I loved the story in the New York Times this morning saying:
The Cato Institute says that Charles Koch's Republican activism threatens its reputation for independent research.
Who are they kidding?
The Cato has been a right wing front for nasty neoliberalism for decades. The Koch brothers bringing that out into the open changes nothing for most of us! But I guess if you're delusional enough to believe the Cato output maybe it does.
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Sorry, it’s me again, but may I ask respectfully and I believe objectively( leaving any thoughts of ideology aside), what do you make of apparent discussions in the coaltion govt over the possibility of trading the 50p tax rate for a “mansion tax”?
As I understand it, one of the reasons for such a move is that property is a fixed and easily located asset and hence taxation on it is more difficult to avoid than tax on income.
Of course one might object to practice of such a trade off but, on the assumption that, if an annual tax is levied there has to be income to pay for it somehow does it make sense bearing in mind that each individual case is different.
Meanwhile, as a mansion tax would be a tax on assessed (as opposed to market realised) value how would the the tax itself affect the value of the asset. If a property could be currently valued at £5m thus incurring an annual tax of £30,000 (if Libdem election policy is applied) would it still be worth £5m if it were subject to an annual liability of £30,000. If not, how can it be valued for tax purposes.
Also, as there is a current tax (stamp duty) on market realised values of properties when they are sold would the imposition of a mansion tax place a downward pressure on the value of expensive properties thus reducing revenue from stamp duty in future years. In other words, to what extent would the govt be robbing peter’s stamp duty to pay paul’s mansion tax.
Incidentally my own house does not even begin to approach the value of those supposedly targetted by a mansion tax so I am not asking out of self interest.
The choice is a mansion tax or 50p tax
The mansion tax is a Lib Dem bodge when we need a proper land value tax
And the 50p tax works
Yes, it’s a bodge. Cable, Huhne and Clegg all support LVT but know that they will never get it past the cons as the privileged elite. The mansion tax will never get lift off anyway. In order to identify those ‘mansions’ it would be necessary to value a bigger sample. The simplest way to do this would be to do a valuation of all properties in band H – this would then open a can of worms – and those at the margin will cause great difficulty with prices adjusting in anticipation of the tax. They are only talking about houses with a £2m+ price tag – there are very few of those and the tax take will not be worth the trouble. It would be more sensible to just apply the tax (sensibly to be collected on a national basis rather than locally) to Band H or even G&H. But there would still be problems at the margin.
Although LVT is a far better tax I still have some sympathy for an additional tax on the bricks and mortar which do represent personal wealth. It is the tax on commercial buildings, part of working capital, along with the land which is collected as National Non Domestic Rates which is really ridiculous.