost entirely on people who bought in the last few years.
I'm suggesting you would always link the tax to the local HPI.
So you buy for £100k. You make £50k improvements. House prices increase by 25%. You pay tax on £125k, even though the house is worth £150k.
Fair enough: that's a pretty reasonable compromise.
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
If must have taxes - and sadly I don't really see any alternative - then I prefer taxes which discourage the inefficient use of scarce resources.
I really don't like taxes that prevent the market from clearing*: like stamp duty.
Gently discouraging people from having homes larger than they actually need is probably a net benefit. (Are there losers? Sure there are. But the winners in terms of greater housing availability are surely more than the losers.)
* Yes, I know the market always clears.
But how does CGT on primary residence encourage older people to downsize? Surely it does the opposite as they'll just lock in and pass their primary residence on tax free up to £1m.
Old people very rarely actually do downsize, unless its for health reasons. People without a mortgage are generally settled and happy in their homes and don't want to move.
We should simply be building lots more family homes for people to move into, rather than magically expecting old people to uproot their lives by downsizing which doesn't happen, so young people have no actual homes to move into.
Quite a few downsize by their late 70s, they don't want the hassle of a large detached house to run and would prefer a flat or bungalow, especially if they are a widow or widower too
In our case we have lived in our home for over 50 years, it is our family's home and will not be sold no matter it is a large detached property by the sea and only my wife and I live in it
Indeed it is possible one of our children will buy it from our estate continuing it's family ownership
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
The national property tax proposed is for houses over £500k and is a replacement for stamp duty.
The original document says that only houses under £500K would pay the local tax (ie council tax) if I have understood it right
Lol 0.54% of £500,000 is currently less than my council tax and my property isn't worth £500,000. This would lead to some bizarre situations in Nottinghamshire.
The claim is that a 0.44% local tax on the value under £500k with a floor of £800 would raise the same amount as council tax currently does. I assume the author has done the work on this - the document is published by a right-ish think tank.
Nottinghamshire residents would be delighted. The council would need a whole huge chunk more central grant though.
If you think Nottinghamshire council would have problems wait to you see the amount it raises up North and how much more the councils would need from central Government (transferring money from the South).
She loves history, churches, geology, poetry, and surreal jokes
Which is kinda handy as these are many of my favourite things as well
Did you go up it? It costs, but it's worth it. Some of the paintings open up and you can look down...
It's just so incredibly beautiful
I've only beem once before, and that was about 25 years ago. So this was almost like my first visit
Stunning. Just stunning. When I first went in I thought, OK, this is like one of the great French cathedrals - Amiens or Reims - very lovely, but lacking Noom
And then we got to the Octagon and the Noom comes from the sheer effrontery of the architecture. The absurd, dreamy idea of this floating geometrical ceiling-from-heaven, my God the Noom kicks in then. Oh yes. Verily, and yea
Also, the Lady Chapel. Also, the fact it was founded in about 670AD by an Anglo-Saxon princess. Also, the Anglo-Saxon warlords and bishops interred in one of the prettier chantries, including some earl who died at the Battle of Maldon. Also, the presence nearby of Grimes Graves in the Breckland (which we both visited for the first time)
We had a brilliant day out. England can still wildly surprise on the upside, and then some. 90 minutes from the North Circular!
Ely must be in the top ten most-beautiful-cathedrals in the world
I believe when it was built, Ely was surrounded by water. Imagine approaching it in medieval times. The cathedral mirrored by its own reflection. Must have been stupendous.
Yes my wife was singing in Ely cathedral a few weeks ago, magical location
The sellers having made a five hundred percent profit on their home after 25 years coughing up would be more equitable than the poor old buyer having to front stamp duty at purchase.
It will just be added to the asking price and the buyer pays it in higher mortgage charges
Stamp duty is a ridiculous tax.
Bear in mind at the moment this proposal is simply kite flying which has been taken as gospel government policy, although I suspect the government will venture down that avenue regardless.
All these proposals are just tinkering around the edges. In opposition the Labour Party were remiss in discounting an extra penny or two on income tax or VAT.
To @Big_G_NorthWales ’s point, at the moment the buyers pay the stamp duty but can’t finance it with mortgage. So it’s an improvement if they can now finance it.
But the reality is the sellers can’t simply “add it to price”. They will sell for the maximum they can buy that is driven by financing availability not any target price they have in mind
Two things will happen
Sellers will include and overprice internals ie carpets, curtains, furniture etc to keep it away when marginal
Higher price owners will collectively add it to their asking prices or simply will not sell
It's the way markets work
Also it won't apply in Wales where we already have Land Transaction Tax [LTT]
Most higher value sellers are selling for a reason. Very few are driven purely by price.
Have you a source for that
35+ years of following the London prime property market
The sellers having made a five hundred percent profit on their home after 25 years coughing up would be more equitable than the poor old buyer having to front stamp duty at purchase.
This policy would be devastating for Labour in London and home counties marginal Labour seats, the AVERAGE London house price is now over £500k, the same in Hertfordshire
As it stands ANY government taxation kite is shot down by the hostile media and the Conservatives. I have no problem with a sales tax for a property that I have potentially nominally profited by £600,000 over 25 years (mortgage interest repayments notwithstanding).
We now seem to operate in a culture where we demand better social and civil services, better and more expensive defence but without any attempts at a taxation quid pro quo.
We want our cake and we want to eat it.
There have been years where my property went up in value by more than the wage I was being paid. The former attracts no tax, the latter does. Do we want to incentivise people to work, or to indulge in property speculation?
Anyone who suggests charging capital gains tax on private homes is signing their political obituary
Got to ask last time we looked into the idea did we find any countries that actually did charge capital gains tax. I think the few that did had so many allowances virtually no-one paid it...
The sellers having made a five hundred percent profit on their home after 25 years coughing up would be more equitable than the poor old buyer having to front stamp duty at purchase.
This policy would be devastating for Labour in London and home counties marginal Labour seats, the AVERAGE London house price is now over £500k, the same in Hertfordshire
As it stands ANY government taxation kite is shot down by the hostile media and the Conservatives. I have no problem with a sales tax for a property that I have potentially nominally profited by £600,000 over 25 years (mortgage interest repayments notwithstanding).
We now seem to operate in a culture where we demand better social and civil services, better and more expensive defence but without any attempts at a taxation quid pro quo.
We want our cake and we want to eat it.
There have been years where my property went up in value by more than the wage I was being paid. The former attracts no tax, the latter does. Do we want to incentivise people to work, or to indulge in property speculation?
We've wanted them to indulge in property speculation for the past few decades. It may have been unspoken, but various policies have abetted it. As a result we've a housing system which doesn't work. Now something has to give.
What on earth is Reeves thinking with all these ridiculous taxation ideas for housing; seemingly on top of council tax
The best thing to do is scrap Council Tax, scrap Stamp Duty and replace with a simple, percentage tax on property values.
I expect however that she'll attempt to introduce a new tax without abolishing either Council Tax or Stamp Duty, which would be the worst thing to do.
Indeed.
Just make sure you don't do the retarded California thing and base it all on last transacion price, which means my friend Joe has a property tax bill about 10% of mine, despite living in a mansion in one of the most expensive parts of LA.
Another positive about this is it incentivises people to improve the housing stock. Buy a shell in a poor part of town; turn it into a masterpiece but pay low taxes on it throughout the time you live there.
As long as that tax is indexed to local house prices it works.
It doesn't work, though, because the tax burden falls almost entirely on people who bought in the last few years.
You can index the payments, which will solve that problem.
Except - you can't index without treating one type of residential housing (primary properties) different to secondary properties where indexing has removed in the late 90s from memory.
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
If must have taxes - and sadly I don't really see any alternative - then I prefer taxes which discourage the inefficient use of scarce resources.
I really don't like taxes that prevent the market from clearing*: like stamp duty.
Gently discouraging people from having homes larger than they actually need is probably a net benefit. (Are there losers? Sure there are. But the winners in terms of greater housing availability are surely more than the losers.)
* Yes, I know the market always clears.
But how does CGT on primary residence encourage older people to downsize? Surely it does the opposite as they'll just lock in and pass their primary residence on tax free up to £1m.
Old people very rarely actually do downsize, unless its for health reasons. People without a mortgage are generally settled and happy in their homes and don't want to move.
We should simply be building lots more family homes for people to move into, rather than magically expecting old people to uproot their lives by downsizing which doesn't happen, so young people have no actual homes to move into.
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
If must have taxes - and sadly I don't really see any alternative - then I prefer taxes which discourage the inefficient use of scarce resources.
I really don't like taxes that prevent the market from clearing*: like stamp duty.
Gently discouraging people from having homes larger than they actually need is probably a net benefit. (Are there losers? Sure there are. But the winners in terms of greater housing availability are surely more than the losers.)
* Yes, I know the market always clears.
But how does CGT on primary residence encourage older people to downsize? Surely it does the opposite as they'll just lock in and pass their primary residence on tax free up to £1m.
Old people very rarely actually do downsize, unless its for health reasons. People without a mortgage are generally settled and happy in their homes and don't want to move.
We should simply be building lots more family homes for people to move into, rather than magically expecting old people to uproot their lives by downsizing which doesn't happen, so young people have no actual homes to move into.
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
If must have taxes - and sadly I don't really see any alternative - then I prefer taxes which discourage the inefficient use of scarce resources.
I really don't like taxes that prevent the market from clearing*: like stamp duty.
Gently discouraging people from having homes larger than they actually need is probably a net benefit. (Are there losers? Sure there are. But the winners in terms of greater housing availability are surely more than the losers.)
* Yes, I know the market always clears.
But how does CGT on primary residence encourage older people to downsize? Surely it does the opposite as they'll just lock in and pass their primary residence on tax free up to £1m.
Old people very rarely actually do downsize, unless its for health reasons. People without a mortgage are generally settled and happy in their homes and don't want to move.
We should simply be building lots more family homes for people to move into, rather than magically expecting old people to uproot their lives by downsizing which doesn't happen, so young people have no actual homes to move into.
A rather gruesome sight in our garden: amid a heap of feathers a pigeon's body with a decapitated head and no head to be found. No sign of the corpse having been eaten. Could it be a fox?
Yes. We usually have a fox den at the end of our garden. Particularly when rearing young it is like an abattoir in our garden. All kills are decapitated and seem to be left for a day. I don't know why.
The sellers having made a five hundred percent profit on their home after 25 years coughing up would be more equitable than the poor old buyer having to front stamp duty at purchase.
This policy would be devastating for Labour in London and home counties marginal Labour seats, the AVERAGE London house price is now over £500k, the same in Hertfordshire
As it stands ANY government taxation kite is shot down by the hostile media and the Conservatives. I have no problem with a sales tax for a property that I have potentially nominally profited by £600,000 over 25 years (mortgage interest repayments notwithstanding).
We now seem to operate in a culture where we demand better social and civil services, better and more expensive defence but without any attempts at a taxation quid pro quo.
We want our cake and we want to eat it.
There have been years where my property went up in value by more than the wage I was being paid. The former attracts no tax, the latter does. Do we want to incentivise people to work, or to indulge in property speculation?
Anyone who suggests charging capital gains tax on private homes is signing their political obituary
Got to ask last time we looked into the idea did we find any countries that actually did charge capital gains tax. I think the few that did had so many allowances virtually no-one paid it...
The US do, but with rollover relief
That made actually makes perfect sense. While you are keep the capital invested in a primary residence (either this property or another) it is tax free. If you choose to take the money out of primary residential housing then it is any other capital gain and should be taxed as such
Edit: say you buy a PPR for £500k and sell it for £1m.
That’s a capital gain of £500k which is taxed at CGT rates.
However if you invest £1m into a new PPR you get to defer the tax liability until such time as the money is released from the new PPR. (The new PPR also has a tax base of £1m so any future gains on that would be separately taxable)
Essentially this helps facilities buying bigger houses, but when you downsize you crystallise a taxable gain and/or when a house is sold/transferred on death a liability is also triggered)
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
If must have taxes - and sadly I don't really see any alternative - then I prefer taxes which discourage the inefficient use of scarce resources.
I really don't like taxes that prevent the market from clearing*: like stamp duty.
Gently discouraging people from having homes larger than they actually need is probably a net benefit. (Are there losers? Sure there are. But the winners in terms of greater housing availability are surely more than the losers.)
* Yes, I know the market always clears.
But how does CGT on primary residence encourage older people to downsize? Surely it does the opposite as they'll just lock in and pass their primary residence on tax free up to £1m.
Old people very rarely actually do downsize, unless its for health reasons. People without a mortgage are generally settled and happy in their homes and don't want to move.
We should simply be building lots more family homes for people to move into, rather than magically expecting old people to uproot their lives by downsizing which doesn't happen, so young people have no actual homes to move into.
Quite a few downsize by their late 70s, they don't want the hassle of a large detached house to run and would prefer a flat or bungalow, especially if they are a widow or widower too
My mother won't. She's 84 and is determined to pass on the house to me and my brother. Despite the fact that we will both be retired by the time it comes. And neither of us have any desire to live in it. Just a thing to have to liquidate upon her death. Be much better for all our peace of mind to do it now.
A rather gruesome sight in our garden: amid a heap of feathers a pigeon's body with a decapitated head and no head to be found. No sign of the corpse having been eaten. Could it be a fox?
Yes. We usually have a fox den at the end of our garden. Particularly when rearing young it is like an abattoir in our garden. All kills are decapitated and seem to be left for a day. I don't know why.
What on earth is Reeves thinking with all these ridiculous taxation ideas for housing; seemingly on top of council tax
The best thing to do is scrap Council Tax, scrap Stamp Duty and replace with a simple, percentage tax on property values.
I expect however that she'll attempt to introduce a new tax without abolishing either Council Tax or Stamp Duty, which would be the worst thing to do.
Erm, that's the proposal. Maybe not a simple, single % but otherwise what you ask:
"First, the stamp duty land tax should be replaced with a national proportional property tax, levied on house values above £500,000. This rate would be set by central government. An annual rate of 0.54%, with a 0.278% supplement on values over £1m would raise the same amount as stamp duty."
"Second, council tax should be replaced with a local proportional property tax, levied on house values up to £500,000 with a minimum annual payment of £800. The rate would be set by local authorities. A rate of 0.44% would raise the same amount of revenue as council tax."
(original policy document)
That's the original proposal, which is a good one. Please give me any link that says this is what Reeves is proposing, which is a different matter.
I won't hold my breath on Reeves doing the right thing, or count any chickens before they're hatched.
Let me caveat by saying some I support some sort of switch to land tax to better use land in this country, however, for a Government who are already as unpopular as they are to try this is "highly courageous"
From what I've heard the plan is to design it so that people in the North pay less and people in the South pay more. This is going to create huge numbers of winners and losers. If you tell people they have to pay a bit more to support their local services then they my grudgingly accept. If you tell them they have to pay more to reduce bills for other people they'll be furious.
Worth noting how many MPs Lab have now in the regions most likely to be impacted:
Greater London - 57/75 South East - 35/91 South West - 22/58 Eastern - 26/61
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
The national property tax proposed is for houses over £500k and is a replacement for stamp duty.
The original document says that only houses under £500K would pay the local tax (ie council tax) if I have understood it right
Lol 0.54% of £500,000 is currently less than my council tax and my property isn't worth £500,000. This would lead to some bizarre situations in Nottinghamshire.
The claim is that a 0.44% local tax on the value under £500k with a floor of £800 would raise the same amount as council tax currently does. I assume the author has done the work on this - the document is published by a right-ish think tank.
Nottinghamshire residents would be delighted. The council would need a whole huge chunk more central grant though.
Part of the justification for this change is that it’s grossly unfair that some of the poorest parts of the UK pay more in council tax than Westminster residents do.
What on earth is Reeves thinking with all these ridiculous taxation ideas for housing; seemingly on top of council tax
The best thing to do is scrap Council Tax, scrap Stamp Duty and replace with a simple, percentage tax on property values.
I expect however that she'll attempt to introduce a new tax without abolishing either Council Tax or Stamp Duty, which would be the worst thing to do.
Indeed.
Just make sure you don't do the retarded California thing and base it all on last transacion price, which means my friend Joe has a property tax bill about 10% of mine, despite living in a mansion in one of the most expensive parts of LA.
Another positive about this is it incentivises people to improve the housing stock. Buy a shell in a poor part of town; turn it into a masterpiece but pay low taxes on it throughout the time you live there.
As long as that tax is indexed to local house prices it works.
It doesn't work, though, because the tax burden falls almost entirely on people who bought in the last few years.
I'm suggesting you would always link the tax to the local HPI.
So you buy for £100k. You make £50k improvements. House prices increase by 25%. You pay tax on £125k, even though the house is worth £150k.
Make it a land value tax and most of these valuation problems fall away.
Major tax reform like this will only be done by a government with sufficient stamina, energy and f* you attitude to steamroller it through. Then in a few years pundits will say “actually that’s quite a good reform”. This government isn’t up for the fight.
"What is wrong with displaying the Union flag or the St. George's Cross in a patriotic way, even if some far-right groups have co-opted it?"
@kategarraway and @adilray discuss the displaying of flags with Kehinde Andrews, Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University, who argues it's provocative and the St George's Cross has become a symbol of racism, while race, culture and identity writer Dr Rakib Ehsan thinks we should be proud of our flag after two councils sparked controversy by taking down St George's and Union flags."
Thing is, I would probably have given significance to his opinion ten years ago. Now I do not give a f*ck. Don't like it? - shut up or leave
That's it. Why should a majority of Brits warp, pervert and abase their sense of identity - the symbolism and self respect - to accommodate professionally aggrieved people like this? They have a grift and they're gonna grift. Even if t's honest, it is a grift. It's how they make a living
We had an empire. It was magnificent and the biggest ever. Sorry but there it is
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
The national property tax proposed is for houses over £500k and is a replacement for stamp duty.
The original document says that only houses under £500K would pay the local tax (ie council tax) if I have understood it right
Lol 0.54% of £500,000 is currently less than my council tax and my property isn't worth £500,000. This would lead to some bizarre situations in Nottinghamshire.
The claim is that a 0.44% local tax on the value under £500k with a floor of £800 would raise the same amount as council tax currently does. I assume the author has done the work on this - the document is published by a right-ish think tank.
Nottinghamshire residents would be delighted. The council would need a whole huge chunk more central grant though.
If you think Nottinghamshire council would have problems wait to you see the amount it raises up North and how much more the councils would need from central Government (transferring money from the South).
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
If must have taxes - and sadly I don't really see any alternative - then I prefer taxes which discourage the inefficient use of scarce resources.
I really don't like taxes that prevent the market from clearing*: like stamp duty.
Gently discouraging people from having homes larger than they actually need is probably a net benefit. (Are there losers? Sure there are. But the winners in terms of greater housing availability are surely more than the losers.)
* Yes, I know the market always clears.
But how does CGT on primary residence encourage older people to downsize? Surely it does the opposite as they'll just lock in and pass their primary residence on tax free up to £1m.
Old people very rarely actually do downsize, unless its for health reasons. People without a mortgage are generally settled and happy in their homes and don't want to move.
We should simply be building lots more family homes for people to move into, rather than magically expecting old people to uproot their lives by downsizing which doesn't happen, so young people have no actual homes to move into.
Quite a few downsize by their late 70s, they don't want the hassle of a large detached house to run and would prefer a flat or bungalow, especially if they are a widow or widower too
I've downsized twice from 4,500 sq ft to 2,500 sq ft to 1,500 sq ft. No regrets but getting rid of all the surplus stuff is a bugger.
Lot of kite flying on property taxes in the press today clearly. Looks like different Treasury officials have been briefing the Guardian & the Times on the various policies they want to stab in the back early.
It's a scattergun approach quite far out from the budget, like throwing a dart blindfolded, multiple policy ideas are being thrown around early. Eventually you'll get lucky and hit a bullseye. We just have to guess which policy(s) she opts for.
One thing farmers unions maybe regretted last time was not lobbying harder before the budget, the IHT ag reforms were supposedly finalised very close to budget day.
Will lobbying Labour MPs this far out make any difference to the potential various choices? She may be limited in choices for reforming Council tax if they can only bring that forward in England
To claim universal credit you have to be actively seeking work and cannot turn down a job offer. The UK minimum wage is also now higher than ever at over £20,000 a year.
So there should be plenty of incentive for UK unemployed to take care home jobs now not just migrants, especially is there are now more out of work than there are job vacancies here. We should also follow the Japanese model of funding social care with insurance
Not so. There are around 3.4 million UC claimants who do. It need to work.
I concur your final sentence.
And how many of them are in any fit state to work?
How many of them would you want caring for your elderly rellies?
I don't know what the number of British people who shouldn't be working at all is, but it's somewhere higher than zero.
Don’t argue the toss with me over this. I’m just correcting HYUFD who said that to claim UC you need to be actively seeking work.
That’s not the case.
Exactly plenty of lazy barstewards with no principles who are happy to take free money rather than work, this country is overrun with pathetic parasitical losers who would rob their granny rather than work.
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
The national property tax proposed is for houses over £500k and is a replacement for stamp duty.
The original document says that only houses under £500K would pay the local tax (ie council tax) if I have understood it right
Lol 0.54% of £500,000 is currently less than my council tax and my property isn't worth £500,000. This would lead to some bizarre situations in Nottinghamshire.
The claim is that a 0.44% local tax on the value under £500k with a floor of £800 would raise the same amount as council tax currently does. I assume the author has done the work on this - the document is published by a right-ish think tank.
Nottinghamshire residents would be delighted. The council would need a whole huge chunk more central grant though.
Part of the justification for this change is that it’s grossly unfair that some of the poorest parts of the UK pay more in council tax than Westminster residents do.
If you set it nationally though, you’re arrogating yet more power to Westminster in the western world’s already most centralised polity.
Devolve it properly, plus devolution of income tax and corporation tax, but put together a Barnett style funding arrangement. Like Switzerland.
What on earth is Reeves thinking with all these ridiculous taxation ideas for housing; seemingly on top of council tax
The best thing to do is scrap Council Tax, scrap Stamp Duty and replace with a simple, percentage tax on property values.
I expect however that she'll attempt to introduce a new tax without abolishing either Council Tax or Stamp Duty, which would be the worst thing to do.
Erm, that's the proposal. Maybe not a simple, single % but otherwise what you ask:
"First, the stamp duty land tax should be replaced with a national proportional property tax, levied on house values above £500,000. This rate would be set by central government. An annual rate of 0.54%, with a 0.278% supplement on values over £1m would raise the same amount as stamp duty."
"Second, council tax should be replaced with a local proportional property tax, levied on house values up to £500,000 with a minimum annual payment of £800. The rate would be set by local authorities. A rate of 0.44% would raise the same amount of revenue as council tax."
(original policy document)
That's the original proposal, which is a good one. Please give me any link that says this is what Reeves is proposing, which is a different matter.
I won't hold my breath on Reeves doing the right thing, or count any chickens before they're hatched.
Let me caveat by saying some I support some sort of switch to land tax to better use land in this country, however, for a Government who are already as unpopular as they are to try this is "highly courageous"
From what I've heard the plan is to design it so that people in the North pay less and people in the South pay more. This is going to create huge numbers of winners and losers. If you tell people they have to pay a bit more to support their local services then they my grudgingly accept. If you tell them they have to pay more to reduce bills for other people they'll be furious.
Worth noting how many MPs Lab have now in the regions most likely to be impacted:
Greater London - 57/75 South East - 35/91 South West - 22/58 Eastern - 26/61
I'm not sure that's the case actually. Council tax is so imbalanced even flats in central London could see a cut of it's a flat percentage. I have a nice flat in Edinburgh and it comes out roughly the same at 0.5%, meanwhile vast swathes of the Red Wall get big tax cuts.
It's big houses in the Shires that get screwed, but that's hardly Labour swing voters.
She loves history, churches, geology, poetry, and surreal jokes
Which is kinda handy as these are many of my favourite things as well
Did you go up it? It costs, but it's worth it. Some of the paintings open up and you can look down...
It's just so incredibly beautiful
I've only beem once before, and that was about 25 years ago. So this was almost like my first visit
Stunning. Just stunning. When I first went in I thought, OK, this is like one of the great French cathedrals - Amiens or Reims - very lovely, but lacking Noom
And then we got to the Octagon and the Noom comes from the sheer effrontery of the architecture. The absurd, dreamy idea of this floating geometrical ceiling-from-heaven, my God the Noom kicks in then. Oh yes. Verily, and yea
Also, the Lady Chapel. Also, the fact it was founded in about 670AD by an Anglo-Saxon princess. Also, the Anglo-Saxon warlords and bishops interred in one of the prettier chantries, including some earl who died at the Battle of Maldon. Also, the presence nearby of Grimes Graves in the Breckland (which we both visited for the first time)
We had a brilliant day out. England can still wildly surprise on the upside, and then some. 90 minutes from the North Circular!
Ely must be in the top ten most-beautiful-cathedrals in the world
I believe when it was built, Ely was surrounded by water. Imagine approaching it in medieval times. The cathedral mirrored by its own reflection. Must have been stupendous.
Yes my wife was singing in Ely cathedral a few weeks ago, magical location
You have a wife???? Who sings in a choir?
Mate, you've been posting on PB for about 107 years, and today we learn you have a wife
This is a bit like Nick Palmer "Swissnick" Day, only with wives and more wholesome
"What is wrong with displaying the Union flag or the St. George's Cross in a patriotic way, even if some far-right groups have co-opted it?"
@kategarraway and @adilray discuss the displaying of flags with Kehinde Andrews, Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University, who argues it's provocative and the St George's Cross has become a symbol of racism, while race, culture and identity writer Dr Rakib Ehsan thinks we should be proud of our flag after two councils sparked controversy by taking down St George's and Union flags."
Thing is, I would probably have given significance to his opinion ten years ago. Now I do not give a f*ck. Don't like it? - shut up or leave
That's it. Why should a majority of Brits warp, pervert and abase their sense of identity - the symbolism and self respect - to accommodate professionally aggrieved people like this? They have a grift and they're gonna grift. Even if t's honest, it is a grift. It's how they make a living
We had an empire. It was magnificent and the biggest ever. Sorry but there it is
ENOUGH
It’s GMB, it’s what they do. Pick a controversial subject. Get two diametrically opposed talking heads on and use it as clickbait on social media.
The sellers having made a five hundred percent profit on their home after 25 years coughing up would be more equitable than the poor old buyer having to front stamp duty at purchase.
This policy would be devastating for Labour in London and home counties marginal Labour seats, the AVERAGE London house price is now over £500k, the same in Hertfordshire
As it stands ANY government taxation kite is shot down by the hostile media and the Conservatives. I have no problem with a sales tax for a property that I have potentially nominally profited by £600,000 over 25 years (mortgage interest repayments notwithstanding).
We now seem to operate in a culture where we demand better social and civil services, better and more expensive defence but without any attempts at a taxation quid pro quo.
We want our cake and we want to eat it.
There have been years where my property went up in value by more than the wage I was being paid. The former attracts no tax, the latter does. Do we want to incentivise people to work, or to indulge in property speculation?
Anyone who suggests charging capital gains tax on private homes is signing their political obituary
There are a few places in the world that do charge capital gains tax on private homes. The Philippines, for example. South Africa (but only on the most expensive properties). In Portugal, if you sell a home and buy another, you don't pay CGT, but if you sell a home and don't buy another, then you do pay CGT.
The sellers having made a five hundred percent profit on their home after 25 years coughing up would be more equitable than the poor old buyer having to front stamp duty at purchase.
This policy would be devastating for Labour in London and home counties marginal Labour seats, the AVERAGE London house price is now over £500k, the same in Hertfordshire
As it stands ANY government taxation kite is shot down by the hostile media and the Conservatives. I have no problem with a sales tax for a property that I have potentially nominally profited by £600,000 over 25 years (mortgage interest repayments notwithstanding).
We now seem to operate in a culture where we demand better social and civil services, better and more expensive defence but without any attempts at a taxation quid pro quo.
We want our cake and we want to eat it.
however if you count what you paid , interest , insurance , maintenance , upgrading etc et cyou will find you have not actually made a fortune , unlike the ones who pay peppercorn rents for social housing , many are actually better off than home owners and have lived the high life on teh money they did not waste on houses.
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
The national property tax proposed is for houses over £500k and is a replacement for stamp duty.
The original document says that only houses under £500K would pay the local tax (ie council tax) if I have understood it right
Lol 0.54% of £500,000 is currently less than my council tax and my property isn't worth £500,000. This would lead to some bizarre situations in Nottinghamshire.
The claim is that a 0.44% local tax on the value under £500k with a floor of £800 would raise the same amount as council tax currently does. I assume the author has done the work on this - the document is published by a right-ish think tank.
Nottinghamshire residents would be delighted. The council would need a whole huge chunk more central grant though.
Part of the justification for this change is that it’s grossly unfair that some of the poorest parts of the UK pay more in council tax than Westminster residents do.
It wouldn't be the worst idea imo, but surely such a substantial reform would get a bit more than the half baked summer holiday kite flying that's happening now ?
The sellers having made a five hundred percent profit on their home after 25 years coughing up would be more equitable than the poor old buyer having to front stamp duty at purchase.
This policy would be devastating for Labour in London and home counties marginal Labour seats, the AVERAGE London house price is now over £500k, the same in Hertfordshire
As it stands ANY government taxation kite is shot down by the hostile media and the Conservatives. I have no problem with a sales tax for a property that I have potentially nominally profited by £600,000 over 25 years (mortgage interest repayments notwithstanding).
We now seem to operate in a culture where we demand better social and civil services, better and more expensive defence but without any attempts at a taxation quid pro quo.
We want our cake and we want to eat it.
There have been years where my property went up in value by more than the wage I was being paid. The former attracts no tax, the latter does. Do we want to incentivise people to work, or to indulge in property speculation?
Anyone who suggests charging capital gains tax on private homes is signing their political obituary
There are a few places in the world that do charge capital gains tax on private homes. The Philippines, for example. South Africa (but only on the most expensive properties). In Portugal, if you sell a home and buy another, you don't pay CGT, but if you sell a home and don't buy another, then you do pay CGT.
I doubt UK homeowners are interested in other countries tax policies on this subject
It is pure poison for any party even suggesting it
She loves history, churches, geology, poetry, and surreal jokes
Which is kinda handy as these are many of my favourite things as well
Did you go up it? It costs, but it's worth it. Some of the paintings open up and you can look down...
It's just so incredibly beautiful
I've only beem once before, and that was about 25 years ago. So this was almost like my first visit
Stunning. Just stunning. When I first went in I thought, OK, this is like one of the great French cathedrals - Amiens or Reims - very lovely, but lacking Noom
And then we got to the Octagon and the Noom comes from the sheer effrontery of the architecture. The absurd, dreamy idea of this floating geometrical ceiling-from-heaven, my God the Noom kicks in then. Oh yes. Verily, and yea
Also, the Lady Chapel. Also, the fact it was founded in about 670AD by an Anglo-Saxon princess. Also, the Anglo-Saxon warlords and bishops interred in one of the prettier chantries, including some earl who died at the Battle of Maldon. Also, the presence nearby of Grimes Graves in the Breckland (which we both visited for the first time)
We had a brilliant day out. England can still wildly surprise on the upside, and then some. 90 minutes from the North Circular!
Ely must be in the top ten most-beautiful-cathedrals in the world
I believe when it was built, Ely was surrounded by water. Imagine approaching it in medieval times. The cathedral mirrored by its own reflection. Must have been stupendous.
Yes my wife was singing in Ely cathedral a few weeks ago, magical location
You have a wife???? Who sings in a choir?
Mate, you've been posting on PB for about 107 years, and today we learn you have a wife
This is a bit like Nick Palmer "Swissnick" Day, only with wives and more wholesome
To be fair @HYUFD has mentioned his wife on occasions and I think it is wonderful she sings in Ely choir
What on earth is Reeves thinking with all these ridiculous taxation ideas for housing; seemingly on top of council tax
The best thing to do is scrap Council Tax, scrap Stamp Duty and replace with a simple, percentage tax on property values.
I expect however that she'll attempt to introduce a new tax without abolishing either Council Tax or Stamp Duty, which would be the worst thing to do.
Erm, that's the proposal. Maybe not a simple, single % but otherwise what you ask:
"First, the stamp duty land tax should be replaced with a national proportional property tax, levied on house values above £500,000. This rate would be set by central government. An annual rate of 0.54%, with a 0.278% supplement on values over £1m would raise the same amount as stamp duty."
"Second, council tax should be replaced with a local proportional property tax, levied on house values up to £500,000 with a minimum annual payment of £800. The rate would be set by local authorities. A rate of 0.44% would raise the same amount of revenue as council tax."
(original policy document)
That's the original proposal, which is a good one. Please give me any link that says this is what Reeves is proposing, which is a different matter.
I won't hold my breath on Reeves doing the right thing, or count any chickens before they're hatched.
Let me caveat by saying some I support some sort of switch to land tax to better use land in this country, however, for a Government who are already as unpopular as they are to try this is "highly courageous"
From what I've heard the plan is to design it so that people in the North pay less and people in the South pay more. This is going to create huge numbers of winners and losers. If you tell people they have to pay a bit more to support their local services then they my grudgingly accept. If you tell them they have to pay more to reduce bills for other people they'll be furious.
Worth noting how many MPs Lab have now in the regions most likely to be impacted:
Greater London - 57/75 South East - 35/91 South West - 22/58 Eastern - 26/61
I'm not sure that's the case actually. Council tax is so imbalanced even flats in central London could see a cut of it's a flat percentage. I have a nice flat in Edinburgh and it comes out roughly the same at 0.5%, meanwhile vast swathes of the Red Wall get big tax cuts.
It's big houses in the Shires that get screwed, but that's hardly Labour swing voters.
E.g. it would mean a tax cut for a Band A flat in Middlesbrough of up to 90%.
A rather gruesome sight in our garden: amid a heap of feathers a pigeon's body with a decapitated head and no head to be found. No sign of the corpse having been eaten. Could it be a fox?
Sounds like the work of a hawk to me.
Pigeons are so dozy I've seen them lined up on the fence watching one of their own being torn to shreds just feet away. Hawks feast on these stupid birds.
"What is wrong with displaying the Union flag or the St. George's Cross in a patriotic way, even if some far-right groups have co-opted it?"
@kategarraway and @adilray discuss the displaying of flags with Kehinde Andrews, Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University, who argues it's provocative and the St George's Cross has become a symbol of racism, while race, culture and identity writer Dr Rakib Ehsan thinks we should be proud of our flag after two councils sparked controversy by taking down St George's and Union flags."
Thing is, I would probably have given significance to his opinion ten years ago. Now I do not give a f*ck. Don't like it? - shut up or leave
That's it. Why should a majority of Brits warp, pervert and abase their sense of identity - the symbolism and self respect - to accommodate professionally aggrieved people like this? They have a grift and they're gonna grift. Even if t's honest, it is a grift. It's how they make a living
We had an empire. It was magnificent and the biggest ever. Sorry but there it is
ENOUGH
It’s GMB, it’s what they do. Pick a controversial subject. Get two diametrically opposed talking heads on and use it as clickbait on social media.
She loves history, churches, geology, poetry, and surreal jokes
Which is kinda handy as these are many of my favourite things as well
Did you go up it? It costs, but it's worth it. Some of the paintings open up and you can look down...
It's just so incredibly beautiful
I've only beem once before, and that was about 25 years ago. So this was almost like my first visit
Stunning. Just stunning. When I first went in I thought, OK, this is like one of the great French cathedrals - Amiens or Reims - very lovely, but lacking Noom
And then we got to the Octagon and the Noom comes from the sheer effrontery of the architecture. The absurd, dreamy idea of this floating geometrical ceiling-from-heaven, my God the Noom kicks in then. Oh yes. Verily, and yea
Also, the Lady Chapel. Also, the fact it was founded in about 670AD by an Anglo-Saxon princess. Also, the Anglo-Saxon warlords and bishops interred in one of the prettier chantries, including some earl who died at the Battle of Maldon. Also, the presence nearby of Grimes Graves in the Breckland (which we both visited for the first time)
We had a brilliant day out. England can still wildly surprise on the upside, and then some. 90 minutes from the North Circular!
Ely must be in the top ten most-beautiful-cathedrals in the world
I believe when it was built, Ely was surrounded by water. Imagine approaching it in medieval times. The cathedral mirrored by its own reflection. Must have been stupendous.
Yes my wife was singing in Ely cathedral a few weeks ago, magical location
You have a wife???? Who sings in a choir?
Mate, you've been posting on PB for about 107 years, and today we learn you have a wife
This is a bit like Nick Palmer "Swissnick" Day, only with wives and more wholesome
What on earth is Reeves thinking with all these ridiculous taxation ideas for housing; seemingly on top of council tax
The best thing to do is scrap Council Tax, scrap Stamp Duty and replace with a simple, percentage tax on property values.
I expect however that she'll attempt to introduce a new tax without abolishing either Council Tax or Stamp Duty, which would be the worst thing to do.
Erm, that's the proposal. Maybe not a simple, single % but otherwise what you ask:
"First, the stamp duty land tax should be replaced with a national proportional property tax, levied on house values above £500,000. This rate would be set by central government. An annual rate of 0.54%, with a 0.278% supplement on values over £1m would raise the same amount as stamp duty."
"Second, council tax should be replaced with a local proportional property tax, levied on house values up to £500,000 with a minimum annual payment of £800. The rate would be set by local authorities. A rate of 0.44% would raise the same amount of revenue as council tax."
(original policy document)
That's the original proposal, which is a good one. Please give me any link that says this is what Reeves is proposing, which is a different matter.
I won't hold my breath on Reeves doing the right thing, or count any chickens before they're hatched.
Let me caveat by saying some I support some sort of switch to land tax to better use land in this country, however, for a Government who are already as unpopular as they are to try this is "highly courageous"
From what I've heard the plan is to design it so that people in the North pay less and people in the South pay more. This is going to create huge numbers of winners and losers. If you tell people they have to pay a bit more to support their local services then they my grudgingly accept. If you tell them they have to pay more to reduce bills for other people they'll be furious.
Worth noting how many MPs Lab have now in the regions most likely to be impacted:
Greater London - 57/75 South East - 35/91 South West - 22/58 Eastern - 26/61
I'm not sure that's the case actually. Council tax is so imbalanced even flats in central London could see a cut of it's a flat percentage. I have a nice flat in Edinburgh and it comes out roughly the same at 0.5%, meanwhile vast swathes of the Red Wall get big tax cuts.
It's big houses in the Shires that get screwed, but that's hardly Labour swing voters.
Labour have constituencies in the shires now though like Banbury, Basingstoke and Hitchin. Where I am 500k gets you a fairly middle of the road 3 bed house
She loves history, churches, geology, poetry, and surreal jokes
Which is kinda handy as these are many of my favourite things as well
Did you go up it? It costs, but it's worth it. Some of the paintings open up and you can look down...
It's just so incredibly beautiful
I've only beem once before, and that was about 25 years ago. So this was almost like my first visit
Stunning. Just stunning. When I first went in I thought, OK, this is like one of the great French cathedrals - Amiens or Reims - very lovely, but lacking Noom
And then we got to the Octagon and the Noom comes from the sheer effrontery of the architecture. The absurd, dreamy idea of this floating geometrical ceiling-from-heaven, my God the Noom kicks in then. Oh yes. Verily, and yea
Also, the Lady Chapel. Also, the fact it was founded in about 670AD by an Anglo-Saxon princess. Also, the Anglo-Saxon warlords and bishops interred in one of the prettier chantries, including some earl who died at the Battle of Maldon. Also, the presence nearby of Grimes Graves in the Breckland (which we both visited for the first time)
We had a brilliant day out. England can still wildly surprise on the upside, and then some. 90 minutes from the North Circular!
Ely must be in the top ten most-beautiful-cathedrals in the world
I believe when it was built, Ely was surrounded by water. Imagine approaching it in medieval times. The cathedral mirrored by its own reflection. Must have been stupendous.
Yes my wife was singing in Ely cathedral a few weeks ago, magical location
Mrs Romford and one of the Romford Things were singing there a few weeks ago, as part of a nationwide youth choir course.
There is a lot of quiet harmless good in the nation.
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
If must have taxes - and sadly I don't really see any alternative - then I prefer taxes which discourage the inefficient use of scarce resources.
I really don't like taxes that prevent the market from clearing*: like stamp duty.
Gently discouraging people from having homes larger than they actually need is probably a net benefit. (Are there losers? Sure there are. But the winners in terms of greater housing availability are surely more than the losers.)
* Yes, I know the market always clears.
But how does CGT on primary residence encourage older people to downsize? Surely it does the opposite as they'll just lock in and pass their primary residence on tax free up to £1m.
Old people very rarely actually do downsize, unless its for health reasons. People without a mortgage are generally settled and happy in their homes and don't want to move.
We should simply be building lots more family homes for people to move into, rather than magically expecting old people to uproot their lives by downsizing which doesn't happen, so young people have no actual homes to move into.
Quite a few downsize by their late 70s, they don't want the hassle of a large detached house to run and would prefer a flat or bungalow, especially if they are a widow or widower too
Really, quite a few?
Most widows or widowers I've known are in no fit state to go through the upheaval of moving, unless its to go into a care home. Do you have any actual facts or figures as to the numbers actually doing this?
She loves history, churches, geology, poetry, and surreal jokes
Which is kinda handy as these are many of my favourite things as well
Did you go up it? It costs, but it's worth it. Some of the paintings open up and you can look down...
It's just so incredibly beautiful
I've only beem once before, and that was about 25 years ago. So this was almost like my first visit
Stunning. Just stunning. When I first went in I thought, OK, this is like one of the great French cathedrals - Amiens or Reims - very lovely, but lacking Noom
And then we got to the Octagon and the Noom comes from the sheer effrontery of the architecture. The absurd, dreamy idea of this floating geometrical ceiling-from-heaven, my God the Noom kicks in then. Oh yes. Verily, and yea
Also, the Lady Chapel. Also, the fact it was founded in about 670AD by an Anglo-Saxon princess. Also, the Anglo-Saxon warlords and bishops interred in one of the prettier chantries, including some earl who died at the Battle of Maldon. Also, the presence nearby of Grimes Graves in the Breckland (which we both visited for the first time)
We had a brilliant day out. England can still wildly surprise on the upside, and then some. 90 minutes from the North Circular!
Ely must be in the top ten most-beautiful-cathedrals in the world
I believe when it was built, Ely was surrounded by water. Imagine approaching it in medieval times. The cathedral mirrored by its own reflection. Must have been stupendous.
Yes my wife was singing in Ely cathedral a few weeks ago, magical location
You have a wife???? Who sings in a choir?
Mate, you've been posting on PB for about 107 years, and today we learn you have a wife
This is a bit like Nick Palmer "Swissnick" Day, only with wives and more wholesome
Discussed this morning. The Guardian write-up of this is awful & confuses who is being taxed & when.
Under this proposal the seller is not being taxed - the buyer is being taxed an annual % property tax after they purchase the property as a replacement for stamp duty.
As I commented earlier, it honestly looks like the journalist in question shoved that document into an LLM, asked it to summarise the document & then published whatever bullshit the LLM spat out. A poor show frankly.
Presumably on top of their council tax ?
Who’d buy in those circumstances ?
The national property tax proposed is for houses over £500k and is a replacement for stamp duty.
The original document says that only houses under £500K would pay the local tax (ie council tax) if I have understood it right
Lol 0.54% of £500,000 is currently less than my council tax and my property isn't worth £500,000. This would lead to some bizarre situations in Nottinghamshire.
The claim is that a 0.44% local tax on the value under £500k with a floor of £800 would raise the same amount as council tax currently does. I assume the author has done the work on this - the document is published by a right-ish think tank.
Nottinghamshire residents would be delighted. The council would need a whole huge chunk more central grant though.
Part of the justification for this change is that it’s grossly unfair that some of the poorest parts of the UK pay more in council tax than Westminster residents do.
If you set it nationally though, you’re arrogating yet more power to Westminster in the western world’s already most centralised polity.
Devolve it properly, plus devolution of income tax and corporation tax, but put together a Barnett style funding arrangement. Like Switzerland.
IIRC Tim Leunig’s proposal is to allow local councils to set the local rate on the value up to £500k, with a floor of £800.
Who knows what Reeves will go with? The odds of Labour making things worse by introducing a third property tax on top of stamp duty & council tax whilst leaving those untouched seem high sadly.
The sellers having made a five hundred percent profit on their home after 25 years coughing up would be more equitable than the poor old buyer having to front stamp duty at purchase.
This policy would be devastating for Labour in London and home counties marginal Labour seats, the AVERAGE London house price is now over £500k, the same in Hertfordshire
As it stands ANY government taxation kite is shot down by the hostile media and the Conservatives. I have no problem with a sales tax for a property that I have potentially nominally profited by £600,000 over 25 years (mortgage interest repayments notwithstanding).
We now seem to operate in a culture where we demand better social and civil services, better and more expensive defence but without any attempts at a taxation quid pro quo.
We want our cake and we want to eat it.
There have been years where my property went up in value by more than the wage I was being paid. The former attracts no tax, the latter does. Do we want to incentivise people to work, or to indulge in property speculation?
Anyone who suggests charging capital gains tax on private homes is signing their political obituary
Maybe because most people are greedy and want everyone else to pay for them. If I earn £100k this year I would pay £31,400 in tax and NI, if I earned £50k and my house increased in value by £50k then I would pay £10,500 in tax and NI. Why are we taxing work more than sitting on your arse?
A rather gruesome sight in our garden: amid a heap of feathers a pigeon's body with a decapitated head and no head to be found. No sign of the corpse having been eaten. Could it be a fox?
Sounds like the work of a hawk to me.
Pigeons are so dozy I've seen them lined up on the fence watching one of their own being torn to shreds just feet away. Hawks feast on these stupid birds.
I remember back in late 2019 seeing a hawk savage a dove over our front garden: the sort of augury they give to the special needs class of soothsayers. I had to clear away the corpse. It was surprisingly soft and almost weightless. I put it in the green bin.
She loves history, churches, geology, poetry, and surreal jokes
Which is kinda handy as these are many of my favourite things as well
Did you go up it? It costs, but it's worth it. Some of the paintings open up and you can look down...
It's just so incredibly beautiful
I've only beem once before, and that was about 25 years ago. So this was almost like my first visit
Stunning. Just stunning. When I first went in I thought, OK, this is like one of the great French cathedrals - Amiens or Reims - very lovely, but lacking Noom
And then we got to the Octagon and the Noom comes from the sheer effrontery of the architecture. The absurd, dreamy idea of this floating geometrical ceiling-from-heaven, my God the Noom kicks in then. Oh yes. Verily, and yea
Also, the Lady Chapel. Also, the fact it was founded in about 670AD by an Anglo-Saxon princess. Also, the Anglo-Saxon warlords and bishops interred in one of the prettier chantries, including some earl who died at the Battle of Maldon. Also, the presence nearby of Grimes Graves in the Breckland (which we both visited for the first time)
We had a brilliant day out. England can still wildly surprise on the upside, and then some. 90 minutes from the North Circular!
Ely must be in the top ten most-beautiful-cathedrals in the world
I believe when it was built, Ely was surrounded by water. Imagine approaching it in medieval times. The cathedral mirrored by its own reflection. Must have been stupendous.
Yes my wife was singing in Ely cathedral a few weeks ago, magical location
You have a wife???? Who sings in a choir?
Mate, you've been posting on PB for about 107 years, and today we learn you have a wife
This is a bit like Nick Palmer "Swissnick" Day, only with wives and more wholesome
@leon where have you been? @hyufd has talked about his wife numerous times and posted here when he got married. If memory serves me right she works for the church at Oxford Uni. Do I have that right @hyufd?
A rather gruesome sight in our garden: amid a heap of feathers a pigeon's body with a decapitated head and no head to be found. No sign of the corpse having been eaten. Could it be a fox?
Sounds like the work of a hawk to me.
Pigeons are so dozy I've seen them lined up on the fence watching one of their own being torn to shreds just feet away. Hawks feast on these stupid birds.
I remember back in late 2019 seeing a hawk savage a dove over our front garden: the sort of augury they give to the special needs class of soothsayers. I had to clear away the corpse. It was surprisingly soft and almost weightless. I put it in the green bin.
I have a friend who's a professional magician, and who (surprise surprise) keeps doves.
Why are doves the preferred magic bird? I asked one evening over a glass of wine.
Because they fold up nice and small, he explained. And then he went out to the garden grabbed a dove and demonstrated how relatively relaxed they were about being folded up and chucked into a pocket.
Comments
We should simply be building lots more family homes for people to move into, rather than magically expecting old people to uproot their lives by downsizing which doesn't happen, so young people have no actual homes to move into.
Imposing CGT or a sale levy will kill liquidity, hence stopping boomers selling the family home, hence stopping young couples starting a family from buying the bigger home, hence blocking people from buying starter homes.
An illiquid housing market is exactly what we need to avoid. There need to be fewer property taxes, not more.
Where has that been mentioned?
I won't hold my breath on Reeves doing the right thing, or count any chickens before they're hatched.
It is August still.
But they won't do that because, reasons, human rights, traitors. This stuff is going to see them ANNIHILATED at the next GE
Property is always difficult though. DM headlines about Labour taxing poor Granny in her five bed house in Kensington are not to be born apparently.
As long as that tax is indexed to local house prices it works.
We now seem to operate in a culture where we demand better social and civil services, better and more expensive defence but without any attempts at a taxation quid pro quo.
We want our cake and we want to eat it.
Kite flying a proposal to impose it on properties > £1.5million.
I would suggest another longer term solution - focus on medical research into dementia as that drives a lot of the need for care homes
From Alzheimer's UK:
Dementia research is already lagging some way behind other comparable diseases when it comes to government funding.
The economic impact of dementia to our society each year is £26 billion, more than cancer and chronic heart disease combined, with over 80% of the cost carried by social and informal care.
In 2017/18, government investment in dementia research was just £82.5m, equivalent to 0.3% of the total annual cost of dementia. By contrast, government funding for cancer research stood at £269 million in 2015/16 – 1.6% of cancer’s £16.4 billion annual cost to the UK.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_births
It will surprise no one to discover the Vatican is last on the list, but it still managed to register two births. Do they have birthright citizenship, do you know?
There are ways of reducing the tax burden by leaving money in the US. Of course, the US is a stable democracy with a healthy economy, so that would be a perfectly safe thing to do. It's not like the US is going to elect a President who collapses the value of the dollar and supercharges inflation or anything. The US isn't going to slap a tax on remittances leaving the country all of a sudden. Nothing to worry about at all.
Moaning "Sharon....".
I would like to kidnap and torture politicians who implement them.
But can't see that proposed by Reeves or err "Treasury officials"
As ever, a simple annual property tax indexed to your postcode HPI and based on the last transaction price is the solution.
So you buy for £100k. You make £50k improvements. House prices increase by 25%. You pay tax on £125k, even though the house is worth £150k.
You seem to be the one obsessed here.
Instead calamity Rachel seems to want to whack a new tax on those home owners with homes of the average house price in London and some home counties, an act of political suicide for Labour MPs in marginals there
Indeed it is possible one of our children will buy it from our estate continuing it's family ownership
It may have been unspoken, but various policies have abetted it.
As a result we've a housing system which doesn't work.
Now something has to give.
A unit of the San Angeles ICE has been despatched to ProtectServe you.
Be well, citizen.
That made actually makes perfect sense. While you are keep the capital invested in a primary residence (either this property or another) it is tax free. If you choose to take the money out of primary residential housing then it is any other capital gain and should be taxed as such
Edit: say you buy a PPR for £500k and sell it for £1m.
That’s a capital gain of £500k which is taxed at CGT rates.
However if you invest £1m into a new PPR you get to defer the tax liability until such time as the money is released from the new PPR. (The new PPR also has a tax base of £1m so any future gains on that would be separately taxable)
Essentially this helps facilities buying bigger houses, but when you downsize you crystallise a taxable gain and/or when a house is sold/transferred on death a liability is also triggered)
Despite the fact that we will both be retired by the time it comes.
And neither of us have any desire to live in it.
Just a thing to have to liquidate upon her death.
Be much better for all our peace of mind to do it now.
From what I've heard the plan is to design it so that people in the North pay less and people in the South pay more. This is going to create huge numbers of winners and losers. If you tell people they have to pay a bit more to support their local services then they my grudgingly accept. If you tell them they have to pay more to reduce bills for other people they'll be furious.
Worth noting how many MPs Lab have now in the regions most likely to be impacted:
Greater London - 57/75
South East - 35/91
South West - 22/58
Eastern - 26/61
Major tax reform like this will only be done by a government with sufficient stamina, energy and f* you attitude to steamroller it through. Then in a few years pundits will say “actually that’s quite a good reform”. This government isn’t up for the fight.
https://x.com/GMB/status/1957707029583183915
"What is wrong with displaying the Union flag or the St. George's Cross in a patriotic way, even if some far-right groups have co-opted it?"
@kategarraway
and
@adilray
discuss the displaying of flags with Kehinde Andrews, Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University, who argues it's provocative and the St George's Cross has become a symbol of racism, while race, culture and identity writer Dr Rakib Ehsan thinks we should be proud of our flag after two councils sparked controversy by taking down St George's and Union flags."
Thing is, I would probably have given significance to his opinion ten years ago. Now I do not give a f*ck. Don't like it? - shut up or leave
That's it. Why should a majority of Brits warp, pervert and abase their sense of identity - the symbolism and self respect - to accommodate professionally aggrieved people like this? They have a grift and they're gonna grift. Even if t's honest, it is a grift. It's how they make a living
We had an empire. It was magnificent and the biggest ever. Sorry but there it is
ENOUGH
As part of this, have a law protecting Infrastructure of Public Interest (so attacking privately owned power lines which are part of the grid etc).
Fines up to 10x damage, plus 10 years in prison. Double if acting at the direct of another country or a proscribed organisation.
One thing farmers unions maybe regretted last time was not lobbying harder before the budget, the IHT ag reforms were supposedly finalised very close to budget day.
Will lobbying Labour MPs this far out make any difference to the potential various choices? She may be limited in choices for reforming Council tax if they can only bring that forward in England
Devolve it properly, plus devolution of income tax and corporation tax, but put together a Barnett style funding arrangement. Like Switzerland.
It's big houses in the Shires that get screwed, but that's hardly Labour swing voters.
Mate, you've been posting on PB for about 107 years, and today we learn you have a wife
This is a bit like Nick Palmer "Swissnick" Day, only with wives and more wholesome
It is pure poison for any party even suggesting it
Pigeons are so dozy I've seen them lined up on the fence watching one of their own being torn to shreds just feet away. Hawks feast on these stupid birds.
PUT OUT MORE FLAGS
There is a lot of quiet harmless good in the nation.
Most widows or widowers I've known are in no fit state to go through the upheaval of moving, unless its to go into a care home. Do you have any actual facts or figures as to the numbers actually doing this?
Who knows what Reeves will go with? The odds of Labour making things worse by introducing a third property tax on top of stamp duty & council tax whilst leaving those untouched seem high sadly.
Odd because it is non stop. You might think we are rum @malcolmg , but you don't tell us all the time.
Why are doves the preferred magic bird? I asked one evening over a glass of wine.
Because they fold up nice and small, he explained. And then he went out to the garden grabbed a dove and demonstrated how relatively relaxed they were about being folded up and chucked into a pocket.