Excellent announcement from Kemi that a Conservative government would abolish Stamp Duty
SDLT raised 23-34 £11.6bn 22-23 £15.4bn
I don't disagree that Stamp Duty has negative effects on the housing market and mobility, but how will the tax be raised instead?
How bout cutting spending 👍
We, like most of Europe, have a choice -
Raise taxes on a dwindling workforce,
Cut benefits to politically powerful older voters,
Or borrow more, which is becoming harder and more expensive.
France has attempted all three in recent years. We (via Truss) attempted the last one. In all cases it hasn't gone well.
We could also import younger people of working age, of course #starttheboats.
And that has led to…. Not much difference in economic output.
What we need is productivity increases. Which come from mechanisation and streamlining processes.
For example, my Aunt was trying to escape from hospital. The doctors, the various care units in the hospital and the external support for elderly people were unable, apparently, to talk to each other about simple things.
I ended up sketching, in my head, a simple collaboration portal - on a per case basis. So all the concerned parties could at least talk to each other. Instead of a game of telephone tag….
A Teams call? Or Zoom?
Because of time pressure and needing to spell names accurately etc I was thinking more of text chat with documents and actions, per patient. With task aggregations and alerts (based on length of time since update).
Obviously have an option to turn a conversation into a voice/video call.
We simply have discharge co-ordinators on the staff to err, co-ordinate discharges.
Currently being sacked as part of the management headcount reduction of course. Orders from the top.
The comedy started when the person administratively in charge of the discharge phoned me. Because I was next of kin. “Did I know which district nurses were involved and did I have any of their contact details?”
It ended up with me playing telephone tag with half a dozen people - while trying to get people to actually talk to my Aunt. Who is quite alert, savy and prefers to run her own life….
No one involved was bad or lazy - they just didn’t have information.
I get all the arguments against stamp duty but it does seem likely to depress property prices. A replacement property tax would seem advisable. Personally I'd be happy to see an increase in council tax and even CGT on primary residence sales. 10% might be about the maximum that people would stomach.
I bought my flat for about £150k. If I sell it for £200k I could accept a £5k bill. It would also discourage people from playing around with their first and second property designation as the saving would be much smaller.
I've always felt stamp duty was a diabolical tax as it adds stress when you move, which is always stressful anyway. Moreover if people can move more easily then they'll be more likely to spend on improvements on their new homes.
I think scrapping stamp duty is a really great policy. They should consider doing it on shares too.
Tories pre speech. "We must tackle the deficit and do something for the young." After. "A £15bn bung to homeowners to inflate house prices!" Superb.
Yes, net zero spending scrapped, welfare scrapped for those with mild mental health problems who can be got back into work, overseas aid cut, no more cars for those with ADHD funded by taxpayer.
Then with those savings stamp duty scrapped benefiting young first time buyers most
Overall that's possibly true because of a more efficient market, but in terms of actual tax paid it's nonsense - Stamp Duty is primarily paid by the richest moving from mansion to mansion.
There's also no duty for first time buyers up to £300k - so a load bollocks from you there.
£300k is below even the average house price in London and the home counties so it will be very welcome to first time buyers there
Here's a visual representation of who will benefit from the removal of Stamp Duty. Average House Prices by Constituency. It's looking more like a desperate stunt rather than taking on Reform or even Labour. Who was it said they think CCHQ has it in for her?
Except that’s not how the housing market works, in practice you end up with a long chain of dependent sales at wildly variable prices, houses that could be all over the country.
We should worry most about taxes produce the biggest drag on the economy per £ for the treasury and not so much about who benefits.
Stamp duty must surely be high up there.
Has anyone prepared such a list?
[NB, I have never paid stamp duty]
Paul Johnson, formerly of the IFS, said it is the worst of many bad taxes
Badenoch explained how she will fund the 9 billion (Primary Homes only) by cancelling ev and heat pump subsidies and other climate related tax rebates, encourage north sea oil with it's increased taxes, attract the wealth creators, millionaires and entrepreneurs chased away by labour, reduce welfare (also reinstating the 2 child cap if it is abolished) and the civil service
Also lost in the stamp duty announcement was the ban on doctors striking and end of labours new union friendly laws
Of course the left will object, but for the first time she has announced a slew of policies so missing to date and there is clear water between the spend and tax of labour and reform and the conservative offer
Time will tell, but if she has given the party an audience and ended Jenrick's ambition then she has had a good day
Fantastic! But how are you paying for the £11.6b shortfall?
Excellent announcement from Kemi that a Conservative government would abolish Stamp Duty
SDLT raised 23-34 £11.6bn 22-23 £15.4bn
I don't disagree that Stamp Duty has negative effects on the housing market and mobility, but how will the tax be raised instead?
How bout cutting spending 👍
We, like most of Europe, have a choice -
Raise taxes on a dwindling workforce,
Cut benefits to politically powerful older voters,
Or borrow more, which is becoming harder and more expensive.
France has attempted all three in recent years. We (via Truss) attempted the last one. In all cases it hasn't gone well.
We could also import younger people of working age, of course #starttheboats.
And that has led to…. Not much difference in economic output.
What we need is productivity increases. Which come from mechanisation and streamlining processes.
For example, my Aunt was trying to escape from hospital. The doctors, the various care units in the hospital and the external support for elderly people were unable, apparently, to talk to each other about simple things.
I ended up sketching, in my head, a simple collaboration portal - on a per case basis. So all the concerned parties could at least talk to each other. Instead of a game of telephone tag….
A Teams call? Or Zoom?
Because of time pressure and needing to spell names accurately etc I was thinking more of text chat with documents and actions, per patient. With task aggregations and alerts (based on length of time since update).
Obviously have an option to turn a conversation into a voice/video call.
We simply have discharge co-ordinators on the staff to err, co-ordinate discharges.
Currently being sacked as part of the management headcount reduction of course. Orders from the top.
Long years ago I had to attend discharge planning meetings. What stands out in my memory is the problems when someone.... an Occupational Therapist ...... reported that she'd (usually) made a visit to an elderly and now disabled patients house and the only toilet was upstairs. Under those circumstances there was frequently nowhere really suitable for a commode either.
Excellent punning. But sad story.
Like.
But it does underline why apparently 'fit' patients are sometimes not released from hospital. No-one at those meetings wanted to keep patients in desperately needed beds, but sometimes we had to go into negotiations with families to put their parents (etc) into care homes.
Quite a few on here excited by Badenoch's pledge to abolish stamp duty on all first time purchases. The current level is £300k for no stamp duty if you are a first time buyer.
That will get you a 1 bedroom flat in my part of the world (East Ham).
The big Folio development at Fresh Wharf is all rental - 1,2 and 3 Bedroom apartments - the one bedroom flats are £750 pcm while the two bedrooms can be anything up to £2k per month for those with a riverside view (the Roding, not the Thames).
We've had stamp duty "holidays" in the past but presumably no Government has been able to say it can live without the receipt from SLT but apparently the next Conservative Government will though the £23 billion welfare cuts are doing a lot of the heavy lifting in all this and are far from well defined.
The idea abolishing SLT will somehow generate large scale economic growth is silly - you might get a short term blip but the market will quickly adjust to the new reality and we'll be back to our old friends supply and demand.
I get all the arguments against stamp duty but it does seem likely to depress property prices. A replacement property tax would seem advisable. Personally I'd be happy to see an increase in council tax and even CGT on primary residence sales. 10% might be about the maximum that people would stomach.
I bought my flat for about £150k. If I sell it for £200k I could accept a £5k bill. It would also discourage people from playing around with their first and second property designation as the saving would be much smaller.
CGT on property sales would be a bit odd if the rationale for abolishing Stamp Duty is to get the market moving. A flat annual tax would be far better.
Excellent announcement from Kemi that a Conservative government would abolish Stamp Duty
SDLT raised 23-34 £11.6bn 22-23 £15.4bn
I don't disagree that Stamp Duty has negative effects on the housing market and mobility, but how will the tax be raised instead?
How bout cutting spending 👍
We, like most of Europe, have a choice -
Raise taxes on a dwindling workforce,
Cut benefits to politically powerful older voters,
Or borrow more, which is becoming harder and more expensive.
France has attempted all three in recent years. We (via Truss) attempted the last one. In all cases it hasn't gone well.
We could also import younger people of working age, of course #starttheboats.
And that has led to…. Not much difference in economic output.
What we need is productivity increases. Which come from mechanisation and streamlining processes.
For example, my Aunt was trying to escape from hospital. The doctors, the various care units in the hospital and the external support for elderly people were unable, apparently, to talk to each other about simple things.
I ended up sketching, in my head, a simple collaboration portal - on a per case basis. So all the concerned parties could at least talk to each other. Instead of a game of telephone tag….
A Teams call? Or Zoom?
Because of time pressure and needing to spell names accurately etc I was thinking more of text chat with documents and actions, per patient. With task aggregations and alerts (based on length of time since update).
Obviously have an option to turn a conversation into a voice/video call.
We simply have discharge co-ordinators on the staff to err, co-ordinate discharges.
Currently being sacked as part of the management headcount reduction of course. Orders from the top.
Long years ago I had to attend discharge planning meetings. What stands out in my memory is the problems when someone.... an Occupational Therapist ...... reported that she'd (usually) made a visit to an elderly and now disabled patients house and the only toilet was upstairs. Under those circumstances there was frequently nowhere really suitable for a commode either.
In the case of my Aunt, a major (anpparent) issue was the “suitability” of her home. Given that it is a flat in a purpose built block, with onsite care available, I was surprised at this.
They solemnly sent people round to look at the flat - all AOK.
After x more rounds of teleporting, it was discovered that the problem was a post-it that was in the file saying “accommodation unsuitable”. No other details on the post-it.
I then suggested that it was possible the post-it note had fallen from another place/file, into hers.
Listening to her speech, the single biggest problem is that all the things she says need to be done are precisely the things her party has spent a decade demonstrating that they are incapable of doing. .
Exactly.
Why should anyone believe them.
A decade in purgatory beckons.
Deservedly so
Very, very positive response to the Tories on WATO. And a blast from the past, Julie Kirkbride who is now a More in Common pollster.
Helen Whateley very impressed with Kemi today. Whateley suggesting that the ending of stamp duty will be paid for by cuts. There is no replacement tax ( yet) apparently.
I’d be more surprised if Whateley was not impressed.
I haven’t listened to WATO in years. I’m watching the last Michael Praed episode of Robin of Sherwood. The Greatest Enema. It’s quite good.
(hums Clannad)
It’s a great theme
You’re a cult tv fan.
Have you ever rewatched an old tv show you had happy memories of that disappointed.
Tories pre speech. "We must tackle the deficit and do something for the young." After. "A £15bn bung to homeowners to inflate house prices!" Superb.
Yes, net zero spending scrapped, welfare scrapped for those with mild mental health problems who can be got back into work, overseas aid cut, no more cars for those with ADHD funded by taxpayer.
Then with those savings stamp duty scrapped benefiting young first time buyers most
Overall that's possibly true because of a more efficient market, but in terms of actual tax paid it's nonsense - Stamp Duty is primarily paid by the richest moving from mansion to mansion.
There's also no duty for first time buyers up to £300k - so a load bollocks from you there.
£300k is below even the average house price in London and the home counties so it will be very welcome to first time buyers there
Here's a visual representation of who will benefit from the removal of Stamp Duty. Average House Prices by Constituency. It's looking more like a desperate stunt rather than taking on Reform or even Labour. Who was it said they think CCHQ has it in for her?
Except that’s not how the housing market works, in practice you end up with a long chain of dependent sales at wildly variable prices, houses that could be all over the country.
We should worry most about taxes produce the biggest drag on the economy per £ for the treasury and not so much about who benefits.
Stamp duty must surely be high up there.
Has anyone prepared such a list?
[NB, I have never paid stamp duty]
Paul Johnson, formerly of the IFS, said it is the worst of many bad taxes
Badenoch explained how she will fund the 9 billion (Primary Homes only) by cancelling ev and heat pump subsidies and other climate related tax rebates, encourage north sea oil with it's increased taxes, attract the wealth creators, millionaires and entrepreneurs chased away by labour, reduce welfare (also reinstating the 2 child cap if it is abolished) and the civil service
Also lost in the stamp duty announcement was the ban on doctors striking and end of labours new union friendly laws
Of course the left will object, but for the first time she has announced a slew of policies so missing to date and there is clear water between the spend and tax of labour and reform and the conservative offer
Time will tell, but if she has given the party an audience and ended Jenrick's ambition then she has had a good day
Fantastic! But how are you paying for the £11.6b shortfall?
Tories pre speech. "We must tackle the deficit and do something for the young." After. "A £15bn bung to homeowners to inflate house prices!" Superb.
Yes, net zero spending scrapped, welfare scrapped for those with mild mental health problems who can be got back into work, overseas aid cut, no more cars for those with ADHD funded by taxpayer.
Then with those savings stamp duty scrapped benefiting young first time buyers most
Overall that's possibly true because of a more efficient market, but in terms of actual tax paid it's nonsense - Stamp Duty is primarily paid by the richest moving from mansion to mansion.
There's also no duty for first time buyers up to £300k - so a load bollocks from you there.
£300k is below even the average house price in London and the home counties so it will be very welcome to first time buyers there
Here's a visual representation of who will benefit from the removal of Stamp Duty. Average House Prices by Constituency. It's looking more like a desperate stunt rather than taking on Reform or even Labour. Who was it said they think CCHQ has it in for her?
Except that’s not how the housing market works, in practice you end up with a long chain of dependent sales at wildly variable prices, houses that could be all over the country.
We should worry most about taxes produce the biggest drag on the economy per £ for the treasury and not so much about who benefits.
Stamp duty must surely be high up there.
Has anyone prepared such a list?
[NB, I have never paid stamp duty]
Good question.
I’d say the biggest is Employer NI, quite literally a tax on jobs but it raises a fortune. Business rates on retail and hospitality is probably next. Fuel duty, especially on commercial diesel, feeds into the price of everything. The top 25% now drive EVs for the tax advantages, turning a progressive tax into a regressive one. Stamp duty SDLT, adds a lot of friction to the economy, and stops people moving out of the London catchment area for a job. Fixed motoring costs, such as tax and insurance, really regressive on 2nd quartile who need car for work. TV Tax, massively regressive and with a large admin overhead, plus the criminal convictions of many poor people and tying up courts. Just fund public service programming from general taxation.
There’s a thread header in there somewhere, with a couple of hours of research over the weekend. Let me see…
Excellent announcement from Kemi that a Conservative government would abolish Stamp Duty
SDLT raised 23-34 £11.6bn 22-23 £15.4bn
I don't disagree that Stamp Duty has negative effects on the housing market and mobility, but how will the tax be raised instead?
How bout cutting spending 👍
We, like most of Europe, have a choice -
Raise taxes on a dwindling workforce,
Cut benefits to politically powerful older voters,
Or borrow more, which is becoming harder and more expensive.
France has attempted all three in recent years. We (via Truss) attempted the last one. In all cases it hasn't gone well.
We could also import younger people of working age, of course #starttheboats.
And that has led to…. Not much difference in economic output.
What we need is productivity increases. Which come from mechanisation and streamlining processes.
For example, my Aunt was trying to escape from hospital. The doctors, the various care units in the hospital and the external support for elderly people were unable, apparently, to talk to each other about simple things.
I ended up sketching, in my head, a simple collaboration portal - on a per case basis. So all the concerned parties could at least talk to each other. Instead of a game of telephone tag….
A Teams call? Or Zoom?
Because of time pressure and needing to spell names accurately etc I was thinking more of text chat with documents and actions, per patient. With task aggregations and alerts (based on length of time since update).
Obviously have an option to turn a conversation into a voice/video call.
We simply have discharge co-ordinators on the staff to err, co-ordinate discharges.
Currently being sacked as part of the management headcount reduction of course. Orders from the top.
Long years ago I had to attend discharge planning meetings. What stands out in my memory is the problems when someone.... an Occupational Therapist ...... reported that she'd (usually) made a visit to an elderly and now disabled patients house and the only toilet was upstairs. Under those circumstances there was frequently nowhere really suitable for a commode either.
Excellent punning. But sad story.
Like.
But it does underline why apparently 'fit' patients are sometimes not released from hospital. No-one at those meetings wanted to keep patients in desperately needed beds, but sometimes we had to go into negotiations with families to put their parents (etc) into care homes.
Define fit
- marathon running capable? - Can walk up and down stairs? - Can walk? - Can live without continuous medical intervention?
Quite a few on here excited by Badenoch's pledge to abolish stamp duty on all first time purchases. The current level is £300k for no stamp duty if you are a first time buyer.
That will get you a 1 bedroom flat in my part of the world (East Ham).
The big Folio development at Fresh Wharf is all rental - 1,2 and 3 Bedroom apartments - the one bedroom flats are £750 pcm while the two bedrooms can be anything up to £2k per month for those with a riverside view (the Roding, not the Thames).
We've had stamp duty "holidays" in the past but presumably no Government has been able to say it can live without the receipt from SLT but apparently the next Conservative Government will though the £23 billion welfare cuts are doing a lot of the heavy lifting in all this and are far from well defined.
The idea abolishing SLT will somehow generate large scale economic growth is silly - you might get a short term blip but the market will quickly adjust to the new reality and we'll be back to our old friends supply and demand.
But by the same token Badenoch's proposal notably pampers southeastern Tory voters (old folk in expensive areas). Does sod all for people in the North or in cheaper areas. Merely inflates house prices even more, ditto the SE economy, and damages the rural areas even more by slowing movement around the UK/increasing second house buying.
Edit: round here £300K will get you a very acceptable 1960s det. ho.
I have said before we are not taking Stephen Miller seriously enough. The other day when he stated Trump has "plenary authority" to do whatever he wants is really very chilling.
Sadly, it's not clear to me that enough ordinary Americans care enough about living in a democracy under the rule of law to actually fight for one.
As the article you posted says Miller thinks that the low-information, don't-aways-bother-to-vote votes can be beguiled into supporting a monarchy/autocracy by propaganda about insurrection and left wing terror cells. Safety over Liberty in a direct reversal of Franklin's original.
All very depressing but I still hold a candle of hope that the ordinary joe will eventually call time on all this madness, possibly because, if for no other reason, that the economy tanks.
Quite a few on here excited by Badenoch's pledge to abolish stamp duty on all first time purchases. The current level is £300k for no stamp duty if you are a first time buyer.
That will get you a 1 bedroom flat in my part of the world (East Ham).
The big Folio development at Fresh Wharf is all rental - 1,2 and 3 Bedroom apartments - the one bedroom flats are £750 pcm while the two bedrooms can be anything up to £2k per month for those with a riverside view (the Roding, not the Thames).
We've had stamp duty "holidays" in the past but presumably no Government has been able to say it can live without the receipt from SLT but apparently the next Conservative Government will though the £23 billion welfare cuts are doing a lot of the heavy lifting in all this and are far from well defined.
The idea abolishing SLT will somehow generate large scale economic growth is silly - you might get a short term blip but the market will quickly adjust to the new reality and we'll be back to our old friends supply and demand.
Abolish stamp duty entirely, and replace it with an annual property tax charge based a percentage of the property's value.
This would (a) actually spur new building activity and (b) make it easier for people to trade down without losing money.
Quite a few on here excited by Badenoch's pledge to abolish stamp duty on all first time purchases. The current level is £300k for no stamp duty if you are a first time buyer.
That will get you a 1 bedroom flat in my part of the world (East Ham).
The big Folio development at Fresh Wharf is all rental - 1,2 and 3 Bedroom apartments - the one bedroom flats are £750 pcm while the two bedrooms can be anything up to £2k per month for those with a riverside view (the Roding, not the Thames).
We've had stamp duty "holidays" in the past but presumably no Government has been able to say it can live without the receipt from SLT but apparently the next Conservative Government will though the £23 billion welfare cuts are doing a lot of the heavy lifting in all this and are far from well defined.
The idea abolishing SLT will somehow generate large scale economic growth is silly - you might get a short term blip but the market will quickly adjust to the new reality and we'll be back to our old friends supply and demand.
Don’t agree with the latter point. At the moment moving for the sake of a new job is prohibitively expensive. As the former deputy leader of the Labour Party found it can cost over £80k. This discourages movement, risk taking, the maximising of skills and resources. It is unequivocally a bad thing. It also reduces investment at the margins because a new development has this large cost built into it. It discourages people both upsizing and downsizing by making this so expensive reducing the efficiency of the utilisation of our housing stock.
SDLT is a very bad thing but the government needs substantially more than every penny it has got and cannot afford to give up an income flow of £18bn without a hopefully less damaging replacement.
Tories pre speech. "We must tackle the deficit and do something for the young." After. "A £15bn bung to homeowners to inflate house prices!" Superb.
Yes, net zero spending scrapped, welfare scrapped for those with mild mental health problems who can be got back into work, overseas aid cut, no more cars for those with ADHD funded by taxpayer.
Then with those savings stamp duty scrapped benefiting young first time buyers most
Overall that's possibly true because of a more efficient market, but in terms of actual tax paid it's nonsense - Stamp Duty is primarily paid by the richest moving from mansion to mansion.
There's also no duty for first time buyers up to £300k - so a load bollocks from you there.
£300k is below even the average house price in London and the home counties so it will be very welcome to first time buyers there
Here's a visual representation of who will benefit from the removal of Stamp Duty. Average House Prices by Constituency. It's looking more like a desperate stunt rather than taking on Reform or even Labour. Who was it said they think CCHQ has it in for her?
Except that’s not how the housing market works, in practice you end up with a long chain of dependent sales at wildly variable prices, houses that could be all over the country.
We should worry most about taxes produce the biggest drag on the economy per £ for the treasury and not so much about who benefits.
Stamp duty must surely be high up there.
Has anyone prepared such a list?
[NB, I have never paid stamp duty]
Good question.
I’d say the biggest is Employer NI, quite literally a tax on jobs but it raises a fortune. Business rates on retail and hospitality is probably next. Fuel duty, especially on commercial diesel, feeds into the price of everything. The top 25% now drive EVs for the tax advantages, turning a progressive tax into a regressive one. Stamp duty SDLT, adds a lot of friction to the economy, and stops people moving out of the London catchment area for a job. Fixed motoring costs, such as tax and insurance, really regressive on 2nd quartile who need car for work. TV Tax, massively regressive and with a large admin overhead, plus the criminal convictions of many poor people and tying up courts. Just fund public service programming from general taxation.
There’s a thread header in there somewhere, with a couple of hours of research over the weekend. Let me see…
Excellent announcement from Kemi that a Conservative government would abolish Stamp Duty
SDLT raised 23-34 £11.6bn 22-23 £15.4bn
I don't disagree that Stamp Duty has negative effects on the housing market and mobility, but how will the tax be raised instead?
How bout cutting spending 👍
We, like most of Europe, have a choice -
Raise taxes on a dwindling workforce,
Cut benefits to politically powerful older voters,
Or borrow more, which is becoming harder and more expensive.
France has attempted all three in recent years. We (via Truss) attempted the last one. In all cases it hasn't gone well.
We could also import younger people of working age, of course #starttheboats.
And that has led to…. Not much difference in economic output.
What we need is productivity increases. Which come from mechanisation and streamlining processes.
For example, my Aunt was trying to escape from hospital. The doctors, the various care units in the hospital and the external support for elderly people were unable, apparently, to talk to each other about simple things.
I ended up sketching, in my head, a simple collaboration portal - on a per case basis. So all the concerned parties could at least talk to each other. Instead of a game of telephone tag….
A Teams call? Or Zoom?
Because of time pressure and needing to spell names accurately etc I was thinking more of text chat with documents and actions, per patient. With task aggregations and alerts (based on length of time since update).
Obviously have an option to turn a conversation into a voice/video call.
We simply have discharge co-ordinators on the staff to err, co-ordinate discharges.
Currently being sacked as part of the management headcount reduction of course. Orders from the top.
Long years ago I had to attend discharge planning meetings. What stands out in my memory is the problems when someone.... an Occupational Therapist ...... reported that she'd (usually) made a visit to an elderly and now disabled patients house and the only toilet was upstairs. Under those circumstances there was frequently nowhere really suitable for a commode either.
Excellent punning. But sad story.
Like.
But it does underline why apparently 'fit' patients are sometimes not released from hospital. No-one at those meetings wanted to keep patients in desperately needed beds, but sometimes we had to go into negotiations with families to put their parents (etc) into care homes.
Define fit
- marathon running capable? - Can walk up and down stairs? - Can walk? - Can live without continuous medical intervention?
Fair questions. Certainly 4. I suspect ..... I'm on the other side of the game these days ..... that if someone is mobile enough to manage on their own, with the help of a 'phone and a visit from a care team member, or family equivalent, three or four times a day, then discharge should be considered. What we did see, sometimes, was a 'reluctance' on the part of potential heirs to spend part or all of the value of the patients residence on care.
Quite a few on here excited by Badenoch's pledge to abolish stamp duty on all first time purchases. The current level is £300k for no stamp duty if you are a first time buyer.
That will get you a 1 bedroom flat in my part of the world (East Ham).
The big Folio development at Fresh Wharf is all rental - 1,2 and 3 Bedroom apartments - the one bedroom flats are £750 pcm while the two bedrooms can be anything up to £2k per month for those with a riverside view (the Roding, not the Thames).
We've had stamp duty "holidays" in the past but presumably no Government has been able to say it can live without the receipt from SLT but apparently the next Conservative Government will though the £23 billion welfare cuts are doing a lot of the heavy lifting in all this and are far from well defined.
The idea abolishing SLT will somehow generate large scale economic growth is silly - you might get a short term blip but the market will quickly adjust to the new reality and we'll be back to our old friends supply and demand.
Don’t agree with the latter point. At the moment moving for the sake of a new job is prohibitively expensive. As the former deputy leader of the Labour Party found it can cost over £80k. This discourages movement, risk taking, the maximising of skills and resources. It is unequivocally a bad thing. It also reduces investment at the margins because a new development has this large cost built into it. It discourages people both upsizing and downsizing by making this so expensive reducing the efficiency of the utilisation of our housing stock.
SDLT is a very bad thing but the government needs substantially more than every penny it has got and cannot afford to give up an income flow of £18bn without a hopefully less damaging replacement.
It's time to put those 26 million spare bedrooms to use.
Tories pre speech. "We must tackle the deficit and do something for the young." After. "A £15bn bung to homeowners to inflate house prices!" Superb.
Yes, net zero spending scrapped, welfare scrapped for those with mild mental health problems who can be got back into work, overseas aid cut, no more cars for those with ADHD funded by taxpayer.
Then with those savings stamp duty scrapped benefiting young first time buyers most
Overall that's possibly true because of a more efficient market, but in terms of actual tax paid it's nonsense - Stamp Duty is primarily paid by the richest moving from mansion to mansion.
There's also no duty for first time buyers up to £300k - so a load bollocks from you there.
£300k is below even the average house price in London and the home counties so it will be very welcome to first time buyers there
Here's a visual representation of who will benefit from the removal of Stamp Duty. Average House Prices by Constituency. It's looking more like a desperate stunt rather than taking on Reform or even Labour. Who was it said they think CCHQ has it in for her?
Except that’s not how the housing market works, in practice you end up with a long chain of dependent sales at wildly variable prices, houses that could be all over the country.
We should worry most about taxes produce the biggest drag on the economy per £ for the treasury and not so much about who benefits.
Stamp duty must surely be high up there.
Has anyone prepared such a list?
[NB, I have never paid stamp duty]
Paul Johnson, formerly of the IFS, said it is the worst of many bad taxes
Badenoch explained how she will fund the 9 billion (Primary Homes only) by cancelling ev and heat pump subsidies and other climate related tax rebates, encourage north sea oil with it's increased taxes, attract the wealth creators, millionaires and entrepreneurs chased away by labour, reduce welfare (also reinstating the 2 child cap if it is abolished) and the civil service
Also lost in the stamp duty announcement was the ban on doctors striking and end of labours new union friendly laws
Of course the left will object, but for the first time she has announced a slew of policies so missing to date and there is clear water between the spend and tax of labour and reform and the conservative offer
Time will tell, but if she has given the party an audience and ended Jenrick's ambition then she has had a good day
Fantastic! But how are you paying for the £11.6b shortfall?
Quite a few on here excited by Badenoch's pledge to abolish stamp duty on all first time purchases. The current level is £300k for no stamp duty if you are a first time buyer.
That will get you a 1 bedroom flat in my part of the world (East Ham).
The big Folio development at Fresh Wharf is all rental - 1,2 and 3 Bedroom apartments - the one bedroom flats are £750 pcm while the two bedrooms can be anything up to £2k per month for those with a riverside view (the Roding, not the Thames).
We've had stamp duty "holidays" in the past but presumably no Government has been able to say it can live without the receipt from SLT but apparently the next Conservative Government will though the £23 billion welfare cuts are doing a lot of the heavy lifting in all this and are far from well defined.
The idea abolishing SLT will somehow generate large scale economic growth is silly - you might get a short term blip but the market will quickly adjust to the new reality and we'll be back to our old friends supply and demand.
Don’t agree with the latter point. At the moment moving for the sake of a new job is prohibitively expensive. As the former deputy leader of the Labour Party found it can cost over £80k. This discourages movement, risk taking, the maximising of skills and resources. It is unequivocally a bad thing. It also reduces investment at the margins because a new development has this large cost built into it. It discourages people both upsizing and downsizing by making this so expensive reducing the efficiency of the utilisation of our housing stock.
SDLT is a very bad thing but the government needs substantially more than every penny it has got and cannot afford to give up an income flow of £18bn without a hopefully less damaging replacement.
SDLT on primary properties is a bad thing - on secondary homes I almost wonder if the current rate isn't enough to discourage purchases and it needs to be higher...
Excellent announcement from Kemi that a Conservative government would abolish Stamp Duty
SDLT raised 23-34 £11.6bn 22-23 £15.4bn
I don't disagree that Stamp Duty has negative effects on the housing market and mobility, but how will the tax be raised instead?
How bout cutting spending 👍
We, like most of Europe, have a choice -
Raise taxes on a dwindling workforce,
Cut benefits to politically powerful older voters,
Or borrow more, which is becoming harder and more expensive.
France has attempted all three in recent years. We (via Truss) attempted the last one. In all cases it hasn't gone well.
We could also import younger people of working age, of course #starttheboats.
And that has led to…. Not much difference in economic output.
What we need is productivity increases. Which come from mechanisation and streamlining processes.
For example, my Aunt was trying to escape from hospital. The doctors, the various care units in the hospital and the external support for elderly people were unable, apparently, to talk to each other about simple things.
I ended up sketching, in my head, a simple collaboration portal - on a per case basis. So all the concerned parties could at least talk to each other. Instead of a game of telephone tag….
A Teams call? Or Zoom?
Because of time pressure and needing to spell names accurately etc I was thinking more of text chat with documents and actions, per patient. With task aggregations and alerts (based on length of time since update).
Obviously have an option to turn a conversation into a voice/video call.
We simply have discharge co-ordinators on the staff to err, co-ordinate discharges.
Currently being sacked as part of the management headcount reduction of course. Orders from the top.
Long years ago I had to attend discharge planning meetings. What stands out in my memory is the problems when someone.... an Occupational Therapist ...... reported that she'd (usually) made a visit to an elderly and now disabled patients house and the only toilet was upstairs. Under those circumstances there was frequently nowhere really suitable for a commode either.
Excellent punning. But sad story.
Like.
But it does underline why apparently 'fit' patients are sometimes not released from hospital. No-one at those meetings wanted to keep patients in desperately needed beds, but sometimes we had to go into negotiations with families to put their parents (etc) into care homes.
Define fit
- marathon running capable? - Can walk up and down stairs? - Can walk? - Can live without continuous medical intervention?
Fair questions. Certainly 4. I suspect ..... I'm on the other side of the game these days ..... that if someone is mobile enough to manage on their own, with the help of a 'phone and a visit from a care team member, or family equivalent, three or four times a day, then discharge should be considered. What we did see, sometimes, was a 'reluctance' on the part of potential heirs to spend part or all of the value of the patients residence on care.
Tories pre speech. "We must tackle the deficit and do something for the young." After. "A £15bn bung to homeowners to inflate house prices!" Superb.
Yes, net zero spending scrapped, welfare scrapped for those with mild mental health problems who can be got back into work, overseas aid cut, no more cars for those with ADHD funded by taxpayer.
Then with those savings stamp duty scrapped benefiting young first time buyers most
Overall that's possibly true because of a more efficient market, but in terms of actual tax paid it's nonsense - Stamp Duty is primarily paid by the richest moving from mansion to mansion.
There's also no duty for first time buyers up to £300k - so a load bollocks from you there.
£300k is below even the average house price in London and the home counties so it will be very welcome to first time buyers there
Here's a visual representation of who will benefit from the removal of Stamp Duty. Average House Prices by Constituency. It's looking more like a desperate stunt rather than taking on Reform or even Labour. Who was it said they think CCHQ has it in for her?
Except that’s not how the housing market works, in practice you end up with a long chain of dependent sales at wildly variable prices, houses that could be all over the country.
We should worry most about taxes produce the biggest drag on the economy per £ for the treasury and not so much about who benefits.
Stamp duty must surely be high up there.
Has anyone prepared such a list?
[NB, I have never paid stamp duty]
Good question.
I’d say the biggest is Employer NI, quite literally a tax on jobs but it raises a fortune. Business rates on retail and hospitality is probably next. Fuel duty, especially on commercial diesel, feeds into the price of everything. The top 25% now drive EVs for the tax advantages, turning a progressive tax into a regressive one. Stamp duty SDLT, adds a lot of friction to the economy, and stops people moving out of the London catchment area for a job. Fixed motoring costs, such as tax and insurance, really regressive on 2nd quartile who need car for work. TV Tax, massively regressive and with a large admin overhead, plus the criminal convictions of many poor people and tying up courts. Just fund public service programming from general taxation.
There’s a thread header in there somewhere, with a couple of hours of research over the weekend. Let me see…
If SDLT is replaced by a capital tax based on values the winners and losers on that map will be reversed. Most in London would be paying at least £5k a year (assuming 1%) but most around here in east Scotland would be paying nearer £2k. Over time this might even out our bizarre property market a bit making property outside London more attractive, not less.
So once again the Tories have committed to both extra expenditure and tax cuts. As others have said, they need to be doing the opposite. They have no credibility on reducing spending on unspecified cuts or reduction in Civil Service numbers - if there was anything left to cut, the Tories would have already done it. They had 14 years.
On cuts, I want to hear them say - government will no longer provide this particular service, with reasons why it's unnecessary, and a clear costed saving. And most of it will have to be pensions or health, because nearly everything else needs more resources, if anything.
She got a D in Maths at A-Level so it's not her fault she can't make the numbers balance.
Kemi Badenoch achieved a masters degree in computer systems and engineering in 2003 (MEng) so not bad at maths then !!!!!!!!!!
Tories pre speech. "We must tackle the deficit and do something for the young." After. "A £15bn bung to homeowners to inflate house prices!" Superb.
Yes, net zero spending scrapped, welfare scrapped for those with mild mental health problems who can be got back into work, overseas aid cut, no more cars for those with ADHD funded by taxpayer.
Then with those savings stamp duty scrapped benefiting young first time buyers most
Overall that's possibly true because of a more efficient market, but in terms of actual tax paid it's nonsense - Stamp Duty is primarily paid by the richest moving from mansion to mansion.
There's also no duty for first time buyers up to £300k - so a load bollocks from you there.
£300k is below even the average house price in London and the home counties so it will be very welcome to first time buyers there
Here's a visual representation of who will benefit from the removal of Stamp Duty. Average House Prices by Constituency. It's looking more like a desperate stunt rather than taking on Reform or even Labour. Who was it said they think CCHQ has it in for her?
Except that’s not how the housing market works, in practice you end up with a long chain of dependent sales at wildly variable prices, houses that could be all over the country.
We should worry most about taxes produce the biggest drag on the economy per £ for the treasury and not so much about who benefits.
Stamp duty must surely be high up there.
Has anyone prepared such a list?
[NB, I have never paid stamp duty]
Good question.
I’d say the biggest is Employer NI, quite literally a tax on jobs but it raises a fortune. Business rates on retail and hospitality is probably next. Fuel duty, especially on commercial diesel, feeds into the price of everything. The top 25% now drive EVs for the tax advantages, turning a progressive tax into a regressive one. Stamp duty SDLT, adds a lot of friction to the economy, and stops people moving out of the London catchment area for a job. Fixed motoring costs, such as tax and insurance, really regressive on 2nd quartile who need car for work. TV Tax, massively regressive and with a large admin overhead, plus the criminal convictions of many poor people and tying up courts. Just fund public service programming from general taxation.
There’s a thread header in there somewhere, with a couple of hours of research over the weekend. Let me see…
If SDLT is replaced by a capital tax based on values the winners and losers on that map will be reversed. Most in London would be paying at least £5k a year (assuming 1%) but most around here in east Scotland would be paying nearer £2k. Over time this might even out our bizarre property market a bit making property outside London more attractive, not less.
But how does the “key worker” afford the £5k a year on a 2-bed rented flat in London?
You’re putting all the losers in the same place, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Do a property tax to replace SDLT and Council Tax, but have the local authorities set the rate rather than a national scale.
Quite a few on here excited by Badenoch's pledge to abolish stamp duty on all first time purchases. The current level is £300k for no stamp duty if you are a first time buyer.
That will get you a 1 bedroom flat in my part of the world (East Ham).
The big Folio development at Fresh Wharf is all rental - 1,2 and 3 Bedroom apartments - the one bedroom flats are £750 pcm while the two bedrooms can be anything up to £2k per month for those with a riverside view (the Roding, not the Thames).
We've had stamp duty "holidays" in the past but presumably no Government has been able to say it can live without the receipt from SLT but apparently the next Conservative Government will though the £23 billion welfare cuts are doing a lot of the heavy lifting in all this and are far from well defined.
The idea abolishing SLT will somehow generate large scale economic growth is silly - you might get a short term blip but the market will quickly adjust to the new reality and we'll be back to our old friends supply and demand.
Don’t agree with the latter point. At the moment moving for the sake of a new job is prohibitively expensive. As the former deputy leader of the Labour Party found it can cost over £80k. This discourages movement, risk taking, the maximising of skills and resources. It is unequivocally a bad thing. It also reduces investment at the margins because a new development has this large cost built into it. It discourages people both upsizing and downsizing by making this so expensive reducing the efficiency of the utilisation of our housing stock.
SDLT is a very bad thing but the government needs substantially more than every penny it has got and cannot afford to give up an income flow of £18bn without a hopefully less damaging replacement.
It is worth remembering that not *all* of that is residential, so the hole is not quite as big as you fear. In 2023/24, stamp duty on residential properties was 9bn. Now, this year there was a significant jump in total take, thanks to higher volumes and increasing the 'additional property' rate to 5%.
So, there's probably a 11-12bn hole for the Chancellor to fill.
There is 9.1 trillion of residential real estate in the UK. One could therefore raise 11bn with a simple 0.125% annual property tax bill.
However, I would be smarter. I would make it 1% home that are lived in less than 180 days a year, and 2% on homes that are occupied less than 90 days.
That would mean that the annual property tax bill on the remainder would be around 0.05% per year. Not nothing, to be sure. And it should be easily absorbed by people's properties now being worth meaningfully more.
Tories pre speech. "We must tackle the deficit and do something for the young." After. "A £15bn bung to homeowners to inflate house prices!" Superb.
Yes, net zero spending scrapped, welfare scrapped for those with mild mental health problems who can be got back into work, overseas aid cut, no more cars for those with ADHD funded by taxpayer.
Then with those savings stamp duty scrapped benefiting young first time buyers most
Overall that's possibly true because of a more efficient market, but in terms of actual tax paid it's nonsense - Stamp Duty is primarily paid by the richest moving from mansion to mansion.
There's also no duty for first time buyers up to £300k - so a load bollocks from you there.
£300k is below even the average house price in London and the home counties so it will be very welcome to first time buyers there
Here's a visual representation of who will benefit from the removal of Stamp Duty. Average House Prices by Constituency. It's looking more like a desperate stunt rather than taking on Reform or even Labour. Who was it said they think CCHQ has it in for her?
Except that’s not how the housing market works, in practice you end up with a long chain of dependent sales at wildly variable prices, houses that could be all over the country.
We should worry most about taxes produce the biggest drag on the economy per £ for the treasury and not so much about who benefits.
Stamp duty must surely be high up there.
Has anyone prepared such a list?
[NB, I have never paid stamp duty]
Paul Johnson, formerly of the IFS, said it is the worst of many bad taxes
Badenoch explained how she will fund the 9 billion (Primary Homes only) by cancelling ev and heat pump subsidies and other climate related tax rebates, encourage north sea oil with it's increased taxes, attract the wealth creators, millionaires and entrepreneurs chased away by labour, reduce welfare (also reinstating the 2 child cap if it is abolished) and the civil service
Also lost in the stamp duty announcement was the ban on doctors striking and end of labours new union friendly laws
Of course the left will object, but for the first time she has announced a slew of policies so missing to date and there is clear water between the spend and tax of labour and reform and the conservative offer
Time will tell, but if she has given the party an audience and ended Jenrick's ambition then she has had a good day
Fantastic! But how are you paying for the £11.6b shortfall?
Its all there but also much added growth through this policy
So once again the Tories have committed to both extra expenditure and tax cuts. As others have said, they need to be doing the opposite. They have no credibility on reducing spending on unspecified cuts or reduction in Civil Service numbers - if there was anything left to cut, the Tories would have already done it. They had 14 years.
On cuts, I want to hear them say - government will no longer provide this particular service, with reasons why it's unnecessary, and a clear costed saving. And most of it will have to be pensions or health, because nearly everything else needs more resources, if anything.
She got a D in Maths at A-Level so it's not her fault she can't make the numbers balance.
Kemi Badenoch achieved a masters degree in computer systems and engineering in 2003 (MEng) so not bad at maths then !!!!!!!!!!
Applied Maths is subtly* different from basic arithmetic.
* Actually not even subtly different. Very different?
Excellent announcement from Kemi that a Conservative government would abolish Stamp Duty
SDLT raised 23-34 £11.6bn 22-23 £15.4bn
I don't disagree that Stamp Duty has negative effects on the housing market and mobility, but how will the tax be raised instead?
How bout cutting spending 👍
We, like most of Europe, have a choice -
Raise taxes on a dwindling workforce,
Cut benefits to politically powerful older voters,
Or borrow more, which is becoming harder and more expensive.
France has attempted all three in recent years. We (via Truss) attempted the last one. In all cases it hasn't gone well.
We could also import younger people of working age, of course #starttheboats.
And that has led to…. Not much difference in economic output.
What we need is productivity increases. Which come from mechanisation and streamlining processes.
For example, my Aunt was trying to escape from hospital. The doctors, the various care units in the hospital and the external support for elderly people were unable, apparently, to talk to each other about simple things.
I ended up sketching, in my head, a simple collaboration portal - on a per case basis. So all the concerned parties could at least talk to each other. Instead of a game of telephone tag….
A Teams call? Or Zoom?
Because of time pressure and needing to spell names accurately etc I was thinking more of text chat with documents and actions, per patient. With task aggregations and alerts (based on length of time since update).
Obviously have an option to turn a conversation into a voice/video call.
We simply have discharge co-ordinators on the staff to err, co-ordinate discharges.
Currently being sacked as part of the management headcount reduction of course. Orders from the top.
Long years ago I had to attend discharge planning meetings. What stands out in my memory is the problems when someone.... an Occupational Therapist ...... reported that she'd (usually) made a visit to an elderly and now disabled patients house and the only toilet was upstairs. Under those circumstances there was frequently nowhere really suitable for a commode either.
Excellent punning. But sad story.
Like.
But it does underline why apparently 'fit' patients are sometimes not released from hospital. No-one at those meetings wanted to keep patients in desperately needed beds, but sometimes we had to go into negotiations with families to put their parents (etc) into care homes.
Define fit
- marathon running capable? - Can walk up and down stairs? - Can walk? - Can live without continuous medical intervention?
Fair questions. Certainly 4. I suspect ..... I'm on the other side of the game these days ..... that if someone is mobile enough to manage on their own, with the help of a 'phone and a visit from a care team member, or family equivalent, three or four times a day, then discharge should be considered. What we did see, sometimes, was a 'reluctance' on the part of potential heirs to spend part or all of the value of the patients residence on care.
Scumbags is the technical term.
We couldn't tell them that face to face. Sometimes unfortunately. But how do you deal with someone who is living in poor conditions themselves that you want them to sell the former council house that they were hoping to move 'up' into when their old Mum died?
Listening to her speech, the single biggest problem is that all the things she says need to be done are precisely the things her party has spent a decade demonstrating that they are incapable of doing. .
Exactly.
Why should anyone believe them.
A decade in purgatory beckons.
Deservedly so
Very, very positive response to the Tories on WATO. And a blast from the past, Julie Kirkbride who is now a More in Common pollster.
Helen Whateley very impressed with Kemi today. Whateley suggesting that the ending of stamp duty will be paid for by cuts. There is no replacement tax ( yet) apparently.
I’d be more surprised if Whateley was not impressed.
I haven’t listened to WATO in years. I’m watching the last Michael Praed episode of Robin of Sherwood. The Greatest Enema. It’s quite good.
(hums Clannad)
It’s a great theme
You’re a cult tv fan.
Have you ever rewatched an old tv show you had happy memories of that disappointed.
I have, it was this.
It’s okay but nothing special
Rather sadly, I was also disappointed when I rewatched Robin of Sherwood: not because it was bad, but the slow pace didn't work any more. What was appropriate in the era of four channels and rainy afternoons doesn't work in the 2020s. I have a horrible feeling the same thing would happen if I rewatched The Children Of The Stones or Airwolf. And I'm not going near Space:1999 (1st series), just in case.
It's not all bad news: when I went to the BFI to see a film (see previous posts), I spent about a hour in its "mediatheque", a free-access row of terminals where you could rewatch programmes. I watched an episode of Edge of Darkness ("Northmoor") and it really stood up. And I think/hope Our Friends In The North would too. And I rewatched some episodes of Big Deal and they really worked, at least for a bit. How about Tales Of The Unexpected, at least the early scripts. Perhaps they would too.
Now I'm wondering. Now we are past the laugh-at-the-tacky effects, if we considered Blake's 7 as a period piece: would it still stand up? Similarly, Miami Vice. Hmmm
Tories pre speech. "We must tackle the deficit and do something for the young." After. "A £15bn bung to homeowners to inflate house prices!" Superb.
Abolishing stamp duty would pretty much pay for itself. Not wholly, but it's such a break on economic activity that it's removal would bring a hell of a lot of growth.
Also as a perspective first time buyer, I see it as a potential bung to me, so all for the good.
I am sure no seller would even dream of adjusting the sale price if they know you, and your competitors as buyers, all have an extra few thousand available.
I don't think abolishing stamp duty will have much effect on first time buyers, but that doesn't mean it doesn't need abolition as that does however solve the (massive) problem that moving from say one £500k house to another generates a whopping tax bill.
We should be encouraging people to move house whenever it makes sense for them to do so, rather than the opposite, the more efficiently the housing stock is used, the better.
It's also a big deal for business - if you're running a small business trying to buy business premises, getting whacked for a load of SDLT right at the point you are most stretched anyway by moving and disruption costs is particularly inconvenient.
The best way to help first time buyers is to reduce demand by turning immigration negative and to build more houses.
Replacing stamp duty with a different property tax would be fine, and better than stamp duty. Getting rid of it without explicitly (and realistically, not magic cuts to budgets they failed to cut over 14 years) stating how to fund that is not.
It’s mere Truss-ism.
No as it is funded by spending cuts on welfare, reductions in civil service numbers and scrapping net zero costs
Why didn't you do this over 14 years? In fact you did the opposite. And you have confirmed you want the biggest welfare spending, pensions, to increase faster than the economy for another decade already.
If you want to pitch as the grown up party on the economy, regurgitating this failed crap is not good enough.
The deficit fell from 10% to 2% from 2010 to 2016
What happened in 2016 to reverse the trend?
Well it wasn't Brexit. That famously was postponed until 2020...
Tories pre speech. "We must tackle the deficit and do something for the young." After. "A £15bn bung to homeowners to inflate house prices!" Superb.
Yes, net zero spending scrapped, welfare scrapped for those with mild mental health problems who can be got back into work, overseas aid cut, no more cars for those with ADHD funded by taxpayer.
Then with those savings stamp duty scrapped benefiting young first time buyers most
Overall that's possibly true because of a more efficient market, but in terms of actual tax paid it's nonsense - Stamp Duty is primarily paid by the richest moving from mansion to mansion.
There's also no duty for first time buyers up to £300k - so a load bollocks from you there.
£300k is below even the average house price in London and the home counties so it will be very welcome to first time buyers there
Here's a visual representation of who will benefit from the removal of Stamp Duty. Average House Prices by Constituency. It's looking more like a desperate stunt rather than taking on Reform or even Labour. Who was it said they think CCHQ has it in for her?
Except that’s not how the housing market works, in practice you end up with a long chain of dependent sales at wildly variable prices, houses that could be all over the country.
We should worry most about taxes produce the biggest drag on the economy per £ for the treasury and not so much about who benefits.
Stamp duty must surely be high up there.
Has anyone prepared such a list?
[NB, I have never paid stamp duty]
Good question.
I’d say the biggest is Employer NI, quite literally a tax on jobs but it raises a fortune. Business rates on retail and hospitality is probably next. Fuel duty, especially on commercial diesel, feeds into the price of everything. The top 25% now drive EVs for the tax advantages, turning a progressive tax into a regressive one. Stamp duty SDLT, adds a lot of friction to the economy, and stops people moving out of the London catchment area for a job. Fixed motoring costs, such as tax and insurance, really regressive on 2nd quartile who need car for work. TV Tax, massively regressive and with a large admin overhead, plus the criminal convictions of many poor people and tying up courts. Just fund public service programming from general taxation.
There’s a thread header in there somewhere, with a couple of hours of research over the weekend. Let me see…
If SDLT is replaced by a capital tax based on values the winners and losers on that map will be reversed. Most in London would be paying at least £5k a year (assuming 1%) but most around here in east Scotland would be paying nearer £2k. Over time this might even out our bizarre property market a bit making property outside London more attractive, not less.
But how does the “key worker” afford the £5k a year on a 2-bed rented flat in London?
You’re putting all the losers in the same place, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Do a property tax to replace SDLT and Council Tax, but have the local authorities set the rate rather than a national scale.
I haven’t thought through all the details yet. My only criteria for this policy is that its replacement has to generate at least £18bn a year more than current taxes. In short, just like Hunt’s cut of NI, we can reallocate taxes to make them less damaging (although all taxes have costs) but we can’t cut taxes when we are borrowing £150bn a year.
This nonsense we have from politicians of all stripes that X will pay for Y totally ignoring this reality is putting me off politics altogether. It’s dishonest and stupid.
So once again the Tories have committed to both extra expenditure and tax cuts. As others have said, they need to be doing the opposite. They have no credibility on reducing spending on unspecified cuts or reduction in Civil Service numbers - if there was anything left to cut, the Tories would have already done it. They had 14 years.
On cuts, I want to hear them say - government will no longer provide this particular service, with reasons why it's unnecessary, and a clear costed saving. And most of it will have to be pensions or health, because nearly everything else needs more resources, if anything.
And since touching health or pensions will be political suicide, that points towards "this is how much the state we want to live in costs, like it or lump it, wallets out everyone."
As that sadder but hopefully wiser Kent County Councillor put it, Everyone thought we’d come in and there were going to be these huge costs we could cut away but there just aren’t.
So once again the Tories have committed to both extra expenditure and tax cuts. As others have said, they need to be doing the opposite. They have no credibility on reducing spending on unspecified cuts or reduction in Civil Service numbers - if there was anything left to cut, the Tories would have already done it. They had 14 years.
On cuts, I want to hear them say - government will no longer provide this particular service, with reasons why it's unnecessary, and a clear costed saving. And most of it will have to be pensions or health, because nearly everything else needs more resources, if anything.
And since touching health or pensions will be political suicide, that points towards "this is how much the state we want to live in costs, like it or lump it, wallets out everyone."
As that sadder but hopefully wiser Kent County Councillor put it, Everyone thought we’d come in and there were going to be these huge costs we could cut away but there just aren’t.
Kemi's replacement? Katie Lam down from 25/1 to 16/1 on Lads since yesterday. Only 3 ahead of her - Jenrick, Cleverly and Boris. I've dipped in before it drops further
Katie Lam was first elected in 2024 and is not even on the Opposition front bench. Leader one day perhaps but not now.
But she has lots of groupies, so the odds may fall some way further.
Quite a few on here excited by Badenoch's pledge to abolish stamp duty on all first time purchases. The current level is £300k for no stamp duty if you are a first time buyer.
That will get you a 1 bedroom flat in my part of the world (East Ham).
The big Folio development at Fresh Wharf is all rental - 1,2 and 3 Bedroom apartments - the one bedroom flats are £750 pcm while the two bedrooms can be anything up to £2k per month for those with a riverside view (the Roding, not the Thames).
We've had stamp duty "holidays" in the past but presumably no Government has been able to say it can live without the receipt from SLT but apparently the next Conservative Government will though the £23 billion welfare cuts are doing a lot of the heavy lifting in all this and are far from well defined.
The idea abolishing SLT will somehow generate large scale economic growth is silly - you might get a short term blip but the market will quickly adjust to the new reality and we'll be back to our old friends supply and demand.
Don’t agree with the latter point. At the moment moving for the sake of a new job is prohibitively expensive. As the former deputy leader of the Labour Party found it can cost over £80k. This discourages movement, risk taking, the maximising of skills and resources. It is unequivocally a bad thing. It also reduces investment at the margins because a new development has this large cost built into it. It discourages people both upsizing and downsizing by making this so expensive reducing the efficiency of the utilisation of our housing stock.
SDLT is a very bad thing but the government needs substantially more than every penny it has got and cannot afford to give up an income flow of £18bn without a hopefully less damaging replacement.
It's time to put those 26 million spare bedrooms to use.
Ours , sadly, are filled with junk but I know what you mean and agree.
The £23b saving for curtailment of payment to lead swingers is certainly eye-catching.
Is Kemi aware that a diagnosis for say autism doesn't automatically deliver a Motability BMW X5? My son after over 20 years is still waiting for his. What benefit he did accrue from a clinical diagnosis for autism was extra time in school and university exams. I'm not sure how the £23b saving is calculated from that.
Got to say the only thing twin A has got from her autism diagnosis is a blue badge and that was more for anxiety than anything else
I am sure by accounting smoke and mirrors your daughter's blue badge equates to a £23b saving right there! Conundrum resolved.
It is not really clear why autism or anxiety merit a blue badge or extra time in exams but since neither cost anything, it's moot.
Extra time in exams devalues the utility derived from being able to do things quickly.
I think its only issue if the assessment is specifically time limited. One of our first year exams is 3 h but realistically ought to be doable in 1h to 1h 30. Many students leave early having finished.
I have said before we are not taking Stephen Miller seriously enough. The other day when he stated Trump has "plenary authority" to do whatever he wants is really very chilling.
Sadly, it's not clear to me that enough ordinary Americans care enough about living in a democracy under the rule of law to actually fight for one.
As the article you posted says Miller thinks that the low-information, don't-aways-bother-to-vote votes can be beguiled into supporting a monarchy/autocracy by propaganda about insurrection and left wing terror cells. Safety over Liberty in a direct reversal of Franklin's original.
All very depressing but I still hold a candle of hope that the ordinary joe will eventually call time on all this madness, possibly because, if for no other reason, that the economy tanks.
From an investor point of view, in a free market, not being able to rely on the rule of law imposes a severe discount on asset prices, so the economy will certainly tank, especially after the imposition of arbitrary costs including tariffs.
The regime has put a lot of pressure on the oligarchy to help out, so it is an open question as to how free the market now actually is. Nevertheless self interest eventually wins out, so then the question is at what point and how violently will asset prices fall?
Tories pre speech. "We must tackle the deficit and do something for the young." After. "A £15bn bung to homeowners to inflate house prices!" Superb.
Yes, net zero spending scrapped, welfare scrapped for those with mild mental health problems who can be got back into work, overseas aid cut, no more cars for those with ADHD funded by taxpayer.
Then with those savings stamp duty scrapped benefiting young first time buyers most
Overall that's possibly true because of a more efficient market, but in terms of actual tax paid it's nonsense - Stamp Duty is primarily paid by the richest moving from mansion to mansion.
There's also no duty for first time buyers up to £300k - so a load bollocks from you there.
£300k is below even the average house price in London and the home counties so it will be very welcome to first time buyers there
Here's a visual representation of who will benefit from the removal of Stamp Duty. Average House Prices by Constituency. It's looking more like a desperate stunt rather than taking on Reform or even Labour. Who was it said they think CCHQ has it in for her?
Except that’s not how the housing market works, in practice you end up with a long chain of dependent sales at wildly variable prices, houses that could be all over the country.
We should worry most about taxes produce the biggest drag on the economy per £ for the treasury and not so much about who benefits.
Stamp duty must surely be high up there.
Has anyone prepared such a list?
[NB, I have never paid stamp duty]
Paul Johnson, formerly of the IFS, said it is the worst of many bad taxes
Badenoch explained how she will fund the 9 billion (Primary Homes only) by cancelling ev and heat pump subsidies and other climate related tax rebates, encourage north sea oil with it's increased taxes, attract the wealth creators, millionaires and entrepreneurs chased away by labour, reduce welfare (also reinstating the 2 child cap if it is abolished) and the civil service
Also lost in the stamp duty announcement was the ban on doctors striking and end of labours new union friendly laws
Of course the left will object, but for the first time she has announced a slew of policies so missing to date and there is clear water between the spend and tax of labour and reform and the conservative offer
Time will tell, but if she has given the party an audience and ended Jenrick's ambition then she has had a good day
Fantastic! But how are you paying for the £11.6b shortfall?
Borrowing as usual, that's why we're in this mess. Govt net borrowing %GDP Apr 1997 to Mar 2010 average 2.5% %GDP Apr 2010 to Mar 2020 average 4.9%
Fake news! It's three Democrats; Pritzker, Newsom and Schiff.
I was very interested by Newson’s policies using the economic might of California to resist Trump. He made it clear that educational institutions who bent the knee to Trump and paid him off would lose their much more substantial State support. Not nice for those caught in the crossfire but a necessary step to resist Trump’s authoritarian power grab. I can see other Blue states following suite.
Tories pre speech. "We must tackle the deficit and do something for the young." After. "A £15bn bung to homeowners to inflate house prices!" Superb.
Yes, net zero spending scrapped, welfare scrapped for those with mild mental health problems who can be got back into work, overseas aid cut, no more cars for those with ADHD funded by taxpayer.
Then with those savings stamp duty scrapped benefiting young first time buyers most
Overall that's possibly true because of a more efficient market, but in terms of actual tax paid it's nonsense - Stamp Duty is primarily paid by the richest moving from mansion to mansion.
There's also no duty for first time buyers up to £300k - so a load bollocks from you there.
£300k is below even the average house price in London and the home counties so it will be very welcome to first time buyers there
Here's a visual representation of who will benefit from the removal of Stamp Duty. Average House Prices by Constituency. It's looking more like a desperate stunt rather than taking on Reform or even Labour. Who was it said they think CCHQ has it in for her?
Except that’s not how the housing market works, in practice you end up with a long chain of dependent sales at wildly variable prices, houses that could be all over the country.
We should worry most about taxes produce the biggest drag on the economy per £ for the treasury and not so much about who benefits.
Stamp duty must surely be high up there.
Has anyone prepared such a list?
[NB, I have never paid stamp duty]
Paul Johnson, formerly of the IFS, said it is the worst of many bad taxes
Badenoch explained how she will fund the 9 billion (Primary Homes only) by cancelling ev and heat pump subsidies and other climate related tax rebates, encourage north sea oil with it's increased taxes, attract the wealth creators, millionaires and entrepreneurs chased away by labour, reduce welfare (also reinstating the 2 child cap if it is abolished) and the civil service
Also lost in the stamp duty announcement was the ban on doctors striking and end of labours new union friendly laws
Of course the left will object, but for the first time she has announced a slew of policies so missing to date and there is clear water between the spend and tax of labour and reform and the conservative offer
Time will tell, but if she has given the party an audience and ended Jenrick's ambition then she has had a good day
Well, yes and as a Conservative member and supporter I can understand you wanting to put as positive as possible a spin on the events of this week.
I am left with two connected thoughts - first, where was all this policy thinking between 2010 and 2024? Second, if abolishing SLT is such a good idea, why didn't Sunak or Hunt offer it when CoE? It's not as though there wouldn't have been a majority in the Commons but instead we had short term "holidays"?
It sounds odd and disjointed - it may even be Reeves will beat your party to the punch but the truth is the numbers look dubious to this observer. The £23 billion welfare number looks decidedly lacking in detail and at a time when public finances are struggling, to play the Magic Money Tree game of making reductions to receipts looks cavalier.
I'd hoped to hear some sensible measures (or at least some sensible thinking) around how to reduce borrowing and the deficit but instead it's more waffly promises aimed at a core vote. As I mentioned in my previous, all the developments around me are for renting not ownership - what is there for the young person or couple who want to rent their first home rather tha buy outright?
Quite a few on here excited by Badenoch's pledge to abolish stamp duty on all first time purchases. The current level is £300k for no stamp duty if you are a first time buyer.
That will get you a 1 bedroom flat in my part of the world (East Ham).
The big Folio development at Fresh Wharf is all rental - 1,2 and 3 Bedroom apartments - the one bedroom flats are £750 pcm while the two bedrooms can be anything up to £2k per month for those with a riverside view (the Roding, not the Thames).
We've had stamp duty "holidays" in the past but presumably no Government has been able to say it can live without the receipt from SLT but apparently the next Conservative Government will though the £23 billion welfare cuts are doing a lot of the heavy lifting in all this and are far from well defined.
The idea abolishing SLT will somehow generate large scale economic growth is silly - you might get a short term blip but the market will quickly adjust to the new reality and we'll be back to our old friends supply and demand.
By contrast there are relatively few properties in the NE of England worth £300k. It's a huge shift in the tax burden from south to north.
Excellent announcement from Kemi that a Conservative government would abolish Stamp Duty
SDLT raised 23-34 £11.6bn 22-23 £15.4bn
I don't disagree that Stamp Duty has negative effects on the housing market and mobility, but how will the tax be raised instead?
How bout cutting spending 👍
We, like most of Europe, have a choice -
Raise taxes on a dwindling workforce,
Cut benefits to politically powerful older voters,
Or borrow more, which is becoming harder and more expensive.
France has attempted all three in recent years. We (via Truss) attempted the last one. In all cases it hasn't gone well.
We could also import younger people of working age, of course #starttheboats.
And that has led to…. Not much difference in economic output.
What we need is productivity increases. Which come from mechanisation and streamlining processes.
For example, my Aunt was trying to escape from hospital. The doctors, the various care units in the hospital and the external support for elderly people were unable, apparently, to talk to each other about simple things.
I ended up sketching, in my head, a simple collaboration portal - on a per case basis. So all the concerned parties could at least talk to each other. Instead of a game of telephone tag….
A Teams call? Or Zoom?
Because of time pressure and needing to spell names accurately etc I was thinking more of text chat with documents and actions, per patient. With task aggregations and alerts (based on length of time since update).
Obviously have an option to turn a conversation into a voice/video call.
We simply have discharge co-ordinators on the staff to err, co-ordinate discharges.
Currently being sacked as part of the management headcount reduction of course. Orders from the top.
Long years ago I had to attend discharge planning meetings. What stands out in my memory is the problems when someone.... an Occupational Therapist ...... reported that she'd (usually) made a visit to an elderly and now disabled patients house and the only toilet was upstairs. Under those circumstances there was frequently nowhere really suitable for a commode either.
Excellent punning. But sad story.
Like.
But it does underline why apparently 'fit' patients are sometimes not released from hospital. No-one at those meetings wanted to keep patients in desperately needed beds, but sometimes we had to go into negotiations with families to put their parents (etc) into care homes.
Define fit
- marathon running capable? - Can walk up and down stairs? - Can walk? - Can live without continuous medical intervention?
Fair questions. Certainly 4. I suspect ..... I'm on the other side of the game these days ..... that if someone is mobile enough to manage on their own, with the help of a 'phone and a visit from a care team member, or family equivalent, three or four times a day, then discharge should be considered. What we did see, sometimes, was a 'reluctance' on the part of potential heirs to spend part or all of the value of the patients residence on care.
We have a very elderly neighbour who as well as being frail, has macular degeneration. As well as family visits, the council carer comes four times a day. It’s surely better being in your own home than in a hospital or care home,
Quite a few on here excited by Badenoch's pledge to abolish stamp duty on all first time purchases. The current level is £300k for no stamp duty if you are a first time buyer.
That will get you a 1 bedroom flat in my part of the world (East Ham).
The big Folio development at Fresh Wharf is all rental - 1,2 and 3 Bedroom apartments - the one bedroom flats are £750 pcm while the two bedrooms can be anything up to £2k per month for those with a riverside view (the Roding, not the Thames).
We've had stamp duty "holidays" in the past but presumably no Government has been able to say it can live without the receipt from SLT but apparently the next Conservative Government will though the £23 billion welfare cuts are doing a lot of the heavy lifting in all this and are far from well defined.
The idea abolishing SLT will somehow generate large scale economic growth is silly - you might get a short term blip but the market will quickly adjust to the new reality and we'll be back to our old friends supply and demand.
Don’t agree with the latter point. At the moment moving for the sake of a new job is prohibitively expensive. As the former deputy leader of the Labour Party found it can cost over £80k. This discourages movement, risk taking, the maximising of skills and resources. It is unequivocally a bad thing. It also reduces investment at the margins because a new development has this large cost built into it. It discourages people both upsizing and downsizing by making this so expensive reducing the efficiency of the utilisation of our housing stock.
SDLT is a very bad thing but the government needs substantially more than every penny it has got and cannot afford to give up an income flow of £18bn without a hopefully less damaging replacement.
SDLT on primary properties is a bad thing - on secondary homes I almost wonder if the current rate isn't enough to discourage purchases and it needs to be higher...
An annual property tax with a 50% for your main residence would be my favoured option.
So once again the Tories have committed to both extra expenditure and tax cuts. As others have said, they need to be doing the opposite. They have no credibility on reducing spending on unspecified cuts or reduction in Civil Service numbers - if there was anything left to cut, the Tories would have already done it. They had 14 years.
On cuts, I want to hear them say - government will no longer provide this particular service, with reasons why it's unnecessary, and a clear costed saving. And most of it will have to be pensions or health, because nearly everything else needs more resources, if anything.
And since touching health or pensions will be political suicide, that points towards "this is how much the state we want to live in costs, like it or lump it, wallets out everyone."
As that sadder but hopefully wiser Kent County Councillor put it, Everyone thought we’d come in and there were going to be these huge costs we could cut away but there just aren’t.
These are people wanting strategic responsibility for multi million pound operations of considerable complexity who have done no homework whatsoever about the task they are undertaking and have not researched how it works or what it does or what stuff costs.
Comments
It ended up with me playing telephone tag with half a dozen people - while trying to get people to actually talk to my Aunt. Who is quite alert, savy and prefers to run her own life….
No one involved was bad or lazy - they just didn’t have information.
I bought my flat for about £150k. If I sell it for £200k I could accept a £5k bill. It would also discourage people from playing around with their first and second property designation as the saving would be much smaller.
I think scrapping stamp duty is a really great policy. They should consider doing it on shares too.
But it does underline why apparently 'fit' patients are sometimes not released from hospital. No-one at those meetings wanted to keep patients in desperately needed beds, but sometimes we had to go into negotiations with families to put their parents (etc) into care homes.
Quite a few on here excited by Badenoch's pledge to abolish stamp duty on all first time purchases. The current level is £300k for no stamp duty if you are a first time buyer.
That will get you a 1 bedroom flat in my part of the world (East Ham).
The big Folio development at Fresh Wharf is all rental - 1,2 and 3 Bedroom apartments - the one bedroom flats are £750 pcm while the two bedrooms can be anything up to £2k per month for those with a riverside view (the Roding, not the Thames).
We've had stamp duty "holidays" in the past but presumably no Government has been able to say it can live without the receipt from SLT but apparently the next Conservative Government will though the £23 billion welfare cuts are doing a lot of the heavy lifting in all this and are far from well defined.
The idea abolishing SLT will somehow generate large scale economic growth is silly - you might get a short term blip but the market will quickly adjust to the new reality and we'll be back to our old friends supply and demand.
They solemnly sent people round to look at the flat - all AOK.
After x more rounds of teleporting, it was discovered that the problem was a post-it that was in the file saying “accommodation unsuitable”. No other details on the post-it.
I then suggested that it was possible the post-it note had fallen from another place/file, into hers.
I could almost hear to nodding on the phone…
You’re a cult tv fan.
Have you ever rewatched an old tv show you had happy memories of that disappointed.
I have, it was this.
It’s okay but nothing special
I’d say the biggest is Employer NI, quite literally a tax on jobs but it raises a fortune.
Business rates on retail and hospitality is probably next.
Fuel duty, especially on commercial diesel, feeds into the price of everything. The top 25% now drive EVs for the tax advantages, turning a progressive tax into a regressive one.
Stamp duty SDLT, adds a lot of friction to the economy, and stops people moving out of the London catchment area for a job.
Fixed motoring costs, such as tax and insurance, really regressive on 2nd quartile who need car for work.
TV Tax, massively regressive and with a large admin overhead, plus the criminal convictions of many poor people and tying up courts. Just fund public service programming from general taxation.
There’s a thread header in there somewhere, with a couple of hours of research over the weekend. Let me see…
- marathon running capable?
- Can walk up and down stairs?
- Can walk?
- Can live without continuous medical intervention?
Edit: round here £300K will get you a very acceptable 1960s det. ho.
As the article you posted says Miller thinks that the low-information, don't-aways-bother-to-vote votes can be beguiled into supporting a monarchy/autocracy by propaganda about insurrection and left wing terror cells. Safety over Liberty in a direct reversal of Franklin's original.
All very depressing but I still hold a candle of hope that the ordinary joe will eventually call time on all this madness, possibly because, if for no other reason, that the economy tanks.
This would (a) actually spur new building activity and (b) make it easier for people to trade down without losing money.
It also reduces investment at the margins because a new development has this large cost built into it.
It discourages people both upsizing and downsizing by making this so expensive reducing the efficiency of the utilisation of our housing stock.
SDLT is a very bad thing but the government needs substantially more than every penny it has got and cannot afford to give up an income flow of £18bn without a hopefully less damaging replacement.
What we did see, sometimes, was a 'reluctance' on the part of potential heirs to spend part or all of the value of the patients residence on care.
Over time this might even out our bizarre property market a bit making property outside London more attractive, not less.
You’re putting all the losers in the same place, with potentially catastrophic consequences.
Do a property tax to replace SDLT and Council Tax, but have the local authorities set the rate rather than a national scale.
So, there's probably a 11-12bn hole for the Chancellor to fill.
There is 9.1 trillion of residential real estate in the UK. One could therefore raise 11bn with a simple 0.125% annual property tax bill.
However, I would be smarter. I would make it 1% home that are lived in less than 180 days a year, and 2% on homes that are occupied less than 90 days.
That would mean that the annual property tax bill on the remainder would be around 0.05% per year. Not nothing, to be sure. And it should be easily absorbed by people's properties now being worth meaningfully more.
* Actually not even subtly different. Very different?
NEW THREAD
It's not all bad news: when I went to the BFI to see a film (see previous posts), I spent about a hour in its "mediatheque", a free-access row of terminals where you could rewatch programmes. I watched an episode of Edge of Darkness ("Northmoor") and it really stood up. And I think/hope Our Friends In The North would too. And I rewatched some episodes of Big Deal and they really worked, at least for a bit. How about Tales Of The Unexpected, at least the early scripts. Perhaps they would too.
Now I'm wondering. Now we are past the laugh-at-the-tacky effects, if we considered Blake's 7 as a period piece: would it still stand up? Similarly, Miami Vice. Hmmm
This nonsense we have from politicians of all stripes that X will pay for Y totally ignoring this reality is putting me off politics altogether. It’s dishonest and stupid.
As that sadder but hopefully wiser Kent County Councillor put it, Everyone thought we’d come in and there were going to be these huge costs we could cut away but there just aren’t.
As that sadder but hopefully wiser Kent County Councillor put it, Everyone thought we’d come in and there were going to be these huge costs we could cut away but there just aren’t.
Some jobs/tasks are time pressured. Some are not.
The regime has put a lot of pressure on the oligarchy to help out, so it is an open question as to how free the market now actually is. Nevertheless self interest eventually wins out, so then the question is at what point and how violently will asset prices fall?
Govt net borrowing %GDP Apr 1997 to Mar 2010 average 2.5%
%GDP Apr 2010 to Mar 2020 average 4.9%
https://www.ons.gov.uk/economy/governmentpublicsectorandtaxes/publicsectorfinance/datasets/governmentdeficitanddebtreturn
Not nice for those caught in the crossfire but a necessary step to resist Trump’s authoritarian power grab. I can see other Blue states following suite.
I am left with two connected thoughts - first, where was all this policy thinking between 2010 and 2024? Second, if abolishing SLT is such a good idea, why didn't Sunak or Hunt offer it when CoE? It's not as though there wouldn't have been a majority in the Commons but instead we had short term "holidays"?
It sounds odd and disjointed - it may even be Reeves will beat your party to the punch but the truth is the numbers look dubious to this observer. The £23 billion welfare number looks decidedly lacking in detail and at a time when public finances are struggling, to play the Magic Money Tree game of making reductions to receipts looks cavalier.
I'd hoped to hear some sensible measures (or at least some sensible thinking) around how to reduce borrowing and the deficit but instead it's more waffly promises aimed at a core vote. As I mentioned in my previous, all the developments around me are for renting not ownership - what is there for the young person or couple who want to rent their first home rather tha buy outright?
It's a huge shift in the tax burden from south to north.
And many of our MPs are no better.
Tragic really.