Anyone else in the South East worried about Andy Burnham bringing in a land tax?

[Beachbooks]

With it looking likely that Andy Burnhan will be the next PM, I was interested to see if anyone else in London / the south east were worried about potential tax raises specifically around the land tax rather than stamp duty ?

A lot of my friends who live locally are worrying that he will make the land tax for the South East so high in proportion to other areas of the UK that it will be financially very difficult to afford but then also extremely difficult to sell!!

BTW we have very standard house and garden but we live in an expensive area

You do know that U turns are only a valid criticism if a policy has actually been announced and voted for in the Commons? The term doesn’t apply to media speculation.

I thought AB had been chuntering on about it?

It is in the media because people are excited and trying to figure out what AB will do.

I would guess most people want an election rather than give AB a mandate that he doesn"t have.

But it hasn’t been debated or voted on in the Commons. It’s not government policy.

Why is he making it a flagship policy then, he is not even PM yet?

I don’t think he is. There’s a mention of it in one article in The Telegraph which says

Mr Burnham, the so-called “King of the North” and likely next prime minister, has for years advocated a land tax, suggesting it could be brought in as a replacement for both council tax and stamp duty.

He told the Telegraph in May that he had “long been persuaded of the argument” for the levy, saying private land was “under-taxed”.

That’s a very long way from saying he wants to implement it, let alone it being government policy.

Another think tank for Burnham
and it’s worse

1% not 0.48% for council tax

heres the whole article

Burnham told to launch £100bn tax reform package
By: Mauricio Alencar
Politics and Economics Reporter

Andy Burnham has been pressed to introduce sweeping tax reforms. PA
Andy Burnham has been urged to introduce sweeping tax reforms that could generate over £100bn in extra government revenue by a group of influential economists, which includes his own heavyweight adviser Jim O’Neill.

A letter signed by O’Neill, who was formerly a Treasury minister and Goldman Sachs executive, urged the next Prime Minister to introduce major reforms of the country’s tax system.

Andy Haldane, the former Bank of England chief economist who is also advising Burnham, made a similar call in an interview with City AM.
The letter argues that the government needs to implement radical changes on infrastructure spending, welfare benefits and taxes.

Burnham has promised to take a different approach to managing the UK economy based on a critique of “neoliberalism” and a focus on so-called “good growth”.

The letter signed by top economists accompanies a report by the UCL’sInstitute for Global Prosperity, titled Prosperity 2030. The report features a list of 30 policies to “remake Britain”, including replacing stamp duty with a one per cent levy on property valuations that would “end the absurdity of a modest terrace paying proportionally more than a high-value mansion”.

It would mean that families stump up £5,000 each year to HMRC if their house is worth £500,000.

The report also calls for income taxes, national insurance, dividend taxes, inheritance taxes and capital gains taxes to be wrapped together into a “national contributions” tax. It would scale up from zero per cent to a 22 per cent base rate. A 46 per cent top rate would be applied to a “flat definition of income”.

The authors’ projections suggest it would raise up to £75bn after five years.

Solving the £100,000 tax trap
Economists also insisted that the report’s “core” was a tax cut for workers, with those in the £100,000 to £125,000 tax trap due to the stripping of personal allowance also projected to keep more of their wages.

Other key reforms include replacing job centres with training centres for apprentices, moving costs from energy system investments away from bills and onto national taxation, and providing nine “Universal Services” that focus on “support delivered in kind” rather than cash handouts.

The authors argued that policies in the report, which is set to be published on Thursday, would create £38bn in extra fiscal headroom under the current borrowing rules. The redesign of the HMRC tax code would add £101bn in extra revenue each year and convert £16bn in non-disability benefits to services.

Other signatories to the letter alongside the report include Jonathan Portes of King’s College London, who worked at the Treasury until 2011, and Danny Sriskandarajah of New Economics Foundation, a left wing think tank whose former chief – Labour MP Miatta Fahnbulleh – is currently advising Burnham on policy.

The letter notes that taxes were rising faster than in any comparable company yet public services were deteriorating and around £110bn was being spent on debt interest costs.
It says the UK’s problems are “structural and systemic” while adding that “incrementalism will not fix Britain”.

Never heard of Cityam. I’ll give it head space when a credible news source reports it.

Same report was on Bloomberg this morning.

1% not 0.48% for council tax

This is what they do when they want people to think 048% is a win. Create panic at a higher figure and relief when it comes in lower. They can always move it higher in a few years.

It’s a different think tank
but yes
anything lower to a lot of people will sound better than 1%

The headline n the link was so provocative that I looked up CityAM.

It is financially orientated media centred on London. It is owned by Matthew Moulding, a very rich libertarian business owner who has personally donated over £300,000 to the Tories.

I am not surprised, are you?

It’s bad and wouldn’t work. But agree with @AlpineMuesliand @BrownTroutBluesAgainat softening .48%

Trying to get people to react, always with more taxes.

Not even slightly @poetryandwine.

If it's 1%, a lot of those modest terraces will be paying a lot more than they do now in council tax.

With the option to accrue it against the estate if you can’t pay. Council would be acquiring real estate assets over time.

A stealth way of accumulating new council housing?

Why would councils be acquiring assets? The property would sell and the money owed would be taken from the sale.

Most who cannot pay would be elderly. Being able to afford taxes will become part of the affordability checks for mortgages.

The only publication suggesting 1% is owned by a libertarian, Matthew Moulding, who has made over £300,000 in personal donations to the Tory party.

Join up the dots.

1% would send a whole lot of London professionals straight to Singapore, Dubai, Zurich and Dublin - so I highly doubt they are that thick. And if they are, get ready for an almighty crash where the 1% is the least of anyone’s problems.

It is really highly unlikely that any politician who got in by stealth is going to deliberately recreate a Liz Truss moment. All politicians are primarily scared of the same happening to them now.

It would also hit people in jobs that can’t do this so easily. It would be financially ruinous for many, the backlash would be high.

And it is not in a manifesto and would take time to implement prudently. So it seems like a whole lot of media speculation to sell a story again and panic about Labour taxes. People are so sensitive to any extra taxes from Labour and the reactions and behaviour changes are disproportionate as a result. Whilst the Tories got away with almost socialist level of income taxes and student loans, and substantially increased immigration. Like I said, it’s all counterintuitive now and it’s Labour cracking down on immigration big time.

Why is it all over the media?

From a cynical perspective...
Testing the waters.
Market research.
An appeal to to the politics of envy

And a whole host of other questionable reasons.

Short-term political or ideological thinking, especially in desperate times is less about sustainable policies / ideas and more about finding ways to soften up the public, limit resistance, and divert attention. Whip up enough discord, mobilise enough blind faith, and persuade enough people that something is a good idea. It then becomes much easier to get them to accept yet another all-singing, all dancing Trojan horse.

Large sections of the country (that might vote Labour) don"t care about "London Professionals" and these workers are for the most part not at a level in the company where they can just dictate where they work from? I doubt Dubai is high on anyone"s list now either?