My first, instinctive, reaction, to George Monbiot's suggestion that there should be a bedroom tax on private property was to say 'no way'. Long experience has, however, taught me to mistrust such reactions and to also question their motivation. I have little doubt that in this case I foresee a time when, I hope, not many years from now, my sons will have left home and such a tax might bite at a time when I might still want to keep 'their bedrooms' available for very occasional use. Could this have been the basis of my reaction? I, of course, do not know, but I am sure that George's suggestion that a tax on the extent to which a property is left vacant has very real merit and is worthy of real consideration.
The simple fact is, as Danny Dorling has pointed out, that we have enough bedrooms in the UK to house everyone in need of a home. Our problem is that they are misallocated, so that some people have very many more rooms each than others enjoy, if they enjoy any at all. I have to be honest it: you could put me in that category. There's also the issue of scale: some bedrooms are very small indeed ( as I well recall from my days in London).
So what George Monbiot is doing is poking a very sharp stick at how tax can, if properly designed, have a big impact on a whole range of policy issues. First of all, of course, there is housing policy. I am quite sure that we do need new houses, but I also know they are going to be a long time in delivery without some major reforms.
Secondly there is environmental policy: we do have a green belt for a reason.
Third there is transport policy: most houses are needed where existing houses already are. This will be more pressing in the future.
Fourth there is inequality. Access to housing is a major issue in this, both in terms of wealth and inter-generational justice. Innovative thinking is needed on both issues: this suggestion falls into that category.
And there is the need to raise revenue, of course. Local authorities need money if social services, in particular, are to be protected.
So, is a tax on spare bedrooms fair? Not, of course, if it creates the gross injustices that have been seen in the case of the current bedroom tax on those claiming social security. Due allowance for need has to be made, and I think a spare bedroom is not an unreasonable thing to have, if I am honest. But how many spare bedrooms does a person need? That is a perfectly fair question and if the answer is 'many' then to bear the social cost of keeping them from use via a tax charge is, like many other taxes on externalities, simply an exercise in repricing goods and services that the market fails to charge for appropriately.
There is much discuss here, but the initial reaction to a bedroom tax, precisely because, maybe, it has that name is wrong. George Monbiot has done a service by raising an awkward, but appropriate issue.
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Agree with Monbiot’s sentiments but wonder why we just get on with some well designed LVT instead. It will achieve what the bedroom tax would without the complexity. If the LVT is in place of other ‘worse’ taxes it could be sold to an electorate that otherwise has been brainwashed into thinking an Englishman’s home is sovereign territory to be guarded at all cost.
If we simultaneously lessen ‘some’ green belt restrictions [much of which is farmland rather than picture postcard forests and dales]and grant councils the tools they need [the right to borrow in order to build]to construct council homes at below market rents then the housing crisis is effectively solved.
I do not dispute there may be more than one way to address this issue
Monbiot simply makes it challenging – and links payment to capacity, which is always appealing
Are you suggesting we all take on lodgers?
Or pay tax
Or sell
That’s choice!
I like the new ‘like’ and ‘dislike’ buttons – I’ve only just spotted them.
However, at the point of commenting I note 3 ‘dislikes’ to Richard’s suggestion above, but no comments to explain the ‘dislikers” reasons. This is a pity really, because it would be fascinating to read a justification for not liking such fair and simple answer.
In the private sector we are already taxed on bedrooms. If you want a larger house, you pay more. You also, therefore, pay more council rates. We wont worry about repairs or heating at this stage.
Even when one privately rents, if you want a spare room, then you pay more.
Please do not misrepresent the truth: 50% of London property is already on top rate council tax
The rest of what you say is just nonsense
I am sorry what has this to do with London, is it not about the whole of the UK!!!!
Sometimes the comments on here are silly.
That statistic surely can’t be right? The council tax bandings haven’t been changed since council tax was introduced, so the distribution should be broadly consistent with what it was in 1992.
I think you will find it is right
Sorry Richard, but according to this you’re miles out:
http://www.voa.gov.uk/corporate/_downloads/xls/140424_CT_Publication_All%20Tables.xls
About 50% of the top banded properties are in London. But that’s an entirely different thing.
OK
Sometimes memory is not perfect
I stand corrected
Jason-How do you equate ‘paying more’ with a tax -you pay more because banks have encouraged vast speculative bubbles on your house -what social value does that have-or perhaps you are happy with the vast array of inequity in are society and you belong to the: ‘my-corner’s alright-sorry-about-yours’ club. No shortage of that stunted human sentiment!
WHat is needed and fast is a tax on an empty property that can easily be transformed into a liveable home.
Outside London there are office blocks that can be turned into flats. In London some of our foreign investors buy property and then leave it to mature in value. This isn’t helpful and pushes everyone out of the main parts of London.
I don’t agree we need more houses to be built. I think we need to work with what we have got. Why in London have the old buildings by the Thames in East London being redeveloped. Look at the old buildings near Tower Bridge. Yet in the Midlands and north all old factories are empty and derelict.
I have no problem with a higher rate for totally empty property
I have argued so for a long time
Do you have a second property Richard?
If you didn’t people might think that your instinctive reaction is that you are all in favour of tax increases (on second homes) that wouldn’t affect you but dubious about tax increases(on spare bedrooms) that would.
I explained my reactions
I have already argued for tax reform on buy to let and second homes
As the post makes clear – whatever my personal situation I try to be objective
I am not sure how you come to your conclusion
PS I realise I did not answer your first question
The answer is yes – I do. The annex at the property I live in – designed for a granny – is rated (at my request, and to HMRC’s considerable surprise when I asked) as a separate dwelling as it has a bathroom and not just a loo. But it is not used as such – I work in it instead and the ‘bedrooms’ contain a lot of filing boxes and a model railway. I made clear, I have more than my fair share of bedrooms. I have done my best to pay tax on them already
When there is so much land that could be developed, either newly or to provide much more living space than currently, but which is withheld due to NIMBY interests and a planning system that’s patently not fir for purpose, I am somewhat uncomfortable with the idea of taxing people extra because they have more rooms than they need.
Think about it.. you might be taxed because of a ten sq meter deemed excess in your home.. by the very state that won’t let anyone build on the 50 acre plot next door. Blaming the populace for the shortages is beyond the pale.
LVT is fine, but that doesn’t care how many rooms you have, it just cares about the value of your site. Site value is granted by society, and exclusive use of that site by one person is therefore a cost to everyone else. So site occupation has a cost to society which can rightly be taxed. I don’t think we should be getting into the business of deciding how many rooms people ‘need’.
Those are the only choices? If so, that is diktat, not choice….
Only if you have a very weird frame of mind that thinks all tax wrong
Since when were open to an infinite array of choices- perhaps only if you are running a bank and can manipulate the market and get state subsidy for your troubles!
Monbiot’s main point, in my view, is the risk of a return to Dickensian rented dwelling conditions with Rachmanism landlords as ringmasters. There are signs this is beginning to happen with those on benefits being refused all but the worst accommodation. Thirty years of housing bubbles have got us here and now, via the bedroom tax and the financial starvation of Housing Associations we have the undermining of social housing so it can be financialised and wrung through the banking system.
“we do have a green belt for a reason.”
Yes, it’s a method of increasing the rent payable to those who own land inside it.
Odd then that rents are lower in rural areas
Yes, my point. If you own that urban land inside the green belt that can be built upon then you will gain a higher rent than that land which cannot be built upon as a result of the green belt.
Restrictions of supply do normally have this sort of effect, monopoly profits to those who own part of that restricted supply.
Tim
If you really think you can live in a world where there is no regulation run far away to a place where you can sit in a corner all by yourself pretending the land you left is the one you’d wish it to be
Oh, I forgot…you’ve already done that – because EU regs let you
Ironic, eh?
Richard
Wouldn’t this be like the Window Tax and (some) people knock down walls to make three bedrooms one big bedroom.
You then erect a temporary wall or screen when your adult kids/grandkids come home to visit ?
Maybe
The world has always had fools
“Oh, I forgot…you’ve already done that — because EU regs let you”
Is that the right way around Richard? Isn’t it more correct to say, because there aren’t regs that prevent you? after all, people should be free to migrate where they choose they?
I happen to think some regulation on migration is probably necessary
You may not
As a matter of fact the right of a person from the UK to live in Portugal is, I think you will find, pretty heavily dependent on the EU. I do not think it was common before 25 April 1974
Before 1974 it was up to the Portuguese immigration authorities to decide. Pretty much how it works for any expat living outside the EU – that country gets to decide who gets a VISA/work permit or not.
Portugal pre 1974 was a fascist state
Slightly odd. The Portugal joined in 1986. And there have been Brits in Portugal since…..well, I’m not sure. Silves has had the Fabrica do Ingles for I’m not sure how many centuries. And the Port families predate Napoleon. William Beckford certainly got here in Georgian times.
And that proves anything?
That’s a little unfair Richard. You gain unfair advantage in a restricted migration scenario by having dual nationality, something not available to everyone. Since that comes from your parents, it’s an inheritance just as much as inheriting a house.
That I know of all the rights I have come from the EU
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Portuguese_Alliance
The first agreement the UK had with Portugal.
Our oldest ally, yes
But not why people from the UK can now live there
You seem unaware of the ongoing confusion between the DWP, tenants, social landlords and the various tribunals involved over what does and does not constitute a bedroom for the purposes of housing benefit and the bedroom tax. If I have it correctly, what the landlord chooses to describe a property as (two, three bedroom etc.) has no lawful standing as for a room to be a bedroom for the purposes of the bedroom tax it has to be of a certain dimension (ruling out those very small ones you speak of above) it has to be being used as a bedroom, having a bed in it together with appropriate furniture like a chest of drawers, wardrobe etc. This can only be determined by individual inspection so the state actually has no idea how many bedrooms, as opposed to spare rooms or rooms of general unspecified purpose, there are in the land.
Bill
I am well aware
This would also be done by self assessment, of course
But the existence of data on many private houses on line would have a powerful deterrent effect
Richard
If a spare room is an externality then all private property not utilised at all times must be an externality, on the basis that it is depriving someone else of its use. Seems like if we start off down this path you can justify any subjugation of individual rights and freedoms for collective gain.
All private property is held subject to satisfying the tax obligations associated with acquiring and continuing to use it.
There is no such thing as an unconditional right to private property
That proposition is debatable (you’ve suggested it before), but even if one accepts it you seem to be suggesting that it justifies the imposition of additional arbitrary tax obligations. That seems rather a stretch, especially as the obligations would be retrospective.
I am not saying it justifies arbitrary taxes
I am saying it justifies taxes
But only if parliament decides
That’s democracy
I am a fan of it
One of the challenges here is that a bedroom is within someone’s house and just a part of it. It is therefore difficult to see how the state could exercise control over it. Say like you could over a car or a TV set. Also, a bedroom can easily become a not bedroom. For example by removing stud partition walls. Either way, the old adage that people can do whatever they like in the privacy of their own bedrooms would need revising.
Oh come on, let’s not be silly
In the vast majority of cases the state knows how many bedrooms there are in a place (ever been to Rightmove?)
I have never been to rightmove, is it in wales??
However I have seen homes under the hammer. THeir first words, pull down the wall!!!
Ed comment:
You comment has been deleted
You are trolling
You are right in that I do object to regulation on migration as a point of principle (and believe most objections to it are disguised racism). I do, however, accept that some restrictions, as with all regulation, are regrettably necessary.
You say “As a matter of fact the right of a person from the UK to live in Portugal is, I think you will find, pretty heavily dependent on the EU. I do not think it was common before 25 April 1974”
To which Richard replied:
“Before 1974 it was up to the Portuguese immigration authorities to decide.”
But that is exactly my point: absent any regs any person could live anywhere they wanted. Regulations are a – sometimes necessary – restriction on human activity. So here nobody has moved to Portugal because regs allow them; regs no longer prevent them. This isn’t just pedantry!
In response to Tim you might well have argued that this shows the benefits of the EU; you have probably missed the chance now though.
That was exactly what I was saying to Tim
You have crossed wires
No I don’t – although I well be straying into pedantry now.
You said “because EU regs let you”
As Tim himself points out, around Europe there has historically been plenty of freedom of movement before the EU – fascism being one of the perversions that prevented this natural state. The EU only acts to stop those countries that would otherwise prevent it from doing so. Its regs don’t ‘let’ anyone go anywhere.
However, pedantry is essentially moribund and I am straying there. Of far more use is Tim’s intial point: the difference between between insurance replacement values for property and its market values shows just how much impact regulations are having on the property market. The green belt, this choking ring around our urban areas, is making rentiers of us all.
Respectfully: if that’s your best argument against regulation it’s lame as lame as your argument on the EU not creating our current freedom of movement
And on this basis we’d trash the world
What is much more important is that the rent is collected for the benefit if all. That is just what I am proposing
I have a better idea than a bedroom tax; in effect a mansion/wealth tax. In addition to LVT I would impose a tax on the owners of big houses, say 3 times national average. This would be based on living space (area x % of building cost). Wouldn’t cost much to collect: you can make it self-assessment and it’s difficult to hide your house with Google Earth and all that. All data in the public domain so we can, as good citizens, ensure that no one’s cheating.
All part of the debate, I say
A slightly odd argument. A small terrace in Belgravia is worth more than a mansion in Weybridge. A bigger house in Oxford is worth less than Surrey or London.
I am not sure we need to stop anyone cheating. We don’t need to check up on anyone.