On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed, its utter madness.
If you downsize you shouldn't pay a penny in tax on the mobility, besides eg VAT on fees related to moving etc
Instead if you downsize you should see a cut in your taxes, as the LVT on a flat or smaller semi etc should be less than the LVT on your existing home.
But instead HMRC does the opposite. Minimal taxes on staying still but hefty taxes if you move. Its utterly insane and no wonder we have a broken system.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
It is a ridiculous tax which reduces the mobility of labour and therefore the efficiency of the market. But governments have never been able to see lumps of money moving around without getting their cut.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Stamp duty is the reason I am an accidental landlord.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
For land with houses on I agree with you - as long as the LVT is replacing Council tax and is broadly neutral in its effects. But for land that is being worked for food, assuming you are going to have the same value per acre for all land, then suddenly pretty much every farm in the country becomes unviable. And what about stuff like the National Parks or National Trust land? I can definitely see the case for habitable land - and land with planning permission to prevent land banking by developers - but land that is being worked to provide is with our food or amenity land for our benefit - cannot be included as it would destroy much of the rural economy.
Land for houses is worth so much more than for agriculture that there isn't much in this. It will be a rounding error in cost for farmers I would think but politically might be smart to exclude them. Arable land something like 10k/acre... whereas housing land can be £1m.
The US announced their aircraft had been involved in supporting Israel last night but Starmer avoided the issue about UK involvement leaving in to the Ministry of Defence to release a statement
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
For land with houses on I agree with you - as long as the LVT is replacing Council tax and is broadly neutral in its effects. But for land that is being worked for food, assuming you are going to have the same value per acre for all land, then suddenly pretty much every farm in the country becomes unviable. And what about stuff like the National Parks or National Trust land? I can definitely see the case for habitable land - and land with planning permission to prevent land banking by developers - but land that is being worked to provide is with our food or amenity land for our benefit - cannot be included as it would destroy much of the rural economy.
Land for houses is worth so much more than for agriculture that there isn't much in this. It will be a rounding error in cost for farmers I would think but politically might be smart to exclude them. Arable land something like 10k/acre... whereas housing land can be £1m.
It's almost like you've identified a problem there...
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
It is a ridiculous tax which reduces the mobility of labour and therefore the efficiency of the market. But governments have never been able to see lumps of money moving around without getting their cut.
I don’t have a philosophical problem with that.
The issue is that they are too greedy.
14% is a ridiculous tax rate on a capital transfer
The Tories' problem is that the right-wing media and pundits were absolutely yearning for Kemi. This means that if she doesn't get it they're be disheartened and won't give either of the other two much charity, especially when they get bored with Sir Keir.
GB News and most of the rightwing commentariat now say Jenrick did at least as well as Kemi this afternoon if not better.
Jenrick is also harder on immigration than Kemi, while pushing building new homes and infrastructure etc
And that is the point
You want a right wing leader when the conservatives need a leader that appeals across the political divide
He's always been a blue Corbynite.
The Conservative Party under various leaders for the past century has sought to attract the vote of liberals and not just conservatives. But HYUFD has made clear he doesn't want liberals like myself, even if we're economically right wing. Or people like you G who may have once voted for Blair in a lifetime of voting conservative.
Well now he's got his wish and the election result he wanted.
What on earth are you chuntering on about? Where and how has HYUFD said anything of the kind?
I have had a lifetime of support for the conservatives including activism at elections, apart from recently, but because I voted for Blair @HYUFD has been quite open in saying I am not a conservative
He is of the right and blue Corbynite is a fair description of him
If I was a blue Corbynite I would not have voted for Sunak last time and would not be backing Tugendhat this time.
I am if anything more centrist than most Tory members
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Stamp duty is the reason I am an accidental landlord.
I don’t understand that logic. I’m assuming you have other living arrangements.
If you would never move back into the house then you should sell regardless of the tax.
If you might move back on one day then you are not an “accidental landlords” but are making a conscious choice
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
It is a ridiculous tax which reduces the mobility of labour and therefore the efficiency of the market. But governments have never been able to see lumps of money moving around without getting their cut.
The thing is, when money is moving around is the only time we know it is really there.
Well worth a read, and another example of why I am glad I didn't become an MP.
Shhh! My dad was a Tory MP: why I didn’t tell my friends
Growing up, Adam Hart was proud that his father, Simon, had a job that other people were interested in. Then the internet abuse started. At university having the Conservative secretary of state for Wales as a parent was social death
...In June 2016, when I was revising for my GCSEs, the MP Jo Cox was murdered after leaving her constituency surgery. Like everyone else, I had read many news articles about murders, but this one, with its pictures of a fortysomething MP with two kids, felt odd.
At home, the powers-that-be reviewed our “home security”. We failed on account of the public footpath that runs past our front door. Some men fitted a panic button in my parents’ wardrobe as well as a motion-triggered alarm outside the door. The first night the alarm was in operation a badger walked past and set it off, summoning Dyfed-Powys police to our house at 3am. As my sister and I were away, my parents saw the policemen at the door and assumed one of us had died.
Why have some people started behaving like this in recent years? I don't understand it.
I don't think anyone definitively knows. The Internet has reduced barriers and we have the phenomenon of online disinhibition. People sound off online in a way they wouldn't in person, and it has become much easier for your abuse to reach its target. 50 years ago, people perhaps had the same thoughts, but they didn't have an easy way of expressing them at someone. Maybe most people aren't like that, but those who are gravitate to online environments.
But maybe it's also about a degradation of political discourse, brought about by more partisan media. Then there's the influence of foreign agents, Russia etc. deliberately injecting discord. We now know Russia was funding right-wing commentators to make divisive social media content, down to complaining the latest Star Wars series is "too woke".
The fundamental problem is a simple one.
People don't want to know the truth; they would rather believe things that mesh with their existing prejudices.
And as media organizations are commercial businesses, built to deliver a profit to shareholders, then they will serve their audience the content they want, rather than the truth.
A premise of Enders Game was that good ideas would drive out the bad, via the internet. The reverse is true. There's an incredible amount of useful information, just a click away, but many people are not interested in it.
Instead, they want to believe the people are killing cats and dogs for food, in Springfield.
Apparently it is not as cut and dried as the twat who referred to me as a "beerhall accountant" (lol) made out. Apparently other celebs/"influencers" cannot avoid paying tax on gifts that they receive through doing their job. The exemption appears to be because HMRC doesn't want to take the politicians on.
I normally use the term alehouse accountant.
I will provide examples;
A customer gets invited to a box at Spurs alongside other customers and employees. There is no benefit in kind or tax charge to the customer ( see Section 265 ITEPA).
An employee of a company whose business is reviewing hotels is provided with a room in a new hotel in Hull for the purpose of reviewing. There would be no tax liability as this would be a normal part of his employment and clearly not excessive.
In addition of a gift is non transferrable and could not ever be swapped for money then no tax charge is likely. A car can be swapped for money, a lunch with David Beckham that only you can attend, is not transferrable.
An influencer is given a load of designer gear which they then promote using social media. They would be considered to self employed by HMRC 'badges of trade' and this would result in a tax charge.
However, if you were sent the freebies which you didn't request, had no obligation to promote them & indeed didn't then promote them, no tax charge liability occurs.
I treat a mate or family to a couple of tickets for Wimbledon semi finals - does a tax charge arise ? Of course not.
If Lord Alli as an individual gifts anything to 'a friend' its very hard to see how any tax liability could arise.
If politicians of any party are offering and providing influence in exchange for gifts, they have more to worry about than a tax liability.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
For land with houses on I agree with you - as long as the LVT is replacing Council tax and is broadly neutral in its effects. But for land that is being worked for food, assuming you are going to have the same value per acre for all land, then suddenly pretty much every farm in the country becomes unviable. And what about stuff like the National Parks or National Trust land? I can definitely see the case for habitable land - and land with planning permission to prevent land banking by developers - but land that is being worked to provide is with our food or amenity land for our benefit - cannot be included as it would destroy much of the rural economy.
An LVT should be able to have local land values factored in, which would make rural costs cheaper than residential ones already.
If rural land is productively used it should be able to pay for some of the costs of running the country, but I agree with it being less.
The Treasury could exempt National Trust etc land as appropriate.
If we moved as I desire to a zonal system then you can include this tax within the zonal system by taxing residentially zoned land more - and I would allow anyone who owns rural land to change their own designation if they choose to develop it to residential (while letting other rural people keep theirs if they so desire) but if they change it then they would become liable for paying the taxes as a consequence of their choice.
I think this appears to be how so many people view tax - it is all well and good to levy taxes just so long as you tax something I do not have. In Bart's case he doesn't have land and is jealous of those that do. A large part of the farming community, even those with large landholdings, have marginal incomes. They work hard and spend their time productively. They can only hope that Rachel Thieves does not read Bart's ideas!
I do have land, what makes you think I didn't?
Even though I personally dislike flats I recognise that's a matter of personal taste and accept I should pay more for owning a house than a flat, as that's my choice and I'm OK to pay for my own choices.
No offence, but "having land" normally means more than a front and back garden, and having it on a large mortgage!
You're pretty ignorant then, most tenants would be quite happy with nothing more than house of their own with or without a front and back garden to go with it.
If you have more, then that's your choice and you should pay for your choices just as I do mine.
And as was said at the start of the discussion, my proposal is not a tax hike but revenue neutral so that Stamp Duty should be eliminated so that rather than merely taxing those who are mobile people should pay lower but more consistent taxes.
Making taxes low and consistent is not a bad thing. Taxing mobility is a bad thing.
Well indeed Barty old bean, agree with your last statements, but taxing the farming community because you are jealous of their capital is incredibly dumb and highly simplistic. You have been banging this "through your own prism" drum for a long time. Glad you got on the ladder, well done. Now go and try as work as hard as a farmer does when many of their annual incomes work out to be less than minimum wage
The valuation of land - you mean property is something I know quite a lot about having spent the 1990s studying and comparing Tithe Commutation valuations with the land tax valuations of the same properties. Perversely the only way to do it is to have the person taxed value his own property, exactly the opposite of what those advocating such a tax propose. The penalty against undervaluation is that the valuations are public and an entreatment to sell. Thus, you either have to accept the offer made, consistent with your own valuation or else suffer a severe penalty, like a 100% surcharge for that year.
It would have the advantage that if you are lumbered with something which isn't worth its value you can reduce the tax you pay until some daft bugger takes it off your hands. There are serious issues such as the 1929 Tax Acts which removed rates from some properties, mainly agricultural holdings etc.
Your land valuation taxes are in effect a reconstituting of the old land tax as it was pre 1798, or as it was meant to be before township valuations became fossilised in the 1730s. The tithe commutation Act of 1836 was an attempt to improve on it as someone has suggested in this thread. Unfortuately as the TCA demonstrated an acre of land on the top of Baugh Fell is not quite as productive as an acre of land next to the Lune in Marthwaite. The valuations as under the Land Tax were much more effective at producing a valid equivalence within a township between bundles. The pretty obvious deficiencies were that they discouraged development of land and they introduced a competition between parishes to have the lowest valuations around. Supposedly when Land Tax was 4s in the £ in the home counties it was 3d in the £ in Westmorland.
Well worth a read, and another example of why I am glad I didn't become an MP.
Shhh! My dad was a Tory MP: why I didn’t tell my friends
Growing up, Adam Hart was proud that his father, Simon, had a job that other people were interested in. Then the internet abuse started. At university having the Conservative secretary of state for Wales as a parent was social death
...In June 2016, when I was revising for my GCSEs, the MP Jo Cox was murdered after leaving her constituency surgery. Like everyone else, I had read many news articles about murders, but this one, with its pictures of a fortysomething MP with two kids, felt odd.
At home, the powers-that-be reviewed our “home security”. We failed on account of the public footpath that runs past our front door. Some men fitted a panic button in my parents’ wardrobe as well as a motion-triggered alarm outside the door. The first night the alarm was in operation a badger walked past and set it off, summoning Dyfed-Powys police to our house at 3am. As my sister and I were away, my parents saw the policemen at the door and assumed one of us had died.
Why have some people started behaving like this in recent years? I don't understand it.
I don't think anyone definitively knows. The Internet has reduced barriers and we have the phenomenon of online disinhibition. People sound off online in a way they wouldn't in person, and it has become much easier for your abuse to reach its target. 50 years ago, people perhaps had the same thoughts, but they didn't have an easy way of expressing them at someone. Maybe most people aren't like that, but those who are gravitate to online environments.
But maybe it's also about a degradation of political discourse, brought about by more partisan media. Then there's the influence of foreign agents, Russia etc. deliberately injecting discord. We now know Russia was funding right-wing commentators to make divisive social media content, down to complaining the latest Star Wars series is "too woke".
The fundamental problem is a simple one.
People don't want to know the truth; they would rather believe things that mesh with their existing prejudices.
And as media organizations are commercial businesses, built to deliver a profit to shareholders, then they will serve their audience the content they want, rather than the truth.
A premise of Enders Game was that good ideas would drive out the bad, via the internet. The reverse is true. There's an incredible amount of useful information, just a click away, but many people are not interested in it.
Instead, they want to believe the people are killing cats and dogs for food, in Springfield.
I missed that episode of The Simpsons, but then it went down in quality after about season 9.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
For land with houses on I agree with you - as long as the LVT is replacing Council tax and is broadly neutral in its effects. But for land that is being worked for food, assuming you are going to have the same value per acre for all land, then suddenly pretty much every farm in the country becomes unviable. And what about stuff like the National Parks or National Trust land? I can definitely see the case for habitable land - and land with planning permission to prevent land banking by developers - but land that is being worked to provide is with our food or amenity land for our benefit - cannot be included as it would destroy much of the rural economy.
An LVT should be able to have local land values factored in, which would make rural costs cheaper than residential ones already.
If rural land is productively used it should be able to pay for some of the costs of running the country, but I agree with it being less.
The Treasury could exempt National Trust etc land as appropriate.
If we moved as I desire to a zonal system then you can include this tax within the zonal system by taxing residentially zoned land more - and I would allow anyone who owns rural land to change their own designation if they choose to develop it to residential (while letting other rural people keep theirs if they so desire) but if they change it then they would become liable for paying the taxes as a consequence of their choice.
I think this appears to be how so many people view tax - it is all well and good to levy taxes just so long as you tax something I do not have. In Bart's case he doesn't have land and is jealous of those that do. A large part of the farming community, even those with large landholdings, have marginal incomes. They work hard and spend their time productively. They can only hope that Rachel Thieves does not read Bart's ideas!
I do have land, what makes you think I didn't?
Even though I personally dislike flats I recognise that's a matter of personal taste and accept I should pay more for owning a house than a flat, as that's my choice and I'm OK to pay for my own choices.
No offence, but "having land" normally means more than a front and back garden, and having it on a large mortgage!
You're pretty ignorant then, most tenants would be quite happy with nothing more than house of their own with or without a front and back garden to go with it.
If you have more, then that's your choice and you should pay for your choices just as I do mine.
And as was said at the start of the discussion, my proposal is not a tax hike but revenue neutral so that Stamp Duty should be eliminated so that rather than merely taxing those who are mobile people should pay lower but more consistent taxes.
Making taxes low and consistent is not a bad thing. Taxing mobility is a bad thing.
Well indeed Barty old bean, agree with your last statements, but taxing the farming community because you are jealous of their capital is incredibly dumb and highly simplistic. You have been banging this "through your own prism" drum for a long time. Glad you got on the ladder, well done. Now go and try as work as hard as a farmer does when many of their annual incomes work out to be less than minimum wage
I am happy for farmers to have the choice what to do with their land, I'm not proposing making their choice for them.
Well worth a read, and another example of why I am glad I didn't become an MP.
Shhh! My dad was a Tory MP: why I didn’t tell my friends
Growing up, Adam Hart was proud that his father, Simon, had a job that other people were interested in. Then the internet abuse started. At university having the Conservative secretary of state for Wales as a parent was social death
...In June 2016, when I was revising for my GCSEs, the MP Jo Cox was murdered after leaving her constituency surgery. Like everyone else, I had read many news articles about murders, but this one, with its pictures of a fortysomething MP with two kids, felt odd.
At home, the powers-that-be reviewed our “home security”. We failed on account of the public footpath that runs past our front door. Some men fitted a panic button in my parents’ wardrobe as well as a motion-triggered alarm outside the door. The first night the alarm was in operation a badger walked past and set it off, summoning Dyfed-Powys police to our house at 3am. As my sister and I were away, my parents saw the policemen at the door and assumed one of us had died.
Why have some people started behaving like this in recent years? I don't understand it.
I don't think anyone definitively knows. The Internet has reduced barriers and we have the phenomenon of online disinhibition. People sound off online in a way they wouldn't in person, and it has become much easier for your abuse to reach its target. 50 years ago, people perhaps had the same thoughts, but they didn't have an easy way of expressing them at someone. Maybe most people aren't like that, but those who are gravitate to online environments.
But maybe it's also about a degradation of political discourse, brought about by more partisan media. Then there's the influence of foreign agents, Russia etc. deliberately injecting discord. We now know Russia was funding right-wing commentators to make divisive social media content, down to complaining the latest Star Wars series is "too woke".
The fundamental problem is a simple one.
People don't want to know the truth; they would rather believe things that mesh with their existing prejudices.
And as media organizations are commercial businesses, built to deliver a profit to shareholders, then they will serve their audience the content they want, rather than the truth.
A premise of Enders Game was that good ideas would drive out the bad, via the internet. The reverse is true. There's an incredible amount of useful information, just a click away, but many people are not interested in it.
Instead, they want to believe the people are killing cats and dogs for food, in Springfield.
The way that both Valentine and Peter talked about 'the nets' (IIRC), and how they used to acquire political power and shape opinion, it was as close to a prophesy of Twitter I have ever seen.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
For land with houses on I agree with you - as long as the LVT is replacing Council tax and is broadly neutral in its effects. But for land that is being worked for food, assuming you are going to have the same value per acre for all land, then suddenly pretty much every farm in the country becomes unviable. And what about stuff like the National Parks or National Trust land? I can definitely see the case for habitable land - and land with planning permission to prevent land banking by developers - but land that is being worked to provide is with our food or amenity land for our benefit - cannot be included as it would destroy much of the rural economy.
An LVT should be able to have local land values factored in, which would make rural costs cheaper than residential ones already.
If rural land is productively used it should be able to pay for some of the costs of running the country, but I agree with it being less.
The Treasury could exempt National Trust etc land as appropriate.
If we moved as I desire to a zonal system then you can include this tax within the zonal system by taxing residentially zoned land more - and I would allow anyone who owns rural land to change their own designation if they choose to develop it to residential (while letting other rural people keep theirs if they so desire) but if they change it then they would become liable for paying the taxes as a consequence of their choice.
I think this appears to be how so many people view tax - it is all well and good to levy taxes just so long as you tax something I do not have. In Bart's case he doesn't have land and is jealous of those that do. A large part of the farming community, even those with large landholdings, have marginal incomes. They work hard and spend their time productively. They can only hope that Rachel Thieves does not read Bart's ideas!
If agricultural land only produces a marginal income then its value is low, and any tax on that value is also low.
Farmers have nothing to fear from a land value tax.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
The US announced their aircraft had been involved in supporting Israel last night but Starmer avoided the issue about UK involvement leaving in to the Ministry of Defence to release a statement
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
The truth is that most people don't want to downsize if they can possibly avoid it. Getting rid of stamp duty won't change that.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
Where are people who downsize going to live if they don't buy somewhere?
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
Where are people who downsize going to live if they don't buy somewhere?
Sure, they buy somewhere else, but downsizing suggests smaller. They're going to buy somewhere cheaper. So SDLT liability will be lower for the downsizer than the purchaser of their bigger property!!!!
Frankly, it seems like a boomer complaint. Why should we change the way property is taxed (transaction taxes are much more efficient as they don't involve nebulous valuations) because boomers have benefited from huge house price growth.
Oh dear oh dear...how could have seen this coming.
Make way for Lord Alli Say hey, it's Lord Alli
So we need to add the Lords' Commissioners to the list of the alt-right extremists who are investigating a non-story. Along with Unite, the Guardian, the Star and a few Labour MPs.
If this goes on, there won't be room for Nigel Farage at the next Reform conference.
The US announced their aircraft had been involved in supporting Israel last night but Starmer avoided the issue about UK involvement leaving in to the Ministry of Defence to release a statement
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
Where are people who downsize going to live if they don't buy somewhere?
Sure, they buy somewhere else, but downsizing suggests smaller. They're going to buy somewhere cheaper. So SDLT liability will be lower for the downsizer than the purchaser of their bigger property!!!!
Frankly, it seems like a boomer complaint. Why should we change the way property is taxed (transaction taxes are much more efficient as they don't involve nebulous valuations) because boomers have benefited from huge house price growth.
Its not a boomer complaint, most boomers are the least mobile.
Its a tax on mobility.
A boomer who lives in the same home they bought decades ago pays no stamp duty while someone who moves three times in a decade due to work commitments pays stamp duty three times.
The US announced their aircraft had been involved in supporting Israel last night but Starmer avoided the issue about UK involvement leaving in to the Ministry of Defence to release a statement
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
Me neither. I mean, it does, since it discourages buys in general and most downsizing triggers a buy, but it discourages upsizing rather more since the buy is bigger there. Plus if you're downsizing you're probably still quids in even after the tax. Upsizing, you're quids out and the tax adds to the pain. Then again, for every upsize there's a downsize, approx, so perhaps it's all a bit of a wash. It does hamper mobility, I think we can safely assert that.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
The truth is that most people don't want to downsize if they can possibly avoid it. Getting rid of stamp duty won't change that.
Indeed
Sell family home for £1.5m and buy a flat for £750k
Tax due £25k, so you have £725k cash and likely less future out goings on council tax, heating and maintenance.
There is also a well worn economic argument that if no SLDT then the flat would be priced at £775k
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
Where are people who downsize going to live if they don't buy somewhere?
Sure, they buy somewhere else, but downsizing suggests smaller. They're going to buy somewhere cheaper. So SDLT liability will be lower for the downsizer than the purchaser of their bigger property!!!!
Frankly, it seems like a boomer complaint. Why should we change the way property is taxed (transaction taxes are much more efficient as they don't involve nebulous valuations) because boomers have benefited from huge house price growth.
Its not a boomer complaint, most boomers are the least mobile.
Its a tax on mobility.
A boomer who lives in the same home they bought decades ago pays no stamp duty while someone who moves three times in a decade due to work commitments pays stamp duty three times.
Why is that reasonable?
Under your plan, people who have little income but happen to live in a house worth a lot have to pay more tax than someone who earns a lot but lives in a house worth a little.
Well worth a read, and another example of why I am glad I didn't become an MP.
Shhh! My dad was a Tory MP: why I didn’t tell my friends
Growing up, Adam Hart was proud that his father, Simon, had a job that other people were interested in. Then the internet abuse started. At university having the Conservative secretary of state for Wales as a parent was social death
...In June 2016, when I was revising for my GCSEs, the MP Jo Cox was murdered after leaving her constituency surgery. Like everyone else, I had read many news articles about murders, but this one, with its pictures of a fortysomething MP with two kids, felt odd.
At home, the powers-that-be reviewed our “home security”. We failed on account of the public footpath that runs past our front door. Some men fitted a panic button in my parents’ wardrobe as well as a motion-triggered alarm outside the door. The first night the alarm was in operation a badger walked past and set it off, summoning Dyfed-Powys police to our house at 3am. As my sister and I were away, my parents saw the policemen at the door and assumed one of us had died.
Why have some people started behaving like this in recent years? I don't understand it.
I don't think anyone definitively knows. The Internet has reduced barriers and we have the phenomenon of online disinhibition. People sound off online in a way they wouldn't in person, and it has become much easier for your abuse to reach its target. 50 years ago, people perhaps had the same thoughts, but they didn't have an easy way of expressing them at someone. Maybe most people aren't like that, but those who are gravitate to online environments.
But maybe it's also about a degradation of political discourse, brought about by more partisan media. Then there's the influence of foreign agents, Russia etc. deliberately injecting discord. We now know Russia was funding right-wing commentators to make divisive social media content, down to complaining the latest Star Wars series is "too woke".
The fundamental problem is a simple one.
People don't want to know the truth; they would rather believe things that mesh with their existing prejudices.
And as media organizations are commercial businesses, built to deliver a profit to shareholders, then they will serve their audience the content they want, rather than the truth.
A premise of Enders Game was that good ideas would drive out the bad, via the internet. The reverse is true. There's an incredible amount of useful information, just a click away, but many people are not interested in it.
Instead, they want to believe the people are killing cats and dogs for food, in Springfield.
I don't think it's an entirely consumer-led process. We know bad actors deliberately push misinformation, be those foreign agents wanting to destabilise their enemies, or special interest groups with their own agendas, or politicians wanting to win elections. Elon Musk, for example, fills Twitter with xenophobia and antisemitism because he wants to, not because the audience want it (Twitter 79% down in value).
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
The truth is that most people don't want to downsize if they can possibly avoid it. Getting rid of stamp duty won't change that.
I sense this is right. It's a factor in staying put but not usually the main one, I'd have thought.
But anyway I support transaction taxers AND asset taxes. For me it isn't an either/or.
The US announced their aircraft had been involved in supporting Israel last night but Starmer avoided the issue about UK involvement leaving in to the Ministry of Defence to release a statement
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
For land with houses on I agree with you - as long as the LVT is replacing Council tax and is broadly neutral in its effects. But for land that is being worked for food, assuming you are going to have the same value per acre for all land, then suddenly pretty much every farm in the country becomes unviable. And what about stuff like the National Parks or National Trust land? I can definitely see the case for habitable land - and land with planning permission to prevent land banking by developers - but land that is being worked to provide is with our food or amenity land for our benefit - cannot be included as it would destroy much of the rural economy.
An LVT should be able to have local land values factored in, which would make rural costs cheaper than residential ones already.
If rural land is productively used it should be able to pay for some of the costs of running the country, but I agree with it being less.
The Treasury could exempt National Trust etc land as appropriate.
If we moved as I desire to a zonal system then you can include this tax within the zonal system by taxing residentially zoned land more - and I would allow anyone who owns rural land to change their own designation if they choose to develop it to residential (while letting other rural people keep theirs if they so desire) but if they change it then they would become liable for paying the taxes as a consequence of their choice.
I think this appears to be how so many people view tax - it is all well and good to levy taxes just so long as you tax something I do not have. In Bart's case he doesn't have land and is jealous of those that do. A large part of the farming community, even those with large landholdings, have marginal incomes. They work hard and spend their time productively. They can only hope that Rachel Thieves does not read Bart's ideas!
If agricultural land only produces a marginal income then its value is low, and any tax on that value is also low.
Farmers have nothing to fear from a land value tax.
We rent just over 3 acres of grassland for £3.6k/yr. It can only be used for grazing as per the nearby church covenant/negative obligation. Would that be taxed ? How would that be taxed ?
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
The truth is that most people don't want to downsize if they can possibly avoid it. Getting rid of stamp duty won't change that.
I sense this is right. It's a factor in staying put but not usually the main one, I'd have thought.
But anyway I support transaction taxers AND asset taxes. For me it isn't an either/or.
People who moved from the provinces to London in their youth should be heavily penalised if they don't move back out again in retirement. They need to make way for the next generation of strivers.
The US announced their aircraft had been involved in supporting Israel last night but Starmer avoided the issue about UK involvement leaving in to the Ministry of Defence to release a statement
John Healey the Secretary of State for Defence posted that "they played their part" yesterday evening at about 10pm.
And it appears from the MOD, that they didn't actually do anything really (beyond deterrence).
Taking out ballistic missiles isn't doing anything - really ?
Starmer should have confirmed joint RAF action with the US in support of Israel
Why didn't he ?
Eh? Its not Starmer's job to confirm the minutiae of what British forces are doing, nor is it necessarily appropriate for that information to be made public in an ongoing mission.
However Starmer did confirm the UK stood with Israel which was the appropriate thing for him to do.
I'll repost what I said this morning as I think Starmer deserves credit for his response and was right to give it:
Calling on Iran to stop its attacks, he added: "Together with its proxies like Hezbollah, Iran has menaced the Middle East for far too long, chaos and destruction brought not just to Israel, but to the people they live amongst in Lebanon and beyond.
"Make no mistake, Britain stands full square against such violence. We support Israel's reasonable demand for the security of its people."
Iran has menaced the Middle East for far, far too long. Dubya Bush made a mistake prioritising Iraq for regime change in 2003 when Iran is the real puppet master.
Its long past time for regime change in Iran. After sending a barrage of missiles against Israel last night I would 100% support all-out conflict with Iran to bring in regime change and the elimination of the Ayatollahs.
That it would rid the world of not just the people behind such terrorists as Hamas and Hezbollah, but also one of the major arms dealers to Putin too is an added bonus.
Less than a month ago she was leading with around 45%.
Real crash and burn here.
I think as soon as her take on the minimum wage was publicised we should all have recognised she was out of the running. I really hope that she learns from this experience and matures her thought process and doesn't just say the first thing that pops into her brain because she thinks people will react to it, leave that to YouTube personalities and podcasters.
In her first speech in her shadow cabinet role after the election she warned her opponent that she would "hold them to account". It's a silly phrase that reduced her role to a YouTube reaction video. Her job as a Shadow is to argue for her position and, when it conflicts, against the Govt's (Steve Baker is good on this)
She has strongly-held views that mesh with the membership and expresses them. This is one of the reasons why I bet on her. But she does not understand the roles and if she fails in her attempt I think the Conservatives will have chosen wisely, at least from their POV. @MaxPB is right.
As far as I am aware, she mentioned the minimum wage in passing as one of the burdens on small businesses (which it is), and it was seized upon by a bored media. She does seem quite prone to bold statements, and I don't support her due to her lack of policies but dismissing her entire candidature on the basis of a sensationalised quote was as ill-considered and immature as she is accused of being.
The US announced their aircraft had been involved in supporting Israel last night but Starmer avoided the issue about UK involvement leaving in to the Ministry of Defence to release a statement
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
The truth is that most people don't want to downsize if they can possibly avoid it. Getting rid of stamp duty won't change that.
I sense this is right. It's a factor in staying put but not usually the main one, I'd have thought.
But anyway I support transaction taxers AND asset taxes. For me it isn't an either/or.
People who moved from the provinces to London in their youth should be heavily penalised if they don't move back out again in retirement. They need to make way for the next generation of strivers.
Yes - so long as I get an exemption I quite like that.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
For land with houses on I agree with you - as long as the LVT is replacing Council tax and is broadly neutral in its effects. But for land that is being worked for food, assuming you are going to have the same value per acre for all land, then suddenly pretty much every farm in the country becomes unviable. And what about stuff like the National Parks or National Trust land? I can definitely see the case for habitable land - and land with planning permission to prevent land banking by developers - but land that is being worked to provide is with our food or amenity land for our benefit - cannot be included as it would destroy much of the rural economy.
An LVT should be able to have local land values factored in, which would make rural costs cheaper than residential ones already.
If rural land is productively used it should be able to pay for some of the costs of running the country, but I agree with it being less.
The Treasury could exempt National Trust etc land as appropriate.
If we moved as I desire to a zonal system then you can include this tax within the zonal system by taxing residentially zoned land more - and I would allow anyone who owns rural land to change their own designation if they choose to develop it to residential (while letting other rural people keep theirs if they so desire) but if they change it then they would become liable for paying the taxes as a consequence of their choice.
I think this appears to be how so many people view tax - it is all well and good to levy taxes just so long as you tax something I do not have. In Bart's case he doesn't have land and is jealous of those that do. A large part of the farming community, even those with large landholdings, have marginal incomes. They work hard and spend their time productively. They can only hope that Rachel Thieves does not read Bart's ideas!
If agricultural land only produces a marginal income then its value is low, and any tax on that value is also low.
Farmers have nothing to fear from a land value tax.
We rent just over 3 acres of grassland for £3.6k/yr. It can only be used for grazing as per the nearby church covenant/negative obligation. Would that be taxed ? How would that be taxed ?
If you rent then you do not own the land so would not be liable for a penny of land value tax.
Your landlord might, although agricultural land could be exempt in some systems depending upon how you define it, and might want to attempt to pass on the cost but it would be a peppercorn amount given the value is so low.
The US announced their aircraft had been involved in supporting Israel last night but Starmer avoided the issue about UK involvement leaving in to the Ministry of Defence to release a statement
The US announced their aircraft had been involved in supporting Israel last night but Starmer avoided the issue about UK involvement leaving in to the Ministry of Defence to release a statement
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
The truth is that most people don't want to downsize if they can possibly avoid it. Getting rid of stamp duty won't change that.
Indeed
Sell family home for £1.5m and buy a flat for £750k
Tax due £25k, so you have £725k cash and likely less future out goings on council tax, heating and maintenance.
There is also a well worn economic argument that if no SLDT then the flat would be priced at £775k
That £25k in stamp duty has to be found from savings / equity in the previous property though - so it's highly possible that without SLDT the flat would be selling at £800k or even more..
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
Where are people who downsize going to live if they don't buy somewhere?
Sure, they buy somewhere else, but downsizing suggests smaller. They're going to buy somewhere cheaper. So SDLT liability will be lower for the downsizer than the purchaser of their bigger property!!!!
Frankly, it seems like a boomer complaint. Why should we change the way property is taxed (transaction taxes are much more efficient as they don't involve nebulous valuations) because boomers have benefited from huge house price growth.
Its not a boomer complaint, most boomers are the least mobile.
Its a tax on mobility.
A boomer who lives in the same home they bought decades ago pays no stamp duty while someone who moves three times in a decade due to work commitments pays stamp duty three times.
Why is that reasonable?
Under your plan, people who have little income but happen to live in a house worth a lot have to pay more tax than someone who earns a lot but lives in a house worth a little.
How is that reasonable?
Under my plan only those who own the land would be facing a tax bill and why should they not?
Why should people who own a large property not pay their fair share of the running costs of the country?
If they don't want to pay that, they can always downsize and cut their costs.
The US announced their aircraft had been involved in supporting Israel last night but Starmer avoided the issue about UK involvement leaving in to the Ministry of Defence to release a statement
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
Where are people who downsize going to live if they don't buy somewhere?
Sure, they buy somewhere else, but downsizing suggests smaller. They're going to buy somewhere cheaper. So SDLT liability will be lower for the downsizer than the purchaser of their bigger property!!!!
Frankly, it seems like a boomer complaint. Why should we change the way property is taxed (transaction taxes are much more efficient as they don't involve nebulous valuations) because boomers have benefited from huge house price growth.
Its not a boomer complaint, most boomers are the least mobile.
Its a tax on mobility.
A boomer who lives in the same home they bought decades ago pays no stamp duty while someone who moves three times in a decade due to work commitments pays stamp duty three times.
Why is that reasonable?
Under your plan, people who have little income but happen to live in a house worth a lot have to pay more tax than someone who earns a lot but lives in a house worth a little.
How is that reasonable?
Because it’s economically far more efficient for the person in the expensive house to sell up to the person who is willing to pay that much for their property & move somewhere cheaper.
Taxes that improve economic efficiency are a net good for everyone, including the person on low income who downsizes, because they grow the entire economy allowing more investment into goods & services for the entire population to enjoy.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
Where are people who downsize going to live if they don't buy somewhere?
Sure, they buy somewhere else, but downsizing suggests smaller. They're going to buy somewhere cheaper. So SDLT liability will be lower for the downsizer than the purchaser of their bigger property!!!!
Frankly, it seems like a boomer complaint. Why should we change the way property is taxed (transaction taxes are much more efficient as they don't involve nebulous valuations) because boomers have benefited from huge house price growth.
Its not a boomer complaint, most boomers are the least mobile.
Its a tax on mobility.
A boomer who lives in the same home they bought decades ago pays no stamp duty while someone who moves three times in a decade due to work commitments pays stamp duty three times.
Why is that reasonable?
Under your plan, people who have little income but happen to live in a house worth a lot have to pay more tax than someone who earns a lot but lives in a house worth a little.
How is that reasonable?
Because it’s economically far more efficient for the person in the expensive house to sell up to the person who is willing to pay that much for their property & move somewhere cheaper.
Taxes that improve economic efficiency are a net good for everyone, including the person on low income who downsizes, because they grow the entire economy allowing more investment into goods & services for the entire population to enjoy.
This.
Any halfway decent government would start with the question "how do we make things work better? how do we encourage the more efficient allocation of resources? and how do we make sure that we incentivize people to work?"
That would, at a minimum, mean: (a) removing stamp duty, (b) replacing it with some kind of LVT, and (c) removing all the traps where marginal tax rate (including removal of benefits) shoots up above 50%.
The US announced their aircraft had been involved in supporting Israel last night but Starmer avoided the issue about UK involvement leaving in to the Ministry of Defence to release a statement
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
The truth is that most people don't want to downsize if they can possibly avoid it. Getting rid of stamp duty won't change that.
I sense this is right. It's a factor in staying put but not usually the main one, I'd have thought.
But anyway I support transaction taxers AND asset taxes. For me it isn't an either/or.
Don't fall for the Silver Bullet Fallacy: progress comes from millions of tiny incremental gains, and you grab them where you can.
Less than a month ago she was leading with around 45%.
Real crash and burn here.
I think as soon as her take on the minimum wage was publicised we should all have recognised she was out of the running. I really hope that she learns from this experience and matures her thought process and doesn't just say the first thing that pops into her brain because she thinks people will react to it, leave that to YouTube personalities and podcasters.
In her first speech in her shadow cabinet role after the election she warned her opponent that she would "hold them to account". It's a silly phrase that reduced her role to a YouTube reaction video. Her job as a Shadow is to argue for her position and, when it conflicts, against the Govt's (Steve Baker is good on this)
She has strongly-held views that mesh with the membership and expresses them. This is one of the reasons why I bet on her. But she does not understand the roles and if she fails in her attempt I think the Conservatives will have chosen wisely, at least from their POV. @MaxPB is right.
As far as I am aware, she mentioned the minimum wage in passing as one of the burdens on small businesses (which it is), and it was seized upon by a bored media. She does seem quite prone to bold statements, and I don't support her due to her lack of policies but dismissing her entire candidature on the basis of a sensationalised quote was as ill-considered and immature as she is accused of being.
But that's why she's unsuitable, she makes those big bold statements on purpose to get into an unnecessary fight with the "establishment" or whatever her latest target is. When she was fighting the men in dresses trying t get into women's spaces it worked for her because it was such an obviously stupid idea that the big bold statement approach worked and people supported her. It doesn't work on policies like the minimum wage, maternity leave or even joking about civil servants not doing their jobs for her because they hate the Tories and Tory policies because those arguments need a lot more thinking and a lot more than a simple statement or joke to win people over.
In all cases she might have had a valid point at some level, for example Labour have been talking about removing the age ramp on the minimum wage which is probably detrimental to young people who will be priced out of a lot of jobs at the start of their careers. For maternity pay there might be a case to look at how the government can assist in making it easier for smaller businesses to support their employees and businesses better when women they employ need to take time off to raise their families. Wrt the civil service she could have made a point that there is an inherent conflict of interest with the civil service being so heavily unionised and those unions supporting the Labour party and assisting them to get elected which can incentivise them to block policies they don't like or think will hurt the Labour party or take actions they think will help Labour get elected etc...
Instead she made big eyecatching pronouncements and jokes so her ideas were just lost in the nonsense that followed.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
Where are people who downsize going to live if they don't buy somewhere?
Sure, they buy somewhere else, but downsizing suggests smaller. They're going to buy somewhere cheaper. So SDLT liability will be lower for the downsizer than the purchaser of their bigger property!!!!
Frankly, it seems like a boomer complaint. Why should we change the way property is taxed (transaction taxes are much more efficient as they don't involve nebulous valuations) because boomers have benefited from huge house price growth.
Its not a boomer complaint, most boomers are the least mobile.
Its a tax on mobility.
A boomer who lives in the same home they bought decades ago pays no stamp duty while someone who moves three times in a decade due to work commitments pays stamp duty three times.
Why is that reasonable?
Under your plan, people who have little income but happen to live in a house worth a lot have to pay more tax than someone who earns a lot but lives in a house worth a little.
How is that reasonable?
Because it’s economically far more efficient for the person in the expensive house to sell up to the person who is willing to pay that much for their property & move somewhere cheaper.
Taxes that improve economic efficiency are a net good for everyone, including the person on low income who downsizes, because they grow the entire economy allowing more investment into goods & services for the entire population to enjoy.
This.
Any halfway decent government would start with the question "how do we make things work better? how do we encourage the more efficient allocation of resources? and how do we make sure that we incentivize people to work?"
That would, at a minimum, mean: (a) removing stamp duty, (b) replacing it with some kind of LVT, and (c) removing all the traps where marginal tax rate (including removal of benefits) shoots up above 50%.
Surely it's
a) remove stamp duty b) replace it with a form on LVT c) discover that is duplicating council tax, so d) replace both stamp duty + Council tax with something that works
keeping margin tax rates with benefits below 50% is going to be an impossible task though. if you change the taper you end up with people receiving benefits on a higher level of pay so dragging even more people into universal credit.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
The truth is that most people don't want to downsize if they can possibly avoid it. Getting rid of stamp duty won't change that.
I sense this is right. It's a factor in staying put but not usually the main one, I'd have thought.
But anyway I support transaction taxers AND asset taxes. For me it isn't an either/or.
People who moved from the provinces to London in their youth should be heavily penalised if they don't move back out again in retirement. They need to make way for the next generation of strivers.
Yes - so long as I get an exemption I quite like that.
Actually the scenario of someone moving out of London highlights an issue with the concept of 'downsizing'.
Sometimes moving to a cheaper property can actually mean upsizing if it involves moving from an expensive area to a cheaper one. London money has pushed up values in lots of areas and priced out would-be young families.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
Where are people who downsize going to live if they don't buy somewhere?
Sure, they buy somewhere else, but downsizing suggests smaller. They're going to buy somewhere cheaper. So SDLT liability will be lower for the downsizer than the purchaser of their bigger property!!!!
Frankly, it seems like a boomer complaint. Why should we change the way property is taxed (transaction taxes are much more efficient as they don't involve nebulous valuations) because boomers have benefited from huge house price growth.
Its not a boomer complaint, most boomers are the least mobile.
Its a tax on mobility.
A boomer who lives in the same home they bought decades ago pays no stamp duty while someone who moves three times in a decade due to work commitments pays stamp duty three times.
Why is that reasonable?
Under your plan, people who have little income but happen to live in a house worth a lot have to pay more tax than someone who earns a lot but lives in a house worth a little.
How is that reasonable?
Because it’s economically far more efficient for the person in the expensive house to sell up to the person who is willing to pay that much for their property & move somewhere cheaper.
Taxes that improve economic efficiency are a net good for everyone, including the person on low income who downsizes, because they grow the entire economy allowing more investment into goods & services for the entire population to enjoy.
This.
Any halfway decent government would start with the question "how do we make things work better? how do we encourage the more efficient allocation of resources? and how do we make sure that we incentivize people to work?"
That would, at a minimum, mean: (a) removing stamp duty, (b) replacing it with some kind of LVT, and (c) removing all the traps where marginal tax rate (including removal of benefits) shoots up above 50%.
A halfway decent government would actually start with the question "how do we get re-elected?" and then see where that fits in with your, for them, secondary questions. That is the inherent nature of democracy.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
The truth is that most people don't want to downsize if they can possibly avoid it. Getting rid of stamp duty won't change that.
Indeed
Sell family home for £1.5m and buy a flat for £750k
Tax due £25k, so you have £725k cash and likely less future out goings on council tax, heating and maintenance.
There is also a well worn economic argument that if no SLDT then the flat would be priced at £775k
That £25k in stamp duty has to be found from savings / equity in the previous property though - so it's highly possible that without SLDT the flat would be selling at £800k or even more..
Depends on the interaction with demand and supply. It would be very odd if 100% of that gain was directed towards housing, and if it opens up many more properties into the market, you might find prices for larger properties falls significantly (great for families).
OTOH, the cost of sheltered accommodation, ground floor flats (good for old people) might increase quite a bit as they become relatively more attractive.
I still think the last two will be Jenrick and Badenoch
You've been saying this pretty consistently and are a voice here I respect. What's your reasoning?
P.S. if that did happen I think Kemi would walk it
Mostly because those two are in the first two positions and I expect transfers from other candidates to be more diverse (if that's the right word) than others seem to think, ie. Jenrick and Badenoch will pick up a few transfers from Stride and either Cleverly or Tugendhat.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
For land with houses on I agree with you - as long as the LVT is replacing Council tax and is broadly neutral in its effects. But for land that is being worked for food, assuming you are going to have the same value per acre for all land, then suddenly pretty much every farm in the country becomes unviable. And what about stuff like the National Parks or National Trust land? I can definitely see the case for habitable land - and land with planning permission to prevent land banking by developers - but land that is being worked to provide is with our food or amenity land for our benefit - cannot be included as it would destroy much of the rural economy.
An LVT should be able to have local land values factored in, which would make rural costs cheaper than residential ones already.
If rural land is productively used it should be able to pay for some of the costs of running the country, but I agree with it being less.
The Treasury could exempt National Trust etc land as appropriate.
If we moved as I desire to a zonal system then you can include this tax within the zonal system by taxing residentially zoned land more - and I would allow anyone who owns rural land to change their own designation if they choose to develop it to residential (while letting other rural people keep theirs if they so desire) but if they change it then they would become liable for paying the taxes as a consequence of their choice.
I think this appears to be how so many people view tax - it is all well and good to levy taxes just so long as you tax something I do not have. In Bart's case he doesn't have land and is jealous of those that do. A large part of the farming community, even those with large landholdings, have marginal incomes. They work hard and spend their time productively. They can only hope that Rachel Thieves does not read Bart's ideas!
If agricultural land only produces a marginal income then its value is low, and any tax on that value is also low.
Farmers have nothing to fear from a land value tax.
We rent just over 3 acres of grassland for £3.6k/yr. It can only be used for grazing as per the nearby church covenant/negative obligation. Would that be taxed ? How would that be taxed ?
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
Likely catastrophic disruption, if you did that over a couple of years - but it would be a great endgame if sufficient new housing stock could be built to make prices rational again. You could build it into a long term plan.
The US announced their aircraft had been involved in supporting Israel last night but Starmer avoided the issue about UK involvement leaving in to the Ministry of Defence to release a statement
John Healey the Secretary of State for Defence posted that "they played their part" yesterday evening at about 10pm.
And it appears from the MOD, that they didn't actually do anything really (beyond deterrence).
Taking out ballistic missiles isn't doing anything - really ?
Starmer should have confirmed joint RAF action with the US in support of Israel
Why didn't he ?
Your link literally said that no target was engaged.
Do you read what you actually post ?
I think you need to revisit the wording where 'it says a wider deterrence and efforts to prevent future escalation'
Taking out ballistic missiles is part of that and has been done by the RAF previously and confirmed by Sunak
You are trying to excuse our Prime Minister remaining silent on RAF involvement when the US were open about it immediately
Did they, or did they not, "take out ballistic missiles last night" ?
It's a simple yes or no.
I understand the RAF provided intelligence, surveillance and other tracking data but on this occasion did not take out any missiles unlike previously
I apologise for my assumption, but at the same time the RAF were engaged in active operations in protecting Israel
The Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier is currently in the Persian Gulf The Prince of Wales aircraft carrier was near Jersey four days ago, so may now be in the Mediterranean. If not from the Prince of Wales they would have to fly from, say, Cyprus Other than that they would need refuelling aircraft I assume if that was happening we'd know.
The US announced their aircraft had been involved in supporting Israel last night but Starmer avoided the issue about UK involvement leaving in to the Ministry of Defence to release a statement
The US announced their aircraft had been involved in supporting Israel last night but Starmer avoided the issue about UK involvement leaving in to the Ministry of Defence to release a statement
John Healey the Secretary of State for Defence posted that "they played their part" yesterday evening at about 10pm.
And it appears from the MOD, that they didn't actually do anything really (beyond deterrence).
Taking out ballistic missiles isn't doing anything - really ?
Starmer should have confirmed joint RAF action with the US in support of Israel
Why didn't he ?
Your link literally said that no target was engaged.
Do you read what you actually post ?
I think you need to revisit the wording where 'it says a wider deterrence and efforts to prevent future escalation'
Taking out ballistic missiles is part of that and has been done by the RAF previously and confirmed by Sunak
You are trying to excuse our Prime Minister remaining silent on RAF involvement when the US were open about it immediately
Did they, or did they not, "take out ballistic missiles last night" ?
It's a simple yes or no.
I understand the RAF provided intelligence, surveillance and other tracking data but on this occasion did not take out any missiles unlike previously
I apologise for my assumption, but at the same time the RAF were engaged in active operations in protecting Israel
The Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier is currently in the Persian Gulf The Prince of Wales aircraft carrier was near Jersey four days ago, so may now be in the Mediterranean. If not from the Prince of Wales they would have to fly from, say, Cyprus Other than that they would need refuelling aircraft I assume if that was happening we'd know.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
The truth is that most people don't want to downsize if they can possibly avoid it. Getting rid of stamp duty won't change that.
I sense this is right. It's a factor in staying put but not usually the main one, I'd have thought.
But anyway I support transaction taxers AND asset taxes. For me it isn't an either/or.
People who moved from the provinces to London in their youth should be heavily penalised if they don't move back out again in retirement. They need to make way for the next generation of strivers.
London needs to be able to grow to its natural size so that anyone, who wants to live there, can, however old they are.
The US announced their aircraft had been involved in supporting Israel last night but Starmer avoided the issue about UK involvement leaving in to the Ministry of Defence to release a statement
John Healey the Secretary of State for Defence posted that "they played their part" yesterday evening at about 10pm.
And it appears from the MOD, that they didn't actually do anything really (beyond deterrence).
Taking out ballistic missiles isn't doing anything - really ?
Starmer should have confirmed joint RAF action with the US in support of Israel
Why didn't he ?
Your link literally said that no target was engaged.
Do you read what you actually post ?
I think you need to revisit the wording where 'it says a wider deterrence and efforts to prevent future escalation'
Taking out ballistic missiles is part of that and has been done by the RAF previously and confirmed by Sunak
You are trying to excuse our Prime Minister remaining silent on RAF involvement when the US were open about it immediately
Did they, or did they not, "take out ballistic missiles last night" ?
It's a simple yes or no.
I understand the RAF provided intelligence, surveillance and other tracking data but on this occasion did not take out any missiles unlike previously
I apologise for my assumption, but at the same time the RAF were engaged in active operations in protecting Israel
The Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier is currently in the Persian Gulf The Prince of Wales aircraft carrier was near Jersey four days ago, so may now be in the Mediterranean. If not from the Prince of Wales they would have to fly from, say, Cyprus Other than that they would need refuelling aircraft I assume if that was happening we'd know.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed, its utter madness.
If you downsize you shouldn't pay a penny in tax on the mobility, besides eg VAT on fees related to moving etc
Instead if you downsize you should see a cut in your taxes, as the LVT on a flat or smaller semi etc should be less than the LVT on your existing home.
But instead HMRC does the opposite. Minimal taxes on staying still but hefty taxes if you move. Its utterly insane and no wonder we have a broken system.
That seems to me to be a strange perspective.
How many years of untaxed, unearned capital growth on your large house will your Stamp Duty bill on your smaller flat comprise?
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
The truth is that most people don't want to downsize if they can possibly avoid it. Getting rid of stamp duty won't change that.
I sense this is right. It's a factor in staying put but not usually the main one, I'd have thought.
But anyway I support transaction taxers AND asset taxes. For me it isn't an either/or.
People who moved from the provinces to London in their youth should be heavily penalised if they don't move back out again in retirement. They need to make way for the next generation of strivers.
Yes - so long as I get an exemption I quite like that.
Actually the scenario of someone moving out of London highlights an issue with the concept of 'downsizing'.
Sometimes moving to a cheaper property can actually mean upsizing if it involves moving from an expensive area to a cheaper one. London money has pushed up values in lots of areas and priced out would-be young families.
We acquired substantially greater space, when we moved from Kenton to Luton, despite paying £75,000 less than we sold for.
The US announced their aircraft had been involved in supporting Israel last night but Starmer avoided the issue about UK involvement leaving in to the Ministry of Defence to release a statement
John Healey the Secretary of State for Defence posted that "they played their part" yesterday evening at about 10pm.
And it appears from the MOD, that they didn't actually do anything really (beyond deterrence).
Taking out ballistic missiles isn't doing anything - really ?
Starmer should have confirmed joint RAF action with the US in support of Israel
Why didn't he ?
Your link literally said that no target was engaged.
Do you read what you actually post ?
I think you need to revisit the wording where 'it says a wider deterrence and efforts to prevent future escalation'
Taking out ballistic missiles is part of that and has been done by the RAF previously and confirmed by Sunak
You are trying to excuse our Prime Minister remaining silent on RAF involvement when the US were open about it immediately
Did they, or did they not, "take out ballistic missiles last night" ?
It's a simple yes or no.
I understand the RAF provided intelligence, surveillance and other tracking data but on this occasion did not take out any missiles unlike previously
I apologise for my assumption, but at the same time the RAF were engaged in active operations in protecting Israel
The Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier is currently in the Persian Gulf The Prince of Wales aircraft carrier was near Jersey four days ago, so may now be in the Mediterranean. If not from the Prince of Wales they would have to fly from, say, Cyprus Other than that they would need refuelling aircraft I assume if that was happening we'd know.
Less than a month ago she was leading with around 45%.
Real crash and burn here.
I think as soon as her take on the minimum wage was publicised we should all have recognised she was out of the running. I really hope that she learns from this experience and matures her thought process and doesn't just say the first thing that pops into her brain because she thinks people will react to it, leave that to YouTube personalities and podcasters.
In her first speech in her shadow cabinet role after the election she warned her opponent that she would "hold them to account". It's a silly phrase that reduced her role to a YouTube reaction video. Her job as a Shadow is to argue for her position and, when it conflicts, against the Govt's (Steve Baker is good on this)
She has strongly-held views that mesh with the membership and expresses them. This is one of the reasons why I bet on her. But she does not understand the roles and if she fails in her attempt I think the Conservatives will have chosen wisely, at least from their POV. @MaxPB is right.
As far as I am aware, she mentioned the minimum wage in passing as one of the burdens on small businesses (which it is), and it was seized upon by a bored media. She does seem quite prone to bold statements, and I don't support her due to her lack of policies but dismissing her entire candidature on the basis of a sensationalised quote was as ill-considered and immature as she is accused of being.
But that's why she's unsuitable, she makes those big bold statements on purpose to get into an unnecessary fight with the "establishment" or whatever her latest target is. When she was fighting the men in dresses trying t get into women's spaces it worked for her because it was such an obviously stupid idea that the big bold statement approach worked and people supported her. It doesn't work on policies like the minimum wage, maternity leave or even joking about civil servants not doing their jobs for her because they hate the Tories and Tory policies because those arguments need a lot more thinking and a lot more than a simple statement or joke to win people over.
In all cases she might have had a valid point at some level, for example Labour have been talking about removing the age ramp on the minimum wage which is probably detrimental to young people who will be priced out of a lot of jobs at the start of their careers. For maternity pay there might be a case to look at how the government can assist in making it easier for smaller businesses to support their employees and businesses better when women they employ need to take time off to raise their families. Wrt the civil service she could have made a point that there is an inherent conflict of interest with the civil service being so heavily unionised and those unions supporting the Labour party and assisting them to get elected which can incentivise them to block policies they don't like or think will hurt the Labour party or take actions they think will help Labour get elected etc...
Instead she made big eyecatching pronouncements and jokes so her ideas were just lost in the nonsense that followed.
Maternity pay is a very serious issue for small companies.
In the US, we had a pretty generous - by US standards - maternity policy. We had a senior employee. She got pregnant, enjoyed six months of maternity leave on half pay (while we were paying twice her salary for a contractor to cover her), and then quit on the day she was due back.
I fully support maternity pay, but for small companies, you will end up actively avoiding hiring women of a certain age, because it can be incredibly expensive. Worse, it encourages dishonesty, which benefits nobody. What we should have done - and which would have saved us a fortune - was given her a three month goodbye bonus when she left. She would have been in the same situation, and we would have therefore avoided paying a fortune for a contractor to cover her, and could have gone straight to hiring a full time replacement.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
The truth is that most people don't want to downsize if they can possibly avoid it. Getting rid of stamp duty won't change that.
I sense this is right. It's a factor in staying put but not usually the main one, I'd have thought.
But anyway I support transaction taxers AND asset taxes. For me it isn't an either/or.
People who moved from the provinces to London in their youth should be heavily penalised if they don't move back out again in retirement. They need to make way for the next generation of strivers.
London needs to be able to grow to its natural size so that anyone, who wants to live there, can, however old they are.
Including people who want to move there from the rest of the world?
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
The truth is that most people don't want to downsize if they can possibly avoid it. Getting rid of stamp duty won't change that.
I sense this is right. It's a factor in staying put but not usually the main one, I'd have thought.
But anyway I support transaction taxers AND asset taxes. For me it isn't an either/or.
People who moved from the provinces to London in their youth should be heavily penalised if they don't move back out again in retirement. They need to make way for the next generation of strivers.
London needs to be able to grow to its natural size so that anyone, who wants to live there, can, however old they are.
I think we should try and make other towns and cities more attractive to aspirational young people.
Kudos for Cleverly for prompting a discussion that has sustained all day. It is perhaps notable for all the posturing, provocative statements and bravado that none of the other candidates managed that.
Whether it’s wise or not remains to be seen, but he definitely got people talking and thinking.
PA Media @PA · 21m #BreakingNews Sir Keir Starmer has paid back more than £6,000 worth of gifts and hospitality received since becoming Prime Minister, Downing Street has said
PA Media @PA The Prime Minister is covering the cost of six Taylor Swift tickets, four to the races and a clothing rental agreement with a high-end designer favoured by his wife, Lady Victoria Starmer
What a strange decision for a man who has done nothing wrong to take.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
Where are people who downsize going to live if they don't buy somewhere?
Sure, they buy somewhere else, but downsizing suggests smaller. They're going to buy somewhere cheaper. So SDLT liability will be lower for the downsizer than the purchaser of their bigger property!!!!
Frankly, it seems like a boomer complaint. Why should we change the way property is taxed (transaction taxes are much more efficient as they don't involve nebulous valuations) because boomers have benefited from huge house price growth.
Its not a boomer complaint, most boomers are the least mobile.
Its a tax on mobility.
A boomer who lives in the same home they bought decades ago pays no stamp duty while someone who moves three times in a decade due to work commitments pays stamp duty three times.
Why is that reasonable?
Under your plan, people who have little income but happen to live in a house worth a lot have to pay more tax than someone who earns a lot but lives in a house worth a little.
How is that reasonable?
Because it’s economically far more efficient for the person in the expensive house to sell up to the person who is willing to pay that much for their property & move somewhere cheaper.
Taxes that improve economic efficiency are a net good for everyone, including the person on low income who downsizes, because they grow the entire economy allowing more investment into goods & services for the entire population to enjoy.
This.
Any halfway decent government would start with the question "how do we make things work better? how do we encourage the more efficient allocation of resources? and how do we make sure that we incentivize people to work?"
That would, at a minimum, mean: (a) removing stamp duty, (b) replacing it with some kind of LVT, and (c) removing all the traps where marginal tax rate (including removal of benefits) shoots up above 50%.
Surely it's
a) remove stamp duty b) replace it with a form on LVT c) discover that is duplicating council tax, so d) replace both stamp duty + Council tax with something that works
keeping margin tax rates with benefits below 50% is going to be an impossible task though. if you change the taper you end up with people receiving benefits on a higher level of pay so dragging even more people into universal credit.
It's not an impossible task, it just requires a little bit of creativity.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
It is a ridiculous tax which reduces the mobility of labour and therefore the efficiency of the market. But governments have never been able to see lumps of money moving around without getting their cut.
I don’t have a philosophical problem with that.
The issue is that they are too greedy.
14% is a ridiculous tax rate on a capital transfer
It means it is hardly ever worth selling an expensive asset: much better to rent it out instead.
Less than a month ago she was leading with around 45%.
Real crash and burn here.
I think as soon as her take on the minimum wage was publicised we should all have recognised she was out of the running. I really hope that she learns from this experience and matures her thought process and doesn't just say the first thing that pops into her brain because she thinks people will react to it, leave that to YouTube personalities and podcasters.
In her first speech in her shadow cabinet role after the election she warned her opponent that she would "hold them to account". It's a silly phrase that reduced her role to a YouTube reaction video. Her job as a Shadow is to argue for her position and, when it conflicts, against the Govt's (Steve Baker is good on this)
She has strongly-held views that mesh with the membership and expresses them. This is one of the reasons why I bet on her. But she does not understand the roles and if she fails in her attempt I think the Conservatives will have chosen wisely, at least from their POV. @MaxPB is right.
As far as I am aware, she mentioned the minimum wage in passing as one of the burdens on small businesses (which it is), and it was seized upon by a bored media. She does seem quite prone to bold statements, and I don't support her due to her lack of policies but dismissing her entire candidature on the basis of a sensationalised quote was as ill-considered and immature as she is accused of being.
But that's why she's unsuitable, she makes those big bold statements on purpose to get into an unnecessary fight with the "establishment" or whatever her latest target is. When she was fighting the men in dresses trying t get into women's spaces it worked for her because it was such an obviously stupid idea that the big bold statement approach worked and people supported her. It doesn't work on policies like the minimum wage, maternity leave or even joking about civil servants not doing their jobs for her because they hate the Tories and Tory policies because those arguments need a lot more thinking and a lot more than a simple statement or joke to win people over.
In all cases she might have had a valid point at some level, for example Labour have been talking about removing the age ramp on the minimum wage which is probably detrimental to young people who will be priced out of a lot of jobs at the start of their careers. For maternity pay there might be a case to look at how the government can assist in making it easier for smaller businesses to support their employees and businesses better when women they employ need to take time off to raise their families. Wrt the civil service she could have made a point that there is an inherent conflict of interest with the civil service being so heavily unionised and those unions supporting the Labour party and assisting them to get elected which can incentivise them to block policies they don't like or think will hurt the Labour party or take actions they think will help Labour get elected etc...
Instead she made big eyecatching pronouncements and jokes so her ideas were just lost in the nonsense that followed.
Maternity pay is a very serious issue for small companies.
In the US, we had a pretty generous - by US standards - maternity policy. We had a senior employee. She got pregnant, enjoyed six months of maternity leave on half pay (while we were paying twice her salary for a contractor to cover her), and then quit on the day she was due back.
I fully support maternity pay, but for small companies, you will end up actively avoiding hiring women of a certain age, because it can be incredibly expensive. Worse, it encourages dishonesty, which benefits nobody. What we should have done - and which would have saved us a fortune - was given her a three month goodbye bonus when she left. She would have been in the same situation, and we would have therefore avoided paying a fortune for a contractor to cover her, and could have gone straight to hiring a full time replacement.
This is an example where it makes sense for the state to pick up the tab for maternity pay so that small companies don't face lumpy costs or negative incentives when hiring.
Instead companies could pay a contribution based on all employees, akin to insurance. You could call it something like, "Employers National Insurance".
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
The truth is that most people don't want to downsize if they can possibly avoid it. Getting rid of stamp duty won't change that.
I sense this is right. It's a factor in staying put but not usually the main one, I'd have thought.
But anyway I support transaction taxers AND asset taxes. For me it isn't an either/or.
People who moved from the provinces to London in their youth should be heavily penalised if they don't move back out again in retirement. They need to make way for the next generation of strivers.
London needs to be able to grow to its natural size so that anyone, who wants to live there, can, however old they are.
Including people who want to move there from the rest of the world?
Why not simply build a big wall around London, say at the M25? Make London into Hong Kong or Dubai or the old free ports of the Hanseatic League.
Brits are allowed to live in either London or Rest of Britain (RoB). Immigrants are only allowed to live in London.
The US announced their aircraft had been involved in supporting Israel last night but Starmer avoided the issue about UK involvement leaving in to the Ministry of Defence to release a statement
John Healey the Secretary of State for Defence posted that "they played their part" yesterday evening at about 10pm.
And it appears from the MOD, that they didn't actually do anything really (beyond deterrence).
Taking out ballistic missiles isn't doing anything - really ?
Starmer should have confirmed joint RAF action with the US in support of Israel
Why didn't he ?
Your link literally said that no target was engaged.
Do you read what you actually post ?
I think you need to revisit the wording where 'it says a wider deterrence and efforts to prevent future escalation'
Taking out ballistic missiles is part of that and has been done by the RAF previously and confirmed by Sunak
You are trying to excuse our Prime Minister remaining silent on RAF involvement when the US were open about it immediately
Did they, or did they not, "take out ballistic missiles last night" ?
It's a simple yes or no.
I understand the RAF provided intelligence, surveillance and other tracking data but on this occasion did not take out any missiles unlike previously
I apologise for my assumption, but at the same time the RAF were engaged in active operations in protecting Israel
The Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier is currently in the Persian Gulf The Prince of Wales aircraft carrier was near Jersey four days ago, so may now be in the Mediterranean. If not from the Prince of Wales they would have to fly from, say, Cyprus Other than that they would need refuelling aircraft I assume if that was happening we'd know.
PA Media @PA · 21m #BreakingNews Sir Keir Starmer has paid back more than £6,000 worth of gifts and hospitality received since becoming Prime Minister, Downing Street has said
PA Media @PA The Prime Minister is covering the cost of six Taylor Swift tickets, four to the races and a clothing rental agreement with a high-end designer favoured by his wife, Lady Victoria Starmer
What a strange decision for a man who has done nothing wrong to take.
Indeed. And £6k in just three months.
There might be another issue for the Labour Party here; now he has paid back these 'gifts', will other Labour ministers and backbenchers be called on to do likewise?
(Yes, and this applies to the other parties as well. But they're not in power.)
PA Media @PA · 21m #BreakingNews Sir Keir Starmer has paid back more than £6,000 worth of gifts and hospitality received since becoming Prime Minister, Downing Street has said
PA Media @PA The Prime Minister is covering the cost of six Taylor Swift tickets, four to the races and a clothing rental agreement with a high-end designer favoured by his wife, Lady Victoria Starmer
What a strange decision for a man who has done nothing wrong to take.
PA Media @PA · 21m #BreakingNews Sir Keir Starmer has paid back more than £6,000 worth of gifts and hospitality received since becoming Prime Minister, Downing Street has said
PA Media @PA The Prime Minister is covering the cost of six Taylor Swift tickets, four to the races and a clothing rental agreement with a high-end designer favoured by his wife, Lady Victoria Starmer
What a strange decision for a man who has done nothing wrong to take.
Indeed. And £6k in just three months.
There might be another issue for the Labour Party here; now he has paid back these 'gifts', will other Labour ministers and backbenchers be called on to do likewise?
(Yes, and this applies to the other parties as well. But they're not in power.)
The line he appears to be drawing is that accepting bribes when he's nailed on to be the PM is fine, but in retrospect he should have stopped taking them when he became PM, which fortunately saves him an awful lot of back-rent.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
The truth is that most people don't want to downsize if they can possibly avoid it. Getting rid of stamp duty won't change that.
I sense this is right. It's a factor in staying put but not usually the main one, I'd have thought.
But anyway I support transaction taxers AND asset taxes. For me it isn't an either/or.
People who moved from the provinces to London in their youth should be heavily penalised if they don't move back out again in retirement. They need to make way for the next generation of strivers.
London needs to be able to grow to its natural size so that anyone, who wants to live there, can, however old they are.
Including people who want to move there from the rest of the world?
Why not simply build a big wall around London, say at the M25? Make London into Hong Kong or Dubai or the old free ports of the Hanseatic League.
Brits are allowed to live in either London or Rest of Britain (RoB). Immigrants are only allowed to live in London.
Everyone is happy.
It could be on a 99-year lease from the British People's Republic.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
The truth is that most people don't want to downsize if they can possibly avoid it. Getting rid of stamp duty won't change that.
I sense this is right. It's a factor in staying put but not usually the main one, I'd have thought.
But anyway I support transaction taxers AND asset taxes. For me it isn't an either/or.
Don't fall for the Silver Bullet Fallacy: progress comes from millions of tiny incremental gains, and you grab them where you can.
We're out of silver bullets except one - a high quality egalitarian education system. And even that one will have to be incremental. Each little step pushed through against much wailing and nitpicking protest. It won't happen by next Tuesday. Indeed it probably won't happen all, let's face it.
On Cleverly, this seems a strange statement - as I hear it - that an elderly couple in a 4 or 5 bedroom house are prevented from downsizing by the existence of Stamp Duty.
Yes, many of us have been making this exact same point for years.
Stamp Duty is a wretched tax on mobility.
If you are an elderly couple in a 5 bed house and you stay there until you pass on you don't pay a penny of stamp duty. If you downsize, you do.
Those arguing in favour of stamp duty make the fallacious argument that as there's large sums of money involved at the time of sales it is expedient to have a tax then, but the problem is it is a massive disincentive to mobility and discourages behaviour we should encourage.
Far better to abolish stamp duty and replace with an annual land value tax. A couple that downsizes should be decreasing their tax bill, not getting a hefty one they'd otherwise avoid.
They the Cleverly claim was that they had been stuck there for 35 years, which is bizarre.
(I pretty much agree with you on the abolition, but I'd do it as part of making Council Tax 0.5% of property value, which is different to your LVT but of the same ilk.)
It isn't bizarre. Many people stay in "the family home" for decades with no family living with them. Our tax system positively encourages them to stay there and not to move and will have done so for each of those 35 years.
So you don’t believe in the right to own property and do as you wish with it? Bit Communist.
No I do believe in the right to property ownership.
Quite the opposite, only taxing people when they buy or move is not letting them "do as they wish with it".
Taxes should be flat, low and consistent.
Those who buy this year should pay the same taxes as those who bought 50 years ago.
But what’s are you taking when you apply land value tax to people? You’re taxing quiet enjoyment, presumably for the common good.
Why would you apply land value tax to people? You would apply it to land and whoever owns the land pays the tax.
Whether you like it or not the country has running costs. Defence, law and order etc and whatever else Parliament has decreed.
The country only has a finite amount of land, if you own a portion of this countries land you should pay a portion of the running costs of the country.
That's not communism it's perfectly liberal.
You seem to think "quiet enjoyment" should for some reason be taxed less than other enjoyment. I would rather let people do as they please with what they own.
Land should be taxed the same whether the owner chooses to quietly enjoy it, or chooses to work it, or chooses to build on it, or chooses to sell it and the new owner takes responsibility for paying the costs.
Why are you opposed to letting people do as they will with what they own? The state should not get involved, it should take its cut of funding for the running costs of the country but let the owner do as he, she or they pleases to do with it.
FWIW my wife and daughter have relocated abroad for her work.
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
Indeed: stamp duty discourages trading down and therefore worsens the housing shortage.
Abolishing both stamp duty and landlord benefit would improve the efficiency of transfer of UK housing at the stroke of a pen.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24. Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
I've never understood the SDLT 'discourages downsizing' argument - it is only paid on buying property, not selling.
The truth is that most people don't want to downsize if they can possibly avoid it. Getting rid of stamp duty won't change that.
I sense this is right. It's a factor in staying put but not usually the main one, I'd have thought.
But anyway I support transaction taxers AND asset taxes. For me it isn't an either/or.
People who moved from the provinces to London in their youth should be heavily penalised if they don't move back out again in retirement. They need to make way for the next generation of strivers.
Yes - so long as I get an exemption I quite like that.
Actually the scenario of someone moving out of London highlights an issue with the concept of 'downsizing'.
Sometimes moving to a cheaper property can actually mean upsizing if it involves moving from an expensive area to a cheaper one. London money has pushed up values in lots of areas and priced out would-be young families.
We want house prices and rents down 30% but we don't want a crash. Answers on a postcard. My one. Big building programme, reboot of the public rental sector.
You can't otoh have property as the main route to personal wealth accretion and otoh freeze out everybody other than the well paid or with generous monied parents from getting a piece.
So we have to change the first condition. Your PPR no longer a vehicle to make money, just a place to live. Buy or rent making no material difference to your long term finances.
Comments
As a result I am in a 5 bedroom house on my own. The sensible thing to do would be to sell and move to a flat. More fun and less work plus frees up housing stock.
But the stamp duty is such a huge cost that I just can’t get past why I would volunteer to transfer that value to the taxman
If you downsize you shouldn't pay a penny in tax on the mobility, besides eg VAT on fees related to moving etc
Instead if you downsize you should see a cut in your taxes, as the LVT on a flat or smaller semi etc should be less than the LVT on your existing home.
But instead HMRC does the opposite. Minimal taxes on staying still but hefty taxes if you move. Its utterly insane and no wonder we have a broken system.
He worries that he will be attacked by the Gaza-for-ever crowd
So he won’t publicly stand up and say that we helped defend a democracy against an indiscriminate missile attack on its civilian population
The issue is that they are too greedy.
14% is a ridiculous tax rate on a capital transfer
If you would never move back into the house then you should sell regardless of the tax.
If you might move back on one day then you are not an “accidental landlords” but are making a conscious choice
Say hey, it's Lord Alli
Instead, they want to believe the people are killing cats and dogs for food, in Springfield.
I will provide examples;
A customer gets invited to a box at Spurs alongside other customers and employees.
There is no benefit in kind or tax charge to the customer ( see Section 265 ITEPA).
An employee of a company whose business is reviewing hotels is provided with a room in a new hotel in Hull for the purpose of reviewing.
There would be no tax liability as this would be a normal part of his employment and clearly not excessive.
In addition of a gift is non transferrable and could not ever be swapped for money then no tax charge is likely.
A car can be swapped for money, a lunch with David Beckham that only you can attend, is not transferrable.
An influencer is given a load of designer gear which they then promote using social media.
They would be considered to self employed by HMRC 'badges of trade' and this would result in a tax charge.
However, if you were sent the freebies which you didn't request, had no obligation to promote them & indeed didn't then promote them, no tax charge liability occurs.
I treat a mate or family to a couple of tickets for Wimbledon semi finals - does a tax charge arise ?
Of course not.
If Lord Alli as an individual gifts anything to 'a friend' its very hard to see how any tax liability could arise.
If politicians of any party are offering and providing influence in exchange for gifts, they have more to worry about than a tax liability.
It would have the advantage that if you are lumbered with something which isn't worth its value you can reduce the tax you pay until some daft bugger takes it off your hands. There are serious issues such as the 1929 Tax Acts which removed rates from some properties, mainly agricultural holdings etc.
Your land valuation taxes are in effect a reconstituting of the old land tax as it was pre 1798, or as it was meant to be before township valuations became fossilised in the 1730s. The tithe commutation Act of 1836 was an attempt to improve on it as someone has suggested in this thread. Unfortuately as the TCA demonstrated an acre of land on the top of Baugh Fell is not quite as productive as an acre of land next to the Lune in Marthwaite. The valuations as under the Land Tax were much more effective at producing a valid equivalence within a township between bundles. The pretty obvious deficiencies were that they discouraged development of land and they introduced a competition between parishes to have the lowest valuations around. Supposedly when Land Tax was 4s in the £ in the home counties it was 3d in the £ in Westmorland.
They are more or less identical too.
In the United Kingdom, the government is expected to spend around £15.6 billion on housing benefits in 2023/24.
Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) raised £15.4bn for the government in the 2022/23 financial year , a 9% increase on the £14.1bn raised in 2021/22.
Farmers have nothing to fear from a land value tax.
Frankly, it seems like a boomer complaint. Why should we change the way property is taxed (transaction taxes are much more efficient as they don't involve nebulous valuations) because boomers have benefited from huge house price growth.
If this goes on, there won't be room for Nigel Farage at the next Reform conference.
And it appears from the MOD, that they didn't actually do anything really (beyond deterrence).
Its a tax on mobility.
A boomer who lives in the same home they bought decades ago pays no stamp duty while someone who moves three times in a decade due to work commitments pays stamp duty three times.
Why is that reasonable?
Starmer should have confirmed joint RAF action with the US in support of Israel
Why didn't he ?
Sell family home for £1.5m and buy a flat for £750k
Tax due £25k, so you have £725k cash and likely less future out goings on council tax, heating and maintenance.
There is also a well worn economic argument that if no SLDT then the flat would be priced at £775k
How is that reasonable?
But anyway I support transaction taxers AND asset taxes. For me it isn't an either/or.
Do you read what you actually post ?
However Starmer did confirm the UK stood with Israel which was the appropriate thing for him to do.
I'll repost what I said this morning as I think Starmer deserves credit for his response and was right to give it:
https://vf.politicalbetting.com/discussion/comment/4977498/#Comment_4977498
Credit where credit is due, I've attacked the new Labour government a few times for its footing on the Middle East, but this from Starmer is 100% correct: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cx2krlgekpxo
Calling on Iran to stop its attacks, he added: "Together with its proxies like Hezbollah, Iran has menaced the Middle East for far too long, chaos and destruction brought not just to Israel, but to the people they live amongst in Lebanon and beyond.
"Make no mistake, Britain stands full square against such violence. We support Israel's reasonable demand for the security of its people."
Iran has menaced the Middle East for far, far too long. Dubya Bush made a mistake prioritising Iraq for regime change in 2003 when Iran is the real puppet master.
Its long past time for regime change in Iran. After sending a barrage of missiles against Israel last night I would 100% support all-out conflict with Iran to bring in regime change and the elimination of the Ayatollahs.
That it would rid the world of not just the people behind such terrorists as Hamas and Hezbollah, but also one of the major arms dealers to Putin too is an added bonus.
https://x.com/politlcsuk/status/1841464943834546228
Taking out ballistic missiles is part of that and has been done by the RAF previously and confirmed by Sunak
You are trying to excuse our Prime Minister remaining silent on RAF involvement when the US were open about it immediately
P.S. if that did happen I think Kemi would walk it
Your landlord might, although agricultural land could be exempt in some systems depending upon how you define it, and might want to attempt to pass on the cost but it would be a peppercorn amount given the value is so low.
It's a simple yes or no.
If we shared intelligence that enabled missiles to be shot down or provided other technical assistance, we could have still played a part.
Not that that there's any reason to disclose the minutiae, particularly if it involves intelligence.
Why should people who own a large property not pay their fair share of the running costs of the country?
If they don't want to pay that, they can always downsize and cut their costs.
I apologise for my assumption, but at the same time the RAF were engaged in active operations in protecting Israel
Taxes that improve economic efficiency are a net good for everyone, including the person on low income who downsizes, because they grow the entire economy allowing more investment into goods & services for the entire population to enjoy.
Any halfway decent government would start with the question "how do we make things work better? how do we encourage the more efficient allocation of resources? and how do we make sure that we incentivize people to work?"
That would, at a minimum, mean: (a) removing stamp duty, (b) replacing it with some kind of LVT, and (c) removing all the traps where marginal tax rate (including removal of benefits) shoots up above 50%.
We also haven't taken out ballistic missiles from Iran at all
The ones "we" destroyed in April were drones.
Posters would be jumping all over Starmer if he exaggerated our involvement.
On going comment about the military details should really be limited to "counting them out and counting them back in again."
In all cases she might have had a valid point at some level, for example Labour have been talking about removing the age ramp on the minimum wage which is probably detrimental to young people who will be priced out of a lot of jobs at the start of their careers. For maternity pay there might be a case to look at how the government can assist in making it easier for smaller businesses to support their employees and businesses better when women they employ need to take time off to raise their families. Wrt the civil service she could have made a point that there is an inherent conflict of interest with the civil service being so heavily unionised and those unions supporting the Labour party and assisting them to get elected which can incentivise them to block policies they don't like or think will hurt the Labour party or take actions they think will help Labour get elected etc...
Instead she made big eyecatching pronouncements and jokes so her ideas were just lost in the nonsense that followed.
a) remove stamp duty
b) replace it with a form on LVT
c) discover that is duplicating council tax, so
d) replace both stamp duty + Council tax with something that works
keeping margin tax rates with benefits below 50% is going to be an impossible task though. if you change the taper you end up with people receiving benefits on a higher level of pay so dragging even more people into universal credit.
Sometimes moving to a cheaper property can actually mean upsizing if it involves moving from an expensive area to a cheaper one. London money has pushed up values in lots of areas and priced out would-be young families.
OTOH, the cost of sheltered accommodation, ground floor flats (good for old people) might increase quite a bit as they become relatively more attractive.
Interesting that the 3 anonymous backers are all for Tugendhat.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1z66vstPc0ZRXDAVxUBwoi6sAia4DnXKRESta32k85dM/edit?gid=1325150590#gid=1325150590
You could build it into a long term plan.
The Prince of Wales aircraft carrier was near Jersey four days ago, so may now be in the Mediterranean.
If not from the Prince of Wales they would have to fly from, say, Cyprus
Other than that they would need refuelling aircraft
I assume if that was happening we'd know.
https://www.cruisemapper.com/ships/HMS-Queen-Elizabeth-aircraft-carrier
https://www.cruisemapper.com/ships/HMS-Prince-of-Wales-aircraft-carrier-1434
https://www.navylookout.com/f-35-jets-to-embark-on-hms-prince-of-wales-for-exercise-strike-warrior/
How many years of untaxed, unearned capital growth on your large house will your Stamp Duty bill on your smaller flat comprise?
In the US, we had a pretty generous - by US standards - maternity policy. We had a senior employee. She got pregnant, enjoyed six months of maternity leave on half pay (while we were paying twice her salary for a contractor to cover her), and then quit on the day she was due back.
I fully support maternity pay, but for small companies, you will end up actively avoiding hiring women of a certain age, because it can be incredibly expensive. Worse, it encourages dishonesty, which benefits nobody. What we should have done - and which would have saved us a fortune - was given her a three month goodbye bonus when she left. She would have been in the same situation, and we would have therefore avoided paying a fortune for a contractor to cover her, and could have gone straight to hiring a full time replacement.
Perhaps... "Levelling up"?
Whether it’s wise or not remains to be seen, but he definitely got people talking and thinking.
PA Media
@PA
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21m
#BreakingNews Sir Keir Starmer has paid back more than £6,000 worth of gifts and hospitality received since becoming Prime Minister, Downing Street has said
PA Media
@PA
The Prime Minister is covering the cost of six Taylor Swift tickets, four to the races and a clothing rental agreement with a high-end designer favoured by his wife, Lady Victoria Starmer
What a strange decision for a man who has done nothing wrong to take.
Instead companies could pay a contribution based on all employees, akin to insurance. You could call it something like, "Employers National Insurance".
Brits are allowed to live in either London or Rest of Britain (RoB). Immigrants are only allowed to live in London.
Everyone is happy.
There might be another issue for the Labour Party here; now he has paid back these 'gifts', will other Labour ministers and backbenchers be called on to do likewise?
(Yes, and this applies to the other parties as well. But they're not in power.)
Voters now say Tories would be better at managing the economy, first CON lead since mid-2022.
🟦 CON 27% (+6)
🟥 LAB 26% (-6)
Via @YouGov
, 30 Sep (+/- vs 22 July)
Tube drivers have voted to go on strike after rejecting a pay rise that would take their salaries to £70,000
Kemi Badenoch Claims Young Tories Get Lower Marks At University Because Of Their Politics
https://x.com/HuffPostUK/status/1841476479525257551
You can't otoh have property as the main route to personal wealth accretion and otoh freeze out everybody other than the well paid or with generous monied parents from getting a piece.
So we have to change the first condition. Your PPR no longer a vehicle to make money, just a place to live. Buy or rent making no material difference to your long term finances.
Jenrick seems miles ahead. Unless a skeleton or two tumbles out.