If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
So you want those who can't buy a home, but have to rent, to pay a load more rent? A bit odd, surely?
The owner would pay the surcharge not the tenant. If the owner doesn't want to do so, they can always put the property on the market allowing the tenants to buy it.
But. If they were able to get a mortgage, why would they be renting? If you want everyone to be an owner-occupier you need a collapse in house prices. Nowt else will suffice.
If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
So wouldn't second home owning couples have one of the couple resident in each property?
Just have a tax of 1% on the value of each property per year, and get rid of banding.
That's much more sensible. We used to call it the 'rates'. The initial valuation exercise would be a bit of an issue, though.
Somehow we manage it in NZ
My Dad’s property is “re-rated” every year and if he doesn’t agree he can appeal.
One presumes in the age of Zoopla it is easier than ever.
Yes, it's possible to do, of course. But in the UK we start from no existing records. I blame Maggie.
And yet weirdly I can find several websites which tell me what my house is “worth”.
If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
So you want those who can't buy a home, but have to rent, to pay a load more rent? A bit odd, surely?
The owner would pay the surcharge not the tenant. If the owner doesn't want to do so, they can always put the property on the market allowing the tenants to buy it.
I think the suggestion is they would put up rents to cover it, so all it would do is shift the payment by the tenant from council tax to rent.
If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
Umm, I think you need to revise the meaning of externality.
An externality is a cost or benefit caused by a producer that is not financially occurred or received by that producer.
In the case of owning other people's homes, there are multiple externalities that result from that. It prevents the occupier from buying it (as they could if it was on the market or eg with Right To Buy if it was owned by the Council) and as a result it has the effect of increasing crime rates and all the other issues that are associated with lower home ownership. Those are all externalities, just like pollution.
It'd be less of an issue if we had complete freedom to build other homes instead - but that has its own externalities too or so others here like to say.
Just had confirmation that my iPhone 13 Pro Max 1TB is going to be delivered tomorrow.
Oh happy days.
I'll give you £100 for your iPhone 12 Pro Max. Final offer.
A 1TB phone memory just makes me blink in quiet incredulity. I clearly remember early PCs with 32K of memory.
Technically, you are comparing storage as that is what this iPhone has 1TB of. The iPhone 13 has 6GB of memory. Many early computers had 0 quick-access storage. Every time you turned them on they were completely reset. You would have to load programs (slowly) off tape, or if you were lucky, floppy disk.
Having said that, I have no idea how people can use 1TB of storage on a phone. A tablet I can understand if you use it to create/edit content. My phone has 64GB which is more than enough for my needs. Particularly as pretty much all content is streamed these days with little need to store it permanently on the device.
Are you kidding? @SeanT's phone porn stash is almost 2TB, and that's ignoring all the stuff on his laptop and tablet.
If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
So you want those who can't buy a home, but have to rent, to pay a load more rent? A bit odd, surely?
The owner would pay the surcharge not the tenant. If the owner doesn't want to do so, they can always put the property on the market allowing the tenants to buy it.
Don't be silly. Many people have to rent, for multiple reasons. Increased costs will just be passed on to them, like any other costs.
How much would it help with the campaign to stop climate change if people stopped buying smartphones whenever a new one was released?
Apple are internally carbon neutral and will be totally by 2030.
Yeah, that doesn't really mean much considering where their kit is manufactured, and manufacturing's where most of the damage is done ...
(This doesn't just apply to Apple; it's true for all manufacturers. As an example, chip design is massively energy-intensive - TSMC have announced they'll be zero carbon by 2050...)
The entire manufacturing process will be carbon neutral by 2030.
Yeah, I cry bs on that. Creative accounting at best.
If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
So you want those who can't buy a home, but have to rent, to pay a load more rent? A bit odd, surely?
The owner would pay the surcharge not the tenant. If the owner doesn't want to do so, they can always put the property on the market allowing the tenants to buy it.
I think the suggestion is they would put up rents to cover it, so all it would do is shift the payment by the tenant from council tax to rent.
In part, depending on rental price elasticity.
House prices would also fall, or at least growth would be tempered, due to the new recurring liability.
If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
So wouldn't second home owning couples have one of the couple resident in each property?
Just have a tax of 1% on the value of each property per year, and get rid of banding.
That's much more sensible. We used to call it the 'rates'. The initial valuation exercise would be a bit of an issue, though.
Nah.
Just do what the French do, and have self declaration. And then every year, the government buys a few thousand homes with the required uplift from people who took the piss.
Have the owners pay the tax at the self-declared rate . . .
And you could always extend right-to-buy to tenants to buy the property at the declared rate.
If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
Umm, I think you need to revise the meaning of externality.
An externality is a cost or benefit caused by a producer that is not financially occurred or received by that producer.
In the case of owning other people's homes, there are multiple externalities that result from that. It prevents the occupier from buying it (as they could if it was on the market or eg with Right To Buy if it was owned by the Council) and as a result it has the effect of increasing crime rates and all the other issues that are associated with lower home ownership. Those are all externalities, just like pollution.
It'd be less of an issue if we had complete freedom to build other homes instead - but that has its own externalities too or so others here like to say.
Renting doesn't increase crime rates in and of itself. Or Germany would be unliveable.
If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
So wouldn't second home owning couples have one of the couple resident in each property?
Just have a tax of 1% on the value of each property per year, and get rid of banding.
That's much more sensible. We used to call it the 'rates'. The initial valuation exercise would be a bit of an issue, though.
Somehow we manage it in NZ
My Dad’s property is “re-rated” every year and if he doesn’t agree he can appeal.
One presumes in the age of Zoopla it is easier than ever.
Yes, it's possible to do, of course. But in the UK we start from no existing records. I blame Maggie.
And yet weirdly I can find several websites which tell me what my house is “worth”.
PPS - and might IoM play a major role in UK application to TTP, given that UK's Pacific link is Pitcairn Island, where many locals are of Manx heritage?
I remember an ill fated Manxman at my Medical School who took the Rugby Club on tour of his island. They all got deported when the Rugby Club decided to take the 3 legged sign that they saw as a souvenir. Unfortunately it was on their parliament...
Coolest thing about them is, their judges are called Deemsters. I think that has a real Dredd vibe about it.
Deem stems from the same word as doom. Doomsday derives its apocalyptic mean from the sense of judgement day. So, more Terminator than Dredd...
But there is a Judge Doom, IIRC. And Judge Dredd is inherently a judge-on-the-spot chappie anyway.
Edit: Ignore. Cross-wiring in brain. Doom is in Roger Rabbit. Apols.
That swooshing sound is all the cash needed for people to actually eat and house themselves swirling it’s way to San Francisco so that Zuckerberg can continue to fuck the public sphere.
If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
So wouldn't second home owning couples have one of the couple resident in each property?
Just have a tax of 1% on the value of each property per year, and get rid of banding.
That's much more sensible. We used to call it the 'rates'. The initial valuation exercise would be a bit of an issue, though.
Somehow we manage it in NZ
My Dad’s property is “re-rated” every year and if he doesn’t agree he can appeal.
One presumes in the age of Zoopla it is easier than ever.
Yes, it's possible to do, of course. But in the UK we start from no existing records. I blame Maggie.
And yet weirdly I can find several websites which tell me what my house is “worth”.
Yeah. Websites.
They’re not very wrong though. So far as I can tell.
Hugo Lowell @hugolowell Wow — Former Trump advisor Steve Bannon says on his War Room podcast he met with Trump and Giuliani the night before Jan. 6 to discuss how to “kill the Biden presidency”, a potential admission of sedition. 6:25 pm · 23 Sep 2021
They might return to power, that's not nothing.
But punishment? No.
I've justed started reading Bob Woodward's first book about the Trump Presidency, — Fear, which is followed by Rage and the recently published Peril — even less than 20% of the way into the book I'm thinking "why the hell aren't these arseholes in prison?"
Even as someone who spent way too much time following what Trump was up to and reading article after article about him it's shocking to see just how dangerous Trump was from the get-go. The first thing in the book is staff hiding memos from Trump so that he doesn't inadvertantly prevent the US from getting an early warning of a North Korean nuclear attack.
If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
Umm, I think you need to revise the meaning of externality.
An externality is a cost or benefit caused by a producer that is not financially occurred or received by that producer.
In the case of owning other people's homes, there are multiple externalities that result from that. It prevents the occupier from buying it (as they could if it was on the market or eg with Right To Buy if it was owned by the Council) and as a result it has the effect of increasing crime rates and all the other issues that are associated with lower home ownership. Those are all externalities, just like pollution.
It'd be less of an issue if we had complete freedom to build other homes instead - but that has its own externalities too or so others here like to say.
Renting doesn't increase crime rates in and of itself. Or Germany would be unliveable.
Germany clearly is unliveable, otherwise they wouldn't have kept trying to invade their neighbours.
If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
So you want those who can't buy a home, but have to rent, to pay a load more rent? A bit odd, surely?
The owner would pay the surcharge not the tenant. If the owner doesn't want to do so, they can always put the property on the market allowing the tenants to buy it.
Don't be silly. Many people have to rent, for multiple reasons. Increased costs will just be passed on to them, like any other costs.
Only if they could get away with passing it on, which they might not be able to do so eg if more houses are coming on the market.
Plus I'd exempt Councils from the Tax (so they'd be able to "compete" at an advantage) since Council-owned homes have Right To Buy so the issue its addressing has been removed.
That swooshing sound is all the cash needed for people to actually eat and house themselves swirling it’s way to San Francisco so that Zuckerberg can continue to fuck the public sphere.
More police More hospital beds More teachers New IT systems Spend spend spend
The question is how the hell do you pay for it all? We have had 2 big crises in the GFC and COVID. We also have the future challenges of social care and climate change.
Our debt to GDP ratio is now around 100%. Taxes are going up to record levels.
Not a lot on how Lab overcome their weaknesses on the economy and public spending
Starmer needs to come out with a big plan on taxing wealth, making it clear that the 99% won't be affected. It's not that hard really.
It has its problems but a 95% tax on all celebrities including footballers would be a good start
Bless! How do define 'celebrity'?
Those multi millionaire, billionaire film stars, pop stars and footballers taking home £400,000 a week to begin with, but of course they will no doubt receive a pass as they are usually of the left
I dont think that was Mr Pointer's, er, point. You've already just excluded plenty of less wealthy celebrities, its just not possible to target 'celebrities' precisely. John Curtice has celebrity in politics but most wouldn't think of him.
I am aware that it is not practical but their wealth needs heavily taxing
I don’t really care how much footballers earn.
I DO care that US billionaires have seen their wealth rise by ONE THIRD during the pandemic, which amounts to ONE TRILLION DOLLARS.
I assume the very wealthy in the U.K. have seen similar gains.
Why are we all letting the 0.01% fuck us over?
That ‘wealth’, is in stock price valuations, rather than cash in the bank. Yours and my pension funds have also gone up considerably during the pandemic, thanks to investments in those very same companies.
No one ever seems to point out that those same billionaires had 'lost' shedloads of money when share prices collapsed at the start of the pandemic. It's all pretty meaningless stuff.
No. Wake up.
For years we were assured that the very wealthy were there on merit, that wealth was a return on “hard work” and “talent”, and that wealth would trickle down.
If it was true-ish once, it’s a bizarre lie now.
Globalisation, financialisation, and regressive tax regimes have sustained and nourished an elite who get richer and richer and richer.
Meanwhile, those on universal credit are about to face a double whammy of income cuts and energy price hikes.
It’s indefensible.
Yes, indeed. Piketty regards himself, ultimately, as a defender of capitalism, for instance, and his work on the increasing concentration and feudalisation of quite a sizeable proportion of wealth is basically indisputable.
I'm about as far from a socialist as it's possible to get, and even I am infuriated by how the super-rich benefit from QE, asset inflation and yet get away with paying bugger all.
It's about fairness for me. That's it. If the tax base changes then so must the tax.
We've introduced plenty of new taxes in the past, including income tax, NI and VAT, let's work out how to tap it mechanistically first and we can then politically debate the rate.
The essential truth of this is uncontrovertible.
Are the Labour Party preparing the ideological ground for this?
My arse they are.
You see, on here tonight we've got myself, yourself and Casino all saying taxes should probably go up and asset based taxes should also be examined seriously. Where the fuck are Labour on this?! Why aren't they out there sticking 5% annual surcharges on landlords, why aren't they putting up the landlord stamp duty charge to 10% instead of the pitiful 3%?
I've been waiting for 18 months for Starmer to say anything about who is going to pay for COVID. The government has decided it will be the workers, which has lost my vote, Labour have an opportunity to win it by taxing the rentier asset owning classes but just seem to be afraid of their own shadow.
To be fair to Labour, the last election with an actual socialist in charge didn't go very well. Which way were they supposed to go after 2019?
An actual socialist who had stupid ideas and also didn't actually address any of these issues but instead said he would raise £100bn from people earning £80k+. We have the government, the Tory party, saying that they're putting up taxes but are going to feather the beds of their client vote. Where is Labour with their tax plan to say "everyone pays" or "those with the most property/assets will pay the most" it's not even very difficult and will get IMO, a lot of support if it's done right.
It will not get the support that matters.
The 50+ property owning plurality are spread well enough around the country that with FPTP you need to be wining a good percentage of them for a majority government of English/Welsh MPs.
People overlook that the oldies in red wall seats swung the North towards Boris. The working younglings voted Corbyn.
Which group is more winnable for Labour? Retired, brexiteers from the North and Midlands who don't like woke Londoners or younger centre right workers across the country who are being hit by new taxes?
Because there will be no wealth tax with a Conservative government. For Labour to win a majority they need a good wedge of the Boomer vote and the v-unfavourable demographics won't be changing for twenty plus years.
FWIW I think Labours only hope is an appeal to fairness, its one of our most base emotions and could cut through CCHQ's Topham Guerin Boomer memes.
Strictly speaking, we already have one. You can't escape council tax, and it is based on the value of your property (if ludicrously backdated to 1991) and you must pay thousands every year.
It has exemptions for students, disabled people and those on very low incomes, and I suspect similar ones would apply to an asset tax.
Except for renters. They pay without having the asset.
If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
Umm, I think you need to revise the meaning of externality.
An externality is a cost or benefit caused by a producer that is not financially occurred or received by that producer.
In the case of owning other people's homes, there are multiple externalities that result from that. It prevents the occupier from buying it (as they could if it was on the market or eg with Right To Buy if it was owned by the Council) and as a result it has the effect of increasing crime rates and all the other issues that are associated with lower home ownership. Those are all externalities, just like pollution.
It'd be less of an issue if we had complete freedom to build other homes instead - but that has its own externalities too or so others here like to say.
Renting doesn't increase crime rates in and of itself. Or Germany would be unliveable.
Germany clearly is unliveable, otherwise they wouldn't have kept trying to invade their neighbours.
Good point. Lebensraum. Hadn't thought of that. Think how the history of 20th century Euope would have been different if they'd taken a serious look at mass owner-occupying.
If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
So you want those who can't buy a home, but have to rent, to pay a load more rent? A bit odd, surely?
The owner would pay the surcharge not the tenant. If the owner doesn't want to do so, they can always put the property on the market allowing the tenants to buy it.
I think the suggestion is they would put up rents to cover it, so all it would do is shift the payment by the tenant from council tax to rent.
In part, depending on rental price elasticity.
House prices would also fall, or at least growth would be tempered, due to the new recurring liability.
Prices aren’t terribly elastic in most of the country, at least, as far as I can judge. The killer is the shortage of good alternatives.
If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
Umm, I think you need to revise the meaning of externality.
An externality is a cost or benefit caused by a producer that is not financially occurred or received by that producer.
In the case of owning other people's homes, there are multiple externalities that result from that. It prevents the occupier from buying it (as they could if it was on the market or eg with Right To Buy if it was owned by the Council) and as a result it has the effect of increasing crime rates and all the other issues that are associated with lower home ownership. Those are all externalities, just like pollution.
It'd be less of an issue if we had complete freedom to build other homes instead - but that has its own externalities too or so others here like to say.
Renting doesn't increase crime rates in and of itself. Or Germany would be unliveable.
Germany clearly is unliveable, otherwise they wouldn't have kept trying to invade their neighbours.
Good point. Lebensraum. Hadn't thought of that. Think how the history of 20th century Euope would have been different if they'd taken a serious look at mass owner-occupying.
They were just in too much of a Russia to sort it out within their existing borders.
If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
So you want those who can't buy a home, but have to rent, to pay a load more rent? A bit odd, surely?
The owner would pay the surcharge not the tenant. If the owner doesn't want to do so, they can always put the property on the market allowing the tenants to buy it.
I think the suggestion is they would put up rents to cover it, so all it would do is shift the payment by the tenant from council tax to rent.
In part, depending on rental price elasticity.
House prices would also fall, or at least growth would be tempered, due to the new recurring liability.
Prices aren’t terribly elastic in most of the country, at least, as far as I can judge. The killer is the shortage of good alternatives.
I think they are, actually. Was very interesting to see Covid impact on rents locally.
For those that don't know Liv Boeree is astrophysic PhD and former professional poker player and lets just say definitely not a GB News viewer type....
The simplest solution is to scrap council tax and stamp duty and replace it with 0.5%* per annum tax on property.
*Or whatever balances. The idea is to *start* down this line, not a massive course correction overnight.
Tax is paid by any property owner, including companies.
If old biddies can’t afford it, they can borrow against the value of their property from a government owned bank set up expressly for this purpose.
These ideas are politically suicidal. People who rent don't want to face large taxes once they achieve home ownership.
Except they already have to pay Council Tax today. And only owners would pay in the future which for an owner-occupier would be no different to being obliged to pay Council Tax as it stands.
The ones who'd lose out are those who have a property empire. Oh well, they can pay their dues, or they can sell up and the people who live in the homes can buy them instead - and no green areas need building on for that purpose so everyone who objects to planning permission being granted should love that!
If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
Umm, I think you need to revise the meaning of externality.
An externality is a cost or benefit caused by a producer that is not financially occurred or received by that producer.
In the case of owning other people's homes, there are multiple externalities that result from that. It prevents the occupier from buying it (as they could if it was on the market or eg with Right To Buy if it was owned by the Council) and as a result it has the effect of increasing crime rates and all the other issues that are associated with lower home ownership. Those are all externalities, just like pollution.
It'd be less of an issue if we had complete freedom to build other homes instead - but that has its own externalities too or so others here like to say.
Renting doesn't increase crime rates in and of itself. Or Germany would be unliveable.
Germany clearly is unliveable, otherwise they wouldn't have kept trying to invade their neighbours.
Good point. Lebensraum. Hadn't thought of that. Think how the history of 20th century Euope would have been different if they'd taken a serious look at mass owner-occupying.
Italy's spazio vitale was a similar concept, and Italian home ownership rates are higher than Britain. And Bitain conquered a quarter of the globe.
If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
So wouldn't second home owning couples have one of the couple resident in each property?
Just have a tax of 1% on the value of each property per year, and get rid of banding.
That's much more sensible. We used to call it the 'rates'. The initial valuation exercise would be a bit of an issue, though.
Somehow we manage it in NZ
My Dad’s property is “re-rated” every year and if he doesn’t agree he can appeal.
One presumes in the age of Zoopla it is easier than ever.
Yes, it's possible to do, of course. But in the UK we start from no existing records. I blame Maggie.
And yet weirdly I can find several websites which tell me what my house is “worth”.
Yeah. Websites.
The banks have to evaluate someones house every time they remortgage to calculate LTV. Pretending this is some special hurdle is ludicrous.
And what happens when USB-C isn't king anymore? Imagine this legislation a few years ago, we'd all be required to have Micro USB ports on everything today. Any stipulations for this to sunset/be revised? Or will people be fighting to finally overturn this in 5 yrs?
Boris more popular than the Tories, Labour more popular than Sir Keir
“Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer remain in minus net ratings, with Boris Johnson on -5 (up 1 point from last week) and Keir Starmer down 3 points in a week to -12.
Boris Johnson slightly out performs his own party with the Conservative Party on a -10 net favourability rating, down 3 points from last week, while Labour slightly outperforms its leader with the party on a -7 point net rating, down 3 points in the past week.”
For those that don't know Liv Boeree is astrophysic PhD and former professional poker player and lets just say definitely not a GB News viewer type....
If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
So wouldn't second home owning couples have one of the couple resident in each property?
Just have a tax of 1% on the value of each property per year, and get rid of banding.
That's much more sensible. We used to call it the 'rates'. The initial valuation exercise would be a bit of an issue, though.
Somehow we manage it in NZ
My Dad’s property is “re-rated” every year and if he doesn’t agree he can appeal.
One presumes in the age of Zoopla it is easier than ever.
Yes, it's possible to do, of course. But in the UK we start from no existing records. I blame Maggie.
And yet weirdly I can find several websites which tell me what my house is “worth”.
This is a completely solved problem except for niches cases such as newly built extensions - that isn’t covered by council tax either
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
Umm, I think you need to revise the meaning of externality.
An externality is a cost or benefit caused by a producer that is not financially occurred or received by that producer.
In the case of owning other people's homes, there are multiple externalities that result from that. It prevents the occupier from buying it (as they could if it was on the market or eg with Right To Buy if it was owned by the Council) and as a result it has the effect of increasing crime rates and all the other issues that are associated with lower home ownership. Those are all externalities, just like pollution.
It'd be less of an issue if we had complete freedom to build other homes instead - but that has its own externalities too or so others here like to say.
It is the difference between private cost and social cost. It arises because third parties are affected by some production or consumption activity. All costs are opportunity costs. Ownership is not a cost-bearing or cost-inducing activity. An externality arises as a result of an action, not a state of being like ownership. You are trying to twist the meaning of a well understood (by economists) concept to support an argument which does not bear this reinterpretation. You can make your argument without resort to this dissimulation.
If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
So you want those who can't buy a home, but have to rent, to pay a load more rent? A bit odd, surely?
The owner would pay the surcharge not the tenant. If the owner doesn't want to do so, they can always put the property on the market allowing the tenants to buy it.
I think the suggestion is they would put up rents to cover it, so all it would do is shift the payment by the tenant from council tax to rent.
In part, depending on rental price elasticity.
House prices would also fall, or at least growth would be tempered, due to the new recurring liability.
Prices aren’t terribly elastic in most of the country, at least, as far as I can judge. The killer is the shortage of good alternatives.
I think they are, actually. Was very interesting to see Covid impact on rents locally.
I think I’m right in saying you’re in London? I wouldn’t extrapolate nationwide from there.
From a personal point of view it’s striking to note how sticky rents are in South Staffs (where I live) Gloucs (where I let a house) much of the north of England (where my cousin lets several properties) and South and West Wales where many of my friends live.
If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
So wouldn't second home owning couples have one of the couple resident in each property?
Just have a tax of 1% on the value of each property per year, and get rid of banding.
That's much more sensible. We used to call it the 'rates'. The initial valuation exercise would be a bit of an issue, though.
Somehow we manage it in NZ
My Dad’s property is “re-rated” every year and if he doesn’t agree he can appeal.
One presumes in the age of Zoopla it is easier than ever.
Yes, it's possible to do, of course. But in the UK we start from no existing records. I blame Maggie.
And yet weirdly I can find several websites which tell me what my house is “worth”.
This is a completely solved problem except for niches cases such as newly built extensions - that isn’t covered by council tax either
Simple. Don’t tax them. At least not until the property is subsequently sold on.
The simpler the tax the better for everyone. Taxation 101.
If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
So you want those who can't buy a home, but have to rent, to pay a load more rent? A bit odd, surely?
The owner would pay the surcharge not the tenant. If the owner doesn't want to do so, they can always put the property on the market allowing the tenants to buy it.
I think the suggestion is they would put up rents to cover it, so all it would do is shift the payment by the tenant from council tax to rent.
In part, depending on rental price elasticity.
House prices would also fall, or at least growth would be tempered, due to the new recurring liability.
Prices aren’t terribly elastic in most of the country, at least, as far as I can judge. The killer is the shortage of good alternatives.
I think they are, actually. Was very interesting to see Covid impact on rents locally.
I think I’m right in saying you’re in London? I wouldn’t extrapolate nationwide from there.
From a personal point of view it’s striking to note how sticky rents are in South Staffs (where I live) Gloucs (where I let a house) much of the north of England (where my cousin lets several properties) and South and West Wales where many of my friends live.
Fair enough. Still, renters won’t be paying council tax under my proposal so it’s swings and roundabouts.
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you jeopordise those two issues summarised above.
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you run in to those two problems summarised above.
Switzerland has a wealth tax. So does New York (ie a property tax)
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
Umm, I think you need to revise the meaning of externality.
An externality is a cost or benefit caused by a producer that is not financially occurred or received by that producer.
In the case of owning other people's homes, there are multiple externalities that result from that. It prevents the occupier from buying it (as they could if it was on the market or eg with Right To Buy if it was owned by the Council) and as a result it has the effect of increasing crime rates and all the other issues that are associated with lower home ownership. Those are all externalities, just like pollution.
It'd be less of an issue if we had complete freedom to build other homes instead - but that has its own externalities too or so others here like to say.
It is the difference between private cost and social cost. It arises because third parties are affected by some production or consumption activity. All costs are opportunity costs. Ownership is not a cost-bearing or cost-inducing activity. An externality arises as a result of an action, not a state of being like ownership. You are trying to twist the meaning of a well understood (by economists) concept to support an argument which does not bear this reinterpretation. You can make your argument without resort to this dissimulation.
If there's no ongoing activity then I'm assuming there's no ongoing rent being charged? Because rent is to cover the activity of letting out the property is it not? So yes every time rent is charged that activity is happening.
Every time the landlord of a property charges rent on the person who lives in the property, without the person living there being able to buy the property they live in that activity is happening.
PPS - and might IoM play a major role in UK application to TTP, given that UK's Pacific link is Pitcairn Island, where many locals are of Manx heritage?
I remember an ill fated Manxman at my Medical School who took the Rugby Club on tour of his island. They all got deported when the Rugby Club decided to take the 3 legged sign that they saw as a souvenir. Unfortunately it was on their parliament...
The Manx do seem to suffer somewhat with students.
My brother was on the Middlesboro’ Uni Rugby tour to the IoM in 1998, which ended badly for ‘reasons’, and the team were, if not deported, told that their welcome would not be extended in future.
The following year, the Middlesboro’ Uni Ten Pin Bowling Team, turned up in the IoM… They didn’t bowl any 300s, but were quite good at rugby.
If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
So you want those who can't buy a home, but have to rent, to pay a load more rent? A bit odd, surely?
The owner would pay the surcharge not the tenant. If the owner doesn't want to do so, they can always put the property on the market allowing the tenants to buy it.
I think the suggestion is they would put up rents to cover it, so all it would do is shift the payment by the tenant from council tax to rent.
In part, depending on rental price elasticity.
House prices would also fall, or at least growth would be tempered, due to the new recurring liability.
Prices aren’t terribly elastic in most of the country, at least, as far as I can judge. The killer is the shortage of good alternatives.
I think they are, actually. Was very interesting to see Covid impact on rents locally.
I think I’m right in saying you’re in London? I wouldn’t extrapolate nationwide from there.
From a personal point of view it’s striking to note how sticky rents are in South Staffs (where I live) Gloucs (where I let a house) much of the north of England (where my cousin lets several properties) and South and West Wales where many of my friends live.
Been looking with my eldest for a property to rent as they have finished Uni. 6 month's up front rent. And that bar gets you on a shortlist for an interview with the landlord.
And what happens when USB-C isn't king anymore? Imagine this legislation a few years ago, we'd all be required to have Micro USB ports on everything today. Any stipulations for this to sunset/be revised? Or will people be fighting to finally overturn this in 5 yrs?
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you run in to those two problems summarised above.
Switzerland has a wealth tax. So does New York (ie a property tax)
Do they have a rental sector? Oh, they do.
You cannot compare Darlington with Zurich or New York.
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you jeopordise those two issues summarised above.
And it provides appropriate housing for transient people, like Fox jr2.
It really doesn't make sense to buy a place if you are going to be in it for less than three years or so.
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you jeopordise those two issues summarised above.
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you run in to those two problems summarised above.
Switzerland has a wealth tax. So does New York (ie a property tax)
Do they have a rental sector? Oh, they do.
You cannot compare Darlington with Zurich or New York.
Iceland votes on Saturday and there's a blizzard (sorry) of polls out this evening. The dilemma is the one with the most recent fieldwork had the smallest sample (just 909) while Gallup has polled 3,845 which is roughly 1.5% of the total number who voted in the last election.
In UK terms, that would be the equivalent of a poll with a sample of 495,000 people which is a tad larger than most UK polls.
Said Gallup poll has the following changes from the 2017 Althing election:
With MMR, the governing coalition is down 6.7 points.
As we all know, Iceland has six multi-member constituencies returning nine members each using the D'Hondt method with a further 9 "levelling" seats. There is a 5% threshold so Centre would be out based on MMR but safe based on Gallup.
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
Umm, I think you need to revise the meaning of externality.
An externality is a cost or benefit caused by a producer that is not financially occurred or received by that producer.
In the case of owning other people's homes, there are multiple externalities that result from that. It prevents the occupier from buying it (as they could if it was on the market or eg with Right To Buy if it was owned by the Council) and as a result it has the effect of increasing crime rates and all the other issues that are associated with lower home ownership. Those are all externalities, just like pollution.
It'd be less of an issue if we had complete freedom to build other homes instead - but that has its own externalities too or so others here like to say.
It is the difference between private cost and social cost. It arises because third parties are affected by some production or consumption activity. All costs are opportunity costs. Ownership is not a cost-bearing or cost-inducing activity. An externality arises as a result of an action, not a state of being like ownership. You are trying to twist the meaning of a well understood (by economists) concept to support an argument which does not bear this reinterpretation. You can make your argument without resort to this dissimulation.
If there's no ongoing activity then I'm assuming there's no ongoing rent being charged? Because rent is to cover the activity of letting out the property is it not? So yes every time rent is charged that activity is happening.
Every time the landlord of a property charges rent on the person who lives in the property, without the person living there being able to buy the property they live in that activity is happening.
Twaddle. You sometimes have some good insights and persuasive arguments. This is not one of them.
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you jeopordise those two issues summarised above.
Wealth taxes dont kill the rental sector, they would simply bring about a touch more balance. I don't think anyone supporting them on here doesnt want there to be a private rental sector at all, many just want it to be smaller. The PRS has expanded massively over the last 20 years, it seems incredibly unlikely that it is now at an optimal level that must be protected at all costs.
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you run in to those two problems summarised above.
Switzerland has a wealth tax. So does New York (ie a property tax)
Do they have a rental sector? Oh, they do.
You cannot compare Darlington with Zurich or New York.
The UK existed with a tiny private rental sector before 2000. Private rental is a huge brake on investment on existing property, owner occupiers are much more likely to spend money on a property than a landlord.
And what happens when USB-C isn't king anymore? Imagine this legislation a few years ago, we'd all be required to have Micro USB ports on everything today. Any stipulations for this to sunset/be revised? Or will people be fighting to finally overturn this in 5 yrs?
I get the intent, but if the regulations stop the adoption of something better that would be immensely stupid.
Its a solution looking for a problem.
Twenty years ago when every phone had a different charger that was stupid. But consumers said it was stupid and the industry sorted it out.
Now there's two modern standards (USB-C and lightning) and a third older standard (Micro USB) which just shows how standards need to change and why sticking to only one is stupid. If this had happened years ago would we have all still had to stick with Micro USB?
Why can't consumers choose from the choice of just two modern standards? Its not like there's thirty different ones anymore.
Iceland votes on Saturday and there's a blizzard (sorry) of polls out this evening. The dilemma is the one with the most recent fieldwork had the smallest sample (just 909) while Gallup has polled 3,845 which is roughly 1.5% of the total number who voted in the last election.
In UK terms, that would be the equivalent of a poll with a sample of 495,000 people which is a tad larger than most UK polls.
Said Gallup poll has the following changes from the 2017 Althing election:
With MMR, the governing coalition is down 6.7 points.
As we all know, Iceland has six multi-member constituencies returning nine members each using the D'Hondt method with a further 9 "levelling" seats. There is a 5% threshold so Centre would be out based on MMR but safe based on Gallup.
So who do the Independence Party want independence from?
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
Umm, I think you need to revise the meaning of externality.
An externality is a cost or benefit caused by a producer that is not financially occurred or received by that producer.
In the case of owning other people's homes, there are multiple externalities that result from that. It prevents the occupier from buying it (as they could if it was on the market or eg with Right To Buy if it was owned by the Council) and as a result it has the effect of increasing crime rates and all the other issues that are associated with lower home ownership. Those are all externalities, just like pollution.
It'd be less of an issue if we had complete freedom to build other homes instead - but that has its own externalities too or so others here like to say.
It is the difference between private cost and social cost. It arises because third parties are affected by some production or consumption activity. All costs are opportunity costs. Ownership is not a cost-bearing or cost-inducing activity. An externality arises as a result of an action, not a state of being like ownership. You are trying to twist the meaning of a well understood (by economists) concept to support an argument which does not bear this reinterpretation. You can make your argument without resort to this dissimulation.
If there's no ongoing activity then I'm assuming there's no ongoing rent being charged? Because rent is to cover the activity of letting out the property is it not? So yes every time rent is charged that activity is happening.
Every time the landlord of a property charges rent on the person who lives in the property, without the person living there being able to buy the property they live in that activity is happening.
Twaddle. You sometimes have some good insights and persuasive arguments. This is not one of them.
To continue, you would have to argue that the fact of renting as opposed to owning somehow affects someone else's costs (or benefits) in their economic activity.
For those that don't know Liv Boeree is astrophysic PhD and former professional poker player and lets just say definitely not a GB News viewer type....
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you jeopordise those two issues summarised above.
And it provides appropriate housing for transient people, like Fox jr2.
It really doesn't make sense to buy a place if you are going to be in it for less than three years or so.
Reducing the size of the rental sector is not the same as eliminating it. Better to shunt people who want to buy into buying by removing some of the obstacles. Careful not to get into the slippery slope fallacy, because if you do that you end up committing all sorts of other fallacies.
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
Umm, I think you need to revise the meaning of externality.
An externality is a cost or benefit caused by a producer that is not financially occurred or received by that producer.
In the case of owning other people's homes, there are multiple externalities that result from that. It prevents the occupier from buying it (as they could if it was on the market or eg with Right To Buy if it was owned by the Council) and as a result it has the effect of increasing crime rates and all the other issues that are associated with lower home ownership. Those are all externalities, just like pollution.
It'd be less of an issue if we had complete freedom to build other homes instead - but that has its own externalities too or so others here like to say.
It is the difference between private cost and social cost. It arises because third parties are affected by some production or consumption activity. All costs are opportunity costs. Ownership is not a cost-bearing or cost-inducing activity. An externality arises as a result of an action, not a state of being like ownership. You are trying to twist the meaning of a well understood (by economists) concept to support an argument which does not bear this reinterpretation. You can make your argument without resort to this dissimulation.
If there's no ongoing activity then I'm assuming there's no ongoing rent being charged? Because rent is to cover the activity of letting out the property is it not? So yes every time rent is charged that activity is happening.
Every time the landlord of a property charges rent on the person who lives in the property, without the person living there being able to buy the property they live in that activity is happening.
Twaddle. You sometimes have some good insights and persuasive arguments. This is not one of them.
Which part is wrong?
Do you deny that that act of letting out a property is an ongoing activity that is a paid for transaction via rent each month?
If letting out the property isn't an activity then what is the rent covering?
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
Umm, I think you need to revise the meaning of externality.
An externality is a cost or benefit caused by a producer that is not financially occurred or received by that producer.
In the case of owning other people's homes, there are multiple externalities that result from that. It prevents the occupier from buying it (as they could if it was on the market or eg with Right To Buy if it was owned by the Council) and as a result it has the effect of increasing crime rates and all the other issues that are associated with lower home ownership. Those are all externalities, just like pollution.
It'd be less of an issue if we had complete freedom to build other homes instead - but that has its own externalities too or so others here like to say.
It is the difference between private cost and social cost. It arises because third parties are affected by some production or consumption activity. All costs are opportunity costs. Ownership is not a cost-bearing or cost-inducing activity. An externality arises as a result of an action, not a state of being like ownership. You are trying to twist the meaning of a well understood (by economists) concept to support an argument which does not bear this reinterpretation. You can make your argument without resort to this dissimulation.
If there's no ongoing activity then I'm assuming there's no ongoing rent being charged? Because rent is to cover the activity of letting out the property is it not? So yes every time rent is charged that activity is happening.
Every time the landlord of a property charges rent on the person who lives in the property, without the person living there being able to buy the property they live in that activity is happening.
Twaddle. You sometimes have some good insights and persuasive arguments. This is not one of them.
To continue, you would have to argue that the fact of renting as opposed to owning somehow affects someone else's costs (or benefits) in their economic activity.
The fact of owning homes you don't occupy does affect someone else's costs or benefits in their economic activity yes. I already argued that.
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you run in to those two problems summarised above.
Switzerland has a wealth tax. So does New York (ie a property tax)
Do they have a rental sector? Oh, they do.
You cannot compare Darlington with Zurich or New York.
Why not?
Because houses cost nothing in Darlington. You can buy a house there for £30,000. Go in to the rural hinterlands of County Durham, and houses are being given away for next to nothing to first time buyers, if they do the place up.
Landlords coming in, buying the properties, doing them up and renting them out to people who have issues in their lives that mean that home ownership isn't right for them can only be regarded as a social good. They take the burden away from the state and generate economic activity.
And what happens when USB-C isn't king anymore? Imagine this legislation a few years ago, we'd all be required to have Micro USB ports on everything today. Any stipulations for this to sunset/be revised? Or will people be fighting to finally overturn this in 5 yrs?
I get the intent, but if the regulations stop the adoption of something better that would be immensely stupid.
Its a solution looking for a problem.
Twenty years ago when every phone had a different charger that was stupid. But consumers said it was stupid and the industry sorted it out.
Now there's two modern standards (USB-C and lightning) and a third older standard (Micro USB) which just shows how standards need to change and why sticking to only one is stupid. If this had happened years ago would we have all still had to stick with Micro USB?
Why can't consumers choose from the choice of just two modern standards? Its not like there's thirty different ones anymore.
If we were still in the EU, then maybe we could have stopped the initiative.
I don't expect that there will be a different phone model for the UK.
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you run in to those two problems summarised above.
Switzerland has a wealth tax. So does New York (ie a property tax)
Do they have a rental sector? Oh, they do.
You cannot compare Darlington with Zurich or New York.
Why not?
Because houses cost nothing in Darlington. You can buy a house there for £30,000. Go in to the rural hinterlands of County Durham, and houses are being given away for next to nothing to first time buyers, if they do the place up.
Landlords coming in, buying the properties, doing them up and renting them out to people who have issues in their lives that mean that home ownership isn't right for them can only be regarded as a social good. They take the burden away from the state and generate economic activity.
So what you are saying is that, in exchange for no more council tax, these landlords should not face a £150 per annum charge.
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you jeopordise those two issues summarised above.
Can you go through point 1 slowly for me ?
I've been round this before on here. So people present themselves as homeless. The Council have a duty to house them. There is no Council Housing. So the Council need private landlords. If there are no landlords, then there is nowhere to house these people.
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you jeopordise those two issues summarised above.
Can you go through point 1 slowly for me ?
I've been round this before on here. So people present themselves as homeless. The Council have a duty to house them. There is no Council Housing. So the Council need private landlords. If there are no landlords, then there is nowhere to house these people.
And what happens when USB-C isn't king anymore? Imagine this legislation a few years ago, we'd all be required to have Micro USB ports on everything today. Any stipulations for this to sunset/be revised? Or will people be fighting to finally overturn this in 5 yrs?
I get the intent, but if the regulations stop the adoption of something better that would be immensely stupid.
Its a solution looking for a problem.
Twenty years ago when every phone had a different charger that was stupid. But consumers said it was stupid and the industry sorted it out.
Now there's two modern standards (USB-C and lightning) and a third older standard (Micro USB) which just shows how standards need to change and why sticking to only one is stupid. If this had happened years ago would we have all still had to stick with Micro USB?
Why can't consumers choose from the choice of just two modern standards? Its not like there's thirty different ones anymore.
Well on a a personal level its annoying when I head to my parents house and Ive forgot my charger and they have only Apple ! Maybe the EU are thinking of me
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
Umm, I think you need to revise the meaning of externality.
An externality is a cost or benefit caused by a producer that is not financially occurred or received by that producer.
In the case of owning other people's homes, there are multiple externalities that result from that. It prevents the occupier from buying it (as they could if it was on the market or eg with Right To Buy if it was owned by the Council) and as a result it has the effect of increasing crime rates and all the other issues that are associated with lower home ownership. Those are all externalities, just like pollution.
It'd be less of an issue if we had complete freedom to build other homes instead - but that has its own externalities too or so others here like to say.
It is the difference between private cost and social cost. It arises because third parties are affected by some production or consumption activity. All costs are opportunity costs. Ownership is not a cost-bearing or cost-inducing activity. An externality arises as a result of an action, not a state of being like ownership. You are trying to twist the meaning of a well understood (by economists) concept to support an argument which does not bear this reinterpretation. You can make your argument without resort to this dissimulation.
If there's no ongoing activity then I'm assuming there's no ongoing rent being charged? Because rent is to cover the activity of letting out the property is it not? So yes every time rent is charged that activity is happening.
Every time the landlord of a property charges rent on the person who lives in the property, without the person living there being able to buy the property they live in that activity is happening.
Twaddle. You sometimes have some good insights and persuasive arguments. This is not one of them.
Which part is wrong?
Do you deny that that act of letting out a property is an ongoing activity that is a paid for transaction via rent each month?
If letting out the property isn't an activity then what is the rent covering?
"Do you deny that that act of letting out a property is an ongoing activity that is a paid for transaction via rent each month?". - Yes I do deny that. All economic activity is either consumption or production. In this case the economic activity is the consumption of housing by living in it, not the manner in which it is paid for.
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you jeopordise those two issues summarised above.
Can you go through point 1 slowly for me ?
I've been round this before on here. So people present themselves as homeless. The Council have a duty to house them. There is no Council Housing. So the Council need private landlords. If there are no landlords, then there is nowhere to house these people.
If landlords sell up because Council Tax has been replaced with a £150 per annum tax (on your numbers) then who would they have sold their homes to?
Or do you expect the homes to be demolished?
Council houses were sold off via right to buy so people could own their own home, not so that people could buy other people's homes.
And what happens when USB-C isn't king anymore? Imagine this legislation a few years ago, we'd all be required to have Micro USB ports on everything today. Any stipulations for this to sunset/be revised? Or will people be fighting to finally overturn this in 5 yrs?
I get the intent, but if the regulations stop the adoption of something better that would be immensely stupid.
Its a solution looking for a problem.
Twenty years ago when every phone had a different charger that was stupid. But consumers said it was stupid and the industry sorted it out.
Now there's two modern standards (USB-C and lightning) and a third older standard (Micro USB) which just shows how standards need to change and why sticking to only one is stupid. If this had happened years ago would we have all still had to stick with Micro USB?
Why can't consumers choose from the choice of just two modern standards? Its not like there's thirty different ones anymore.
The EU did try to mandate Micro-B USB connectors back when phones were using all sorts of connectors. In 2021 we are down to three connectors in common use, and chargers are interchangable with simple adapters, you don't need special chargers really, everything is USB in terms of voltage and current, and devices are smart enough to do the best that the charger and device have in common.
I use a generic three port charger most of the time, with a bunch of different cables for different devices. I've not needed a new charger in years, and don't even bother with the ones that come with devices I've bought recently. There really isn't much of a charger problem left.
Mandating a single physical connector is only okay if the EU is going to make it easy for a manufacturer to go "this is better, so we don't need to use USB Type-C". It would be bloody stupid if the only way round the rules would be to have two ports until the EU gets around to allowing the new port alone.
And what happens when USB-C isn't king anymore? Imagine this legislation a few years ago, we'd all be required to have Micro USB ports on everything today. Any stipulations for this to sunset/be revised? Or will people be fighting to finally overturn this in 5 yrs?
And what happens when USB-C isn't king anymore? Imagine this legislation a few years ago, we'd all be required to have Micro USB ports on everything today. Any stipulations for this to sunset/be revised? Or will people be fighting to finally overturn this in 5 yrs?
I get the intent, but if the regulations stop the adoption of something better that would be immensely stupid.
Its a solution looking for a problem.
Twenty years ago when every phone had a different charger that was stupid. But consumers said it was stupid and the industry sorted it out.
Now there's two modern standards (USB-C and lightning) and a third older standard (Micro USB) which just shows how standards need to change and why sticking to only one is stupid. If this had happened years ago would we have all still had to stick with Micro USB?
Why can't consumers choose from the choice of just two modern standards? Its not like there's thirty different ones anymore.
If we were still in the EU, then maybe we could have stopped the initiative.
I don't expect that there will be a different phone model for the UK.
I do. The UK model will be the same as the Middle East model - with the three-pin charger and the Lightning connector.
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you jeopordise those two issues summarised above.
And it provides appropriate housing for transient people, like Fox jr2.
It really doesn't make sense to buy a place if you are going to be in it for less than three years or so.
There isn't much point in trying to enlighten people on here about this. Landlords have been conveniently identified as the whipping boy for all the ills of capitalism, an economic system that most people on here nonetheless seem to be winners in, when everything is considered in the round.
It is really quite infantile logic that leads people to this position, the understanding of how the private rented sector works is poor; the limitations of the state as a provider of housing have been overlooked; and the appropriateness of home ownership as a way of solving housing problems has been massively overestimated. Problems that largely apply in London and certain parts of the south east have been extrapolated to apply to the entire country.
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
Umm, I think you need to revise the meaning of externality.
An externality is a cost or benefit caused by a producer that is not financially occurred or received by that producer.
In the case of owning other people's homes, there are multiple externalities that result from that. It prevents the occupier from buying it (as they could if it was on the market or eg with Right To Buy if it was owned by the Council) and as a result it has the effect of increasing crime rates and all the other issues that are associated with lower home ownership. Those are all externalities, just like pollution.
It'd be less of an issue if we had complete freedom to build other homes instead - but that has its own externalities too or so others here like to say.
It is the difference between private cost and social cost. It arises because third parties are affected by some production or consumption activity. All costs are opportunity costs. Ownership is not a cost-bearing or cost-inducing activity. An externality arises as a result of an action, not a state of being like ownership. You are trying to twist the meaning of a well understood (by economists) concept to support an argument which does not bear this reinterpretation. You can make your argument without resort to this dissimulation.
If there's no ongoing activity then I'm assuming there's no ongoing rent being charged? Because rent is to cover the activity of letting out the property is it not? So yes every time rent is charged that activity is happening.
Every time the landlord of a property charges rent on the person who lives in the property, without the person living there being able to buy the property they live in that activity is happening.
Twaddle. You sometimes have some good insights and persuasive arguments. This is not one of them.
Which part is wrong?
Do you deny that that act of letting out a property is an ongoing activity that is a paid for transaction via rent each month?
If letting out the property isn't an activity then what is the rent covering?
"Do you deny that that act of letting out a property is an ongoing activity that is a paid for transaction via rent each month?". - Yes I do deny that. All economic activity is either consumption or production. In this case the economic activity is the consumption of housing by living in it, not the manner in which it is paid for.
And an owner not occupying the house is producing a home to be let out out to a tenant to consume that.
You're trying to act as if owner-occupied and tenant-occupied are the same thing but its not and there is all sort of evidence to say it is not, which is why lower-rates of owner-occupation leads to higher rates of crime etc
If its all meaningless the richest few thousand in the country surely wont mind paying a 0.5% of that meaningless stuff each year?
I can't speak for them, but it's a massive economic fallacy, one worthy of Richard Murphy, to assume that notional wealth can simply be taxed (i.e. converted into real cash and grabbed by the government) without clobbering its value or triggering behaviour to take it out of reach. This of course is especially true of illiquid assets.
That's not to say that there's no scope for intelligently-designed taxes to raise more from the wealthy, but the idea that there are trillions lying around which the tax authorities in multiple countries have perversely failed to help themselves to is very naive.
Ten, fifteen years ago the landscape was very different. The richest 1% had fewer assets. It was more likely to be earnt than windfall gains from QE. And importantly on the other side of the equation most people who worked full time had a clear path where they could improve their lot. Financial controls and transparency are tighter now than they were then.
It is you being naive if you think it is sustainable for the richest 1% to see their wealth grow at double the rate of the rest of us, be exempt from targeted asset taxes and democracy to last. At least one of them will have to give.
Absolutely.
And I quite like democracy. So if it’s a choice between that and a wealth tax, I’m gonna plump for the latter.
And please don’t tell me wealth is hard to tax. It transmutes into physical assets, the most notable being housing.
We don’t really tax wealth in this country, we just expect the plebs to pick up the bill.
So it all comes back to a land value tax?
Why not be bold and put up a 5% value surcharge on non-primary residential property? That would raise a lot of money and fix the housing market. Also put up CGT on property investment to 45% with a non-transferable reduction to 28% for new builds. We could also make landlords liable for triple council tax for any property which has been empty for longer than 6 months and commercial landlords liable for quadruple rates for commercial premises that have been empty for longer than 6 months.
These are all revenue raising and would tilt both residential and commercial property back from asset owners to the people who actually use them.
How would anyone enforce a tripling of council tax for empty properties? Do we know exactly which properties are empty and which are not?
All good ideas though.
When the tenant leaves it reverts back to the owner, they then declare it empty so they don't have to pay. This gives them a 6 month countdown.
That seems complicated. How's this as a solution:
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
So you want those who can't buy a home, but have to rent, to pay a load more rent? A bit odd, surely?
The owner would pay the surcharge not the tenant. If the owner doesn't want to do so, they can always put the property on the market allowing the tenants to buy it.
I think the suggestion is they would put up rents to cover it, so all it would do is shift the payment by the tenant from council tax to rent.
In part, depending on rental price elasticity.
House prices would also fall, or at least growth would be tempered, due to the new recurring liability.
Prices aren’t terribly elastic in most of the country, at least, as far as I can judge. The killer is the shortage of good alternatives.
I think they are, actually. Was very interesting to see Covid impact on rents locally.
I think I’m right in saying you’re in London? I wouldn’t extrapolate nationwide from there.
From a personal point of view it’s striking to note how sticky rents are in South Staffs (where I live) Gloucs (where I let a house) much of the north of England (where my cousin lets several properties) and South and West Wales where many of my friends live.
Been looking with my eldest for a property to rent as they have finished Uni. 6 month's up front rent. And that bar gets you on a shortlist for an interview with the landlord.
Where the hell is that?
Sounds like old memories of the Middle East, where rents were quoted as per year because the landlord expected to get one cheque from your employer.
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
Umm, I think you need to revise the meaning of externality.
An externality is a cost or benefit caused by a producer that is not financially occurred or received by that producer.
In the case of owning other people's homes, there are multiple externalities that result from that. It prevents the occupier from buying it (as they could if it was on the market or eg with Right To Buy if it was owned by the Council) and as a result it has the effect of increasing crime rates and all the other issues that are associated with lower home ownership. Those are all externalities, just like pollution.
It'd be less of an issue if we had complete freedom to build other homes instead - but that has its own externalities too or so others here like to say.
It is the difference between private cost and social cost. It arises because third parties are affected by some production or consumption activity. All costs are opportunity costs. Ownership is not a cost-bearing or cost-inducing activity. An externality arises as a result of an action, not a state of being like ownership. You are trying to twist the meaning of a well understood (by economists) concept to support an argument which does not bear this reinterpretation. You can make your argument without resort to this dissimulation.
If there's no ongoing activity then I'm assuming there's no ongoing rent being charged? Because rent is to cover the activity of letting out the property is it not? So yes every time rent is charged that activity is happening.
Every time the landlord of a property charges rent on the person who lives in the property, without the person living there being able to buy the property they live in that activity is happening.
Twaddle. You sometimes have some good insights and persuasive arguments. This is not one of them.
Which part is wrong?
Do you deny that that act of letting out a property is an ongoing activity that is a paid for transaction via rent each month?
If letting out the property isn't an activity then what is the rent covering?
"Do you deny that that act of letting out a property is an ongoing activity that is a paid for transaction via rent each month?". - Yes I do deny that. All economic activity is either consumption or production. In this case the economic activity is the consumption of housing by living in it, not the manner in which it is paid for.
And an owner not occupying the house is producing a home to be let out out to a tenant to consume that.
You're trying to act as if owner-occupied and tenant-occupied are the same thing but its not and there is all sort of evidence to say it is not, which is why lower-rates of owner-occupation leads to higher rates of crime etc
The question is whether "externality" is the appropriate concept here. I assert that it is not because whether the occupier of the property owns it or rents it has no bearing on the consumption or production activity of anyone else. So whatever costs or benefits there are remain with the person occupying the property and that is the full extent of social costs or benefits.
And what happens when USB-C isn't king anymore? Imagine this legislation a few years ago, we'd all be required to have Micro USB ports on everything today. Any stipulations for this to sunset/be revised? Or will people be fighting to finally overturn this in 5 yrs?
What do you expect, when governments pick winners?
USB Type-C isn't really all that good anyway. The plug looks the same but the port can be any one of the various USB 2, 3, 4 and Thunderbolt varieties. There are so many optional features now that you can run into all kinds of stupid issues with compatibility between devices and even the cables themselves. Just today I got another USB 3.1 Gen 2 cable with USB-IF certification delivered, so that I know that I have another cable that will definitely do high-speed I/O and 5v 3A charging with no magic required.
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you jeopordise those two issues summarised above.
Can you go through point 1 slowly for me ?
I've been round this before on here. So people present themselves as homeless. The Council have a duty to house them. There is no Council Housing. So the Council need private landlords. If there are no landlords, then there is nowhere to house these people.
Housing = Empty + OO + Private Landlord + Council Landlord + HA Landlord + Holiday homes + Other housing. Its a zero + New development sum. Landlord benefit is the absolute fucking worst benefit ever too.
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you jeopordise those two issues summarised above.
Can you go through point 1 slowly for me ?
I've been round this before on here. So people present themselves as homeless. The Council have a duty to house them. There is no Council Housing. So the Council need private landlords. If there are no landlords, then there is nowhere to house these people.
If landlords sell up because Council Tax has been replaced with a £150 per annum tax (on your numbers) then who would they have sold their homes to?
Or do you expect the homes to be demolished?
Council houses were sold off via right to buy so people could own their own home, not so that people could buy other people's homes.
I don't know who came up with 'abolish council tax' idea, but it is a total non starter. Such taxes are merely paying for services provided by the Council. If they aren't funded by Council tax, they need to be funded some other way. How?
None of this changes the problem that you need a private rented sector; rents are increasing because landlords are quitting the private rented sector, amongst other things. Supply and demand etc.
And what happens when USB-C isn't king anymore? Imagine this legislation a few years ago, we'd all be required to have Micro USB ports on everything today. Any stipulations for this to sunset/be revised? Or will people be fighting to finally overturn this in 5 yrs?
I get the intent, but if the regulations stop the adoption of something better that would be immensely stupid.
Its a solution looking for a problem.
Twenty years ago when every phone had a different charger that was stupid. But consumers said it was stupid and the industry sorted it out.
Now there's two modern standards (USB-C and lightning) and a third older standard (Micro USB) which just shows how standards need to change and why sticking to only one is stupid. If this had happened years ago would we have all still had to stick with Micro USB?
Why can't consumers choose from the choice of just two modern standards? Its not like there's thirty different ones anymore.
How long before they invent a wireless method of charging devices?
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
Umm, I think you need to revise the meaning of externality.
An externality is a cost or benefit caused by a producer that is not financially occurred or received by that producer.
In the case of owning other people's homes, there are multiple externalities that result from that. It prevents the occupier from buying it (as they could if it was on the market or eg with Right To Buy if it was owned by the Council) and as a result it has the effect of increasing crime rates and all the other issues that are associated with lower home ownership. Those are all externalities, just like pollution.
It'd be less of an issue if we had complete freedom to build other homes instead - but that has its own externalities too or so others here like to say.
It is the difference between private cost and social cost. It arises because third parties are affected by some production or consumption activity. All costs are opportunity costs. Ownership is not a cost-bearing or cost-inducing activity. An externality arises as a result of an action, not a state of being like ownership. You are trying to twist the meaning of a well understood (by economists) concept to support an argument which does not bear this reinterpretation. You can make your argument without resort to this dissimulation.
If there's no ongoing activity then I'm assuming there's no ongoing rent being charged? Because rent is to cover the activity of letting out the property is it not? So yes every time rent is charged that activity is happening.
Every time the landlord of a property charges rent on the person who lives in the property, without the person living there being able to buy the property they live in that activity is happening.
Twaddle. You sometimes have some good insights and persuasive arguments. This is not one of them.
Which part is wrong?
Do you deny that that act of letting out a property is an ongoing activity that is a paid for transaction via rent each month?
If letting out the property isn't an activity then what is the rent covering?
"Do you deny that that act of letting out a property is an ongoing activity that is a paid for transaction via rent each month?". - Yes I do deny that. All economic activity is either consumption or production. In this case the economic activity is the consumption of housing by living in it, not the manner in which it is paid for.
And an owner not occupying the house is producing a home to be let out out to a tenant to consume that.
You're trying to act as if owner-occupied and tenant-occupied are the same thing but its not and there is all sort of evidence to say it is not, which is why lower-rates of owner-occupation leads to higher rates of crime etc
The question is whether "externality" is the appropriate concept here. I assert that it is not because whether the occupier of the property owns it or rents it has no bearing on the consumption or production activity of anyone else. So whatever costs or benefits there are remain with the person occupying the property and that is the full extent of social costs or benefits.
Whether the occupier of the property owns it or rents it does have a bearing on the consumption or production activity of others. Not least the person they let it to.
If I own a home and live in it then that is my activity and mine alone. If I own a home and let it to you then that clearly affects both me and you.
And what happens when USB-C isn't king anymore? Imagine this legislation a few years ago, we'd all be required to have Micro USB ports on everything today. Any stipulations for this to sunset/be revised? Or will people be fighting to finally overturn this in 5 yrs?
I get the intent, but if the regulations stop the adoption of something better that would be immensely stupid.
Its a solution looking for a problem.
Twenty years ago when every phone had a different charger that was stupid. But consumers said it was stupid and the industry sorted it out.
Now there's two modern standards (USB-C and lightning) and a third older standard (Micro USB) which just shows how standards need to change and why sticking to only one is stupid. If this had happened years ago would we have all still had to stick with Micro USB?
Why can't consumers choose from the choice of just two modern standards? Its not like there's thirty different ones anymore.
How long before they invent a wireless method of charging devices?
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you jeopordise those two issues summarised above.
Can you go through point 1 slowly for me ?
I've been round this before on here. So people present themselves as homeless. The Council have a duty to house them. There is no Council Housing. So the Council need private landlords. If there are no landlords, then there is nowhere to house these people.
If landlords sell up because Council Tax has been replaced with a £150 per annum tax (on your numbers) then who would they have sold their homes to?
Or do you expect the homes to be demolished?
Council houses were sold off via right to buy so people could own their own home, not so that people could buy other people's homes.
I don't know who came up with 'abolish council tax' idea, but it is a total non starter. Such taxes are merely paying for services provided by the Council. If they aren't funded by Council tax, they need to be funded some other way. How?
None of this changes the problem that you need a private rented sector; rents are increasing because landlords are quitting the private rented sector, amongst other things. Supply and demand etc.
Council tax should be scrapped because its regressive, expensive and inefficient to collect, and based on valuations from the dark ages.
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you jeopordise those two issues summarised above.
Can you go through point 1 slowly for me ?
I've been round this before on here. So people present themselves as homeless. The Council have a duty to house them. There is no Council Housing. So the Council need private landlords. If there are no landlords, then there is nowhere to house these people.
If landlords sell up because Council Tax has been replaced with a £150 per annum tax (on your numbers) then who would they have sold their homes to?
Or do you expect the homes to be demolished?
Council houses were sold off via right to buy so people could own their own home, not so that people could buy other people's homes.
I don't know who came up with 'abolish council tax' idea, but it is a total non starter. Such taxes are merely paying for services provided by the Council. If they aren't funded by Council tax, they need to be funded some other way. How?
None of this changes the problem that you need a private rented sector; rents are increasing because landlords are quitting the private rented sector, amongst other things. Supply and demand etc.
Quitting the private rented sector and doing what with the property?
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you jeopordise those two issues summarised above.
Can you go through point 1 slowly for me ?
I've been round this before on here. So people present themselves as homeless. The Council have a duty to house them. There is no Council Housing. So the Council need private landlords. If there are no landlords, then there is nowhere to house these people.
If landlords sell up because Council Tax has been replaced with a £150 per annum tax (on your numbers) then who would they have sold their homes to?
Or do you expect the homes to be demolished?
Council houses were sold off via right to buy so people could own their own home, not so that people could buy other people's homes.
I don't know who came up with 'abolish council tax' idea, but it is a total non starter. Such taxes are merely paying for services provided by the Council. If they aren't funded by Council tax, they need to be funded some other way. How?
None of this changes the problem that you need a private rented sector; rents are increasing because landlords are quitting the private rented sector, amongst other things. Supply and demand etc.
Did you read what you were responding to initially? The proposal was to replace Council Tax with a property tax (it could be called Rates). So yes, the Rates would replace the Council Tax.
If landlords are quitting the sector then who are they selling to?
New Zealand’s strategy to eliminate the coronavirus may have been defeated by the Delta strain, the country’s health chief has conceded.
With the country’s largest city, Auckland, in lockdown since mid-August, the health director-general Dr Ashley Bloomfield has warned that the nation may not return to zero Covid-19 cases. Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister, has previously committed to elimination of the virus despite the view of her Australian counterpart, Scott Morrison, that this goal was “absurd”.
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you run in to those two problems summarised above.
Switzerland has a wealth tax. So does New York (ie a property tax)
Do they have a rental sector? Oh, they do.
You cannot compare Darlington with Zurich or New York.
Why not?
Because houses cost nothing in Darlington. You can buy a house there for £30,000. Go in to the rural hinterlands of County Durham, and houses are being given away for next to nothing to first time buyers, if they do the place up.
Landlords coming in, buying the properties, doing them up and renting them out to people who have issues in their lives that mean that home ownership isn't right for them can only be regarded as a social good. They take the burden away from the state and generate economic activity.
Love to know where in Darlington you wou;d buy a house for £30k. £60k will get you a 2 up, 2 down Terrance in the Denes, prices little different since 2004
Equally I wouldn’t want that sort of hassle for £400 or so a month, there are far too many things that could go wrong
Rising taxes Rising interest rates Rising prices Food, energy and petrol shortages.
Could be a fun old winter, eh?
Rising hospital waiting lists too.
Just as well I still have last years Christmas Dinner in the freezer. At least until the power cuts hit.
ITV Wales was so depressing over Wales NHS which has the longest A & E waiting times and waiting lists ever, and the second worst ambulance response times
Off topic, SSN just went proudly live to show the Ryder Cup opening ceremony. It was so bad that after 2 mins they chose to cut back to showing replays of earlier generic sports news that they have been showing all day instead. Never seen that happen before.....
The owner of all properties become liable for their Council Tax. Everyone is permitted to name a single home as their own primary residence which is taxed normally, every other home they own (and all homes for companies that own properties) has the Council Tax doubled.
People and companies owning other people's home is a negative externality, it should be taxed accordingly.
Umm, I think you need to revise the meaning of externality.
An externality is a cost or benefit caused by a producer that is not financially occurred or received by that producer.
In the case of owning other people's homes, there are multiple externalities that result from that. It prevents the occupier from buying it (as they could if it was on the market or eg with Right To Buy if it was owned by the Council) and as a result it has the effect of increasing crime rates and all the other issues that are associated with lower home ownership. Those are all externalities, just like pollution.
It'd be less of an issue if we had complete freedom to build other homes instead - but that has its own externalities too or so others here like to say.
It is the difference between private cost and social cost. It arises because third parties are affected by some production or consumption activity. All costs are opportunity costs. Ownership is not a cost-bearing or cost-inducing activity. An externality arises as a result of an action, not a state of being like ownership. You are trying to twist the meaning of a well understood (by economists) concept to support an argument which does not bear this reinterpretation. You can make your argument without resort to this dissimulation.
If there's no ongoing activity then I'm assuming there's no ongoing rent being charged? Because rent is to cover the activity of letting out the property is it not? So yes every time rent is charged that activity is happening.
Every time the landlord of a property charges rent on the person who lives in the property, without the person living there being able to buy the property they live in that activity is happening.
Twaddle. You sometimes have some good insights and persuasive arguments. This is not one of them.
Which part is wrong?
Do you deny that that act of letting out a property is an ongoing activity that is a paid for transaction via rent each month?
If letting out the property isn't an activity then what is the rent covering?
"Do you deny that that act of letting out a property is an ongoing activity that is a paid for transaction via rent each month?". - Yes I do deny that. All economic activity is either consumption or production. In this case the economic activity is the consumption of housing by living in it, not the manner in which it is paid for.
And an owner not occupying the house is producing a home to be let out out to a tenant to consume that.
You're trying to act as if owner-occupied and tenant-occupied are the same thing but its not and there is all sort of evidence to say it is not, which is why lower-rates of owner-occupation leads to higher rates of crime etc
The question is whether "externality" is the appropriate concept here. I assert that it is not because whether the occupier of the property owns it or rents it has no bearing on the consumption or production activity of anyone else. So whatever costs or benefits there are remain with the person occupying the property and that is the full extent of social costs or benefits.
Whether the occupier of the property owns it or rents it does have a bearing on the consumption or production activity of others. Not least the person they let it to.
If I own a home and live in it then that is my activity and mine alone. If I own a home and let it to you then that clearly affects both me and you.
Philip, let's leave it there. I haven't persuaded you of that your enlisting of the externality concept is in error, and you haven't persuaded me that it is correct. Dommage hien?
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you jeopordise those two issues summarised above.
Can you go through point 1 slowly for me ?
I've been round this before on here. So people present themselves as homeless. The Council have a duty to house them. There is no Council Housing. So the Council need private landlords. If there are no landlords, then there is nowhere to house these people.
If landlords sell up because Council Tax has been replaced with a £150 per annum tax (on your numbers) then who would they have sold their homes to?
Or do you expect the homes to be demolished?
Council houses were sold off via right to buy so people could own their own home, not so that people could buy other people's homes.
I don't know who came up with 'abolish council tax' idea, but it is a total non starter. Such taxes are merely paying for services provided by the Council. If they aren't funded by Council tax, they need to be funded some other way. How?
None of this changes the problem that you need a private rented sector; rents are increasing because landlords are quitting the private rented sector, amongst other things. Supply and demand etc.
Did you read what you were responding to initially? The proposal was to replace Council Tax with a property tax (it could be called Rates). So yes, the Rates would replace the Council Tax.
If landlords are quitting the sector then who are they selling to?
In the area I am familiar with, it is landlords selling their properties to developers, who do them up and then sell them to people coming down from London to live here; thus displacing the poor people who were here before, who then present themselves at the Council homeless. No changes to any system of taxation is going to solve this problem.
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you jeopordise those two issues summarised above.
Can you go through point 1 slowly for me ?
I've been round this before on here. So people present themselves as homeless. The Council have a duty to house them. There is no Council Housing. So the Council need private landlords. If there are no landlords, then there is nowhere to house these people.
If landlords sell up because Council Tax has been replaced with a £150 per annum tax (on your numbers) then who would they have sold their homes to?
Or do you expect the homes to be demolished?
Council houses were sold off via right to buy so people could own their own home, not so that people could buy other people's homes.
I don't know who came up with 'abolish council tax' idea, but it is a total non starter. Such taxes are merely paying for services provided by the Council. If they aren't funded by Council tax, they need to be funded some other way. How?
None of this changes the problem that you need a private rented sector; rents are increasing because landlords are quitting the private rented sector, amongst other things. Supply and demand etc.
Quitting the private rented sector and doing what with the property?
We have done this before, the houses spontaneously combust when landlords sell.
I worked for many years in Councils, and the reality on the ground is that you need a private rented sector for two reasons:
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons. 2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you jeopordise those two issues summarised above.
Can you go through point 1 slowly for me ?
I've been round this before on here. So people present themselves as homeless. The Council have a duty to house them. There is no Council Housing. So the Council need private landlords. If there are no landlords, then there is nowhere to house these people.
If landlords sell up because Council Tax has been replaced with a £150 per annum tax (on your numbers) then who would they have sold their homes to?
Or do you expect the homes to be demolished?
Council houses were sold off via right to buy so people could own their own home, not so that people could buy other people's homes.
I don't know who came up with 'abolish council tax' idea, but it is a total non starter. Such taxes are merely paying for services provided by the Council. If they aren't funded by Council tax, they need to be funded some other way. How?
None of this changes the problem that you need a private rented sector; rents are increasing because landlords are quitting the private rented sector, amongst other things. Supply and demand etc.
Quitting the private rented sector and doing what with the property?
When a landlord sells the house turns to dust - I thought everyone knew that
Comments
If you want everyone to be an owner-occupier you need a collapse in house prices. Nowt else will suffice.
In the case of owning other people's homes, there are multiple externalities that result from that. It prevents the occupier from buying it (as they could if it was on the market or eg with Right To Buy if it was owned by the Council) and as a result it has the effect of increasing crime rates and all the other issues that are associated with lower home ownership. Those are all externalities, just like pollution.
It'd be less of an issue if we had complete freedom to build other homes instead - but that has its own externalities too or so others here like to say.
House prices would also fall, or at least growth would be tempered, due to the new recurring liability.
And you could always extend right-to-buy to tenants to buy the property at the declared rate.
Or Germany would be unliveable.
Edit: Ignore. Cross-wiring in brain. Doom is in Roger Rabbit. Apols.
Thanks to Apple.
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/facebook-drops-warning-apple-ad-150102716.html
So far as I can tell.
Even as someone who spent way too much time following what Trump was up to and reading article after article about him it's shocking to see just how dangerous Trump was from the get-go. The first thing in the book is staff hiding memos from Trump so that he doesn't inadvertantly prevent the US from getting an early warning of a North Korean nuclear attack.
Plus I'd exempt Councils from the Tax (so they'd be able to "compete" at an advantage) since Council-owned homes have Right To Buy so the issue its addressing has been removed.
Let’s tax the fuckers to till their pips squeak.
Think how the history of 20th century Euope would have been different if they'd taken a serious look at mass owner-occupying.
Was very interesting to see Covid impact on rents locally.
https://twitter.com/Liv_Boeree/status/1440956684512501762?s=19
(they deleted the words “woman” and “she” out of Ginsburg’s quote *about women’s rights* because they’re apparently too offensive)
https://twitter.com/Liv_Boeree/status/1440957060330496000?s=19
For those that don't know Liv Boeree is astrophysic PhD and former professional poker player and lets just say definitely not a GB News viewer type....
The ones who'd lose out are those who have a property empire. Oh well, they can pay their dues, or they can sell up and the people who live in the homes can buy them instead - and no green areas need building on for that purpose so everyone who objects to planning permission being granted should love that!
And Bitain conquered a quarter of the globe.
Either accept a very modest form of wealth levy or tax the productive economy into the ground.
“Tax wealth, before income”,
That’s what Keir should say.
At the same time as announcing a TAX CUT for average income earners.
If I heard right, based on exit polling ten new members elected and five incumbents defeated, including three cabinet ministers.
BTW, the discussion of island issues as Election Night panel waits for actual election returns is pretty impressive for a small jurisdiction.
https://www.iomelections.com/2021/live/
https://twitter.com/Sentdex/status/1441134238137344017?s=19
“Boris Johnson and Keir Starmer remain in minus net ratings, with Boris Johnson on -5 (up 1 point from last week) and Keir Starmer down 3 points in a week to -12.
Boris Johnson slightly out performs his own party with the Conservative Party on a -10 net favourability rating, down 3 points from last week, while Labour slightly outperforms its leader with the party on a -7 point net rating, down 3 points in the past week.”
https://www.survation.com/conservatives-hold-5-point-lead-over-labour-going-into-conference-season/
The following songs have been approved by the
@ACLU
. 🎶
“No [Person] No Cry” - Bob Marley
“I’m Every [Person]” - Chaka Khan
“Isn’t [They] Lovely” - Stevie Wonder
“Does Your [Birthing Person] Know” - ABBA
“Bring Your [Offspring With A Cervix] To The Slaughter” - Iron Maiden
You are trying to twist the meaning of a well understood (by economists) concept to support an argument which does not bear this reinterpretation. You can make your argument without resort to this dissimulation.
From a personal point of view it’s striking to note how sticky rents are in South Staffs (where I live) Gloucs (where I let a house) much of the north of England (where my cousin lets several properties) and South and West Wales where many of my friends live.
At least not until the property is subsequently sold on.
The simpler the tax the better for everyone.
Taxation 101.
Still, renters won’t be paying council tax under my proposal so it’s swings and roundabouts.
1) housing of vulnerable people as the state do not do it, most of the time, for good reasons.
2) Inward investment, people doing up properties promotes economic activity in the area.
If you kill the private rented sector through punitive wealth taxes, then you jeopordise those two issues summarised above.
So does New York (ie a property tax)
Do they have a rental sector?
Oh, they do.
Every time the landlord of a property charges rent on the person who lives in the property, without the person living there being able to buy the property they live in that activity is happening.
My brother was on the Middlesboro’ Uni Rugby tour to the IoM in 1998, which ended badly for ‘reasons’, and the team were, if not deported, told that their welcome would not be extended in future.
The following year, the Middlesboro’ Uni Ten Pin Bowling Team, turned up in the IoM… They didn’t bowl any 300s, but were quite good at rugby.
6 month's up front rent. And that bar gets you on a shortlist for an interview with the landlord.
It really doesn't make sense to buy a place if you are going to be in it for less than three years or so.
Iceland votes on Saturday and there's a blizzard (sorry) of polls out this evening. The dilemma is the one with the most recent fieldwork had the smallest sample (just 909) while Gallup has polled 3,845 which is roughly 1.5% of the total number who voted in the last election.
In UK terms, that would be the equivalent of a poll with a sample of 495,000 people which is a tad larger than most UK polls.
Said Gallup poll has the following changes from the 2017 Althing election:
Fieldwork 13/9-19/9
Independence Party: 21.2% (-4.0)
Progressive Party: 13.2% (+2.5)
Social Democrats: 12.7% (+0.6)
Pirates: 11.5% (+2.3)
Left-Green Movement: 10.2% (-6.7)
Reform Party: 10.2% (+3.5)
Socialist Party: 7.3% (+7.3)
People's Party: 7.0% (+0.1)
Centre Party: 6.2% (-4.7)
The governing parties (Independence, Left-Green and Progressive) are are down 8.2% from 2019 so will we see a new coalition come to Government?
The more recent fieldwork (22nd and 23rd September) comes from MMR with a sample of just 909.
Independence Party: 21.8% (-3.4)
Progressive Party: 14.3% (+3.6)
Social Democrats: 13.9% (+1.8)
Left-Green Movement: 11.0% (-5.9)
Pirates: 10.7% (+1.5)
Reform Party: 10.1% (+3.4)
People's Party: 7.3% (+0.4)
Socialist Party: 7.0% (+7.0)
Centre Party: 4.7% (-6.2)
With MMR, the governing coalition is down 6.7 points.
As we all know, Iceland has six multi-member constituencies returning nine members each using the D'Hondt method with a further 9 "levelling" seats. There is a 5% threshold so Centre would be out based on MMR but safe based on Gallup.
You sometimes have some good insights and persuasive arguments. This is not one of them.
Inflation is a killer for government ratings.
Twenty years ago when every phone had a different charger that was stupid. But consumers said it was stupid and the industry sorted it out.
Now there's two modern standards (USB-C and lightning) and a third older standard (Micro USB) which just shows how standards need to change and why sticking to only one is stupid. If this had happened years ago would we have all still had to stick with Micro USB?
Why can't consumers choose from the choice of just two modern standards? Its not like there's thirty different ones anymore.
Careful not to get into the slippery slope fallacy, because if you do that you end up committing all sorts of other fallacies.
Rising interest rates
Rising prices
Food, energy and petrol shortages.
Could be a fun old winter, eh?
Do you deny that that act of letting out a property is an ongoing activity that is a paid for transaction via rent each month?
If letting out the property isn't an activity then what is the rent covering?
Landlords coming in, buying the properties, doing them up and renting them out to people who have issues in their lives that mean that home ownership isn't right for them can only be regarded as a social good. They take the burden away from the state and generate economic activity.
I don't expect that there will be a different phone model for the UK.
Maybe the EU are thinking of me
- Yes I do deny that. All economic activity is either consumption or production. In this case the economic activity is the consumption of housing by living in it, not the manner in which it is paid for.
Just as well I still have last years Christmas Dinner in the freezer. At least until the power cuts hit.
Or do you expect the homes to be demolished?
Council houses were sold off via right to buy so people could own their own home, not so that people could buy other people's homes.
I use a generic three port charger most of the time, with a bunch of different cables for different devices. I've not needed a new charger in years, and don't even bother with the ones that come with devices I've bought recently. There really isn't much of a charger problem left.
Mandating a single physical connector is only okay if the EU is going to make it easy for a manufacturer to go "this is better, so we don't need to use USB Type-C". It would be bloody stupid if the only way round the rules would be to have two ports until the EU gets around to allowing the new port alone.
It is really quite infantile logic that leads people to this position, the understanding of how the private rented sector works is poor; the limitations of the state as a provider of housing have been overlooked; and the appropriateness of home ownership as a way of solving housing problems has been massively overestimated. Problems that largely apply in London and certain parts of the south east have been extrapolated to apply to the entire country.
You're trying to act as if owner-occupied and tenant-occupied are the same thing but its not and there is all sort of evidence to say it is not, which is why lower-rates of owner-occupation leads to higher rates of crime etc
Sounds like old memories of the Middle East, where rents were quoted as per year because the landlord expected to get one cheque from your employer.
Its a zero + New development sum.
Landlord benefit is the absolute fucking worst benefit ever too.
None of this changes the problem that you need a private rented sector; rents are increasing because landlords are quitting the private rented sector, amongst other things. Supply and demand etc.
If I own a home and live in it then that is my activity and mine alone. If I own a home and let it to you then that clearly affects both me and you.
Wireless charging already exists.
Property tax should pay for council services.
If landlords are quitting the sector then who are they selling to?
New Zealand’s strategy to eliminate the coronavirus may have been defeated by the Delta strain, the country’s health chief has conceded.
With the country’s largest city, Auckland, in lockdown since mid-August, the health director-general Dr Ashley Bloomfield has warned that the nation may not return to zero Covid-19 cases. Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister, has previously committed to elimination of the virus despite the view of her Australian counterpart, Scott Morrison, that this goal was “absurd”.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/db962da6-1c5f-11ec-95b9-6429167b0259?shareToken=2230b88deb449e257dfe8f57a2c674c9
Equally I wouldn’t want that sort of hassle for £400 or so a month, there are far too many things that could go wrong