You mean theone which is used to bribe foreign governments to do what we want? cheaper than sending soldiers.
Its a stupid gimmick invented by a politician to make him look good. Should be rolled into the pension at £8 per week
? How is that not a tax on production? Company has to pay and workers have to pay. Private land taxes cant go up much more than they are now. Look what happened when Maggie tried it.
If overall taxation was the same, then it would not affect housing prices, because the total amount of money available to pay for housing would be the same. House prices in the UK now are at the level people can just afford to pay.
no one is forced to watch BBC news. Id agree, it ought to be scaled back, but it is immensely valuable to have a news service which does not depend on commercial backing. Why do you regard it as a left tool rather than the traditional slur against national broadcasters that they promote the government?
Saw Farage yesterday going on about the 24 billion bill again. The guy talks a lot of sense about other issues but on the EU still getting his figures wrong.
Or just scrap it and reduce VAT on fuel so that everyone can benefit from lower heating costs. Even a basic state pension is bribe money.
Maggie tried to introduce a poll tax, a world apart from a land tax. Land taxes don't have any negative impact on production so they're more efficient than regular taxes. The only downside is that it prevents us from playing monopoly with our housing market, and politicians need to pander to the homeowners for votes.
Taxes on land eat into rental income, this reduces the attractiveness of the "asset" and lowers the price. Good news for the economy, bad news for thieving landlords and real estate speculators.
£450million is just the extra amount of money they want, i.e on top of what's already been earmarked for the EU. Farage is a pretty smart guy, I doubt he'd get his figures wrong. Unlike the Labour and Lib Dem panelists on Question Time the other week, they didn't have a clue what the figures were, despite one of them being a former EU minister.
Here's were traditional economics fails us imo. Ratcheting up taxes on production is very damaging to the economy and so the revenues cannot be guaranteed. If income tax was raised to 70% for example it's probable that workers wouldn't bother, either that or they'd resort to the black market economy. So the government would end up losing money if they pushed too hard, this relationship is encapsulated quite nicely with the Laffer curve theory (here's a nicely explained 2 minute clip if you havn't come across this before)
The people being bribed dont like the word bribe. nasty connotations.
tush,fuel taxes need to go up. Using unneccesary fuel is not a good idea.
It was a tax on living in a certain location, and by and large had the same effect as a property tax,
Dont understand mate. Youre saying that somehow the tax on your factory is not passed on in your prices?
Man has £100 to spend on housing, so he gets a home costing £100. land tax £10, landlord gets £90. Land tax £40, landlord gets £60. Man still pays £100. Landlords sell up. No buyers. Prices crash. Country is bankrupt. The difficulty I think is thatif you pushed up the fee on private land enough to make much difference, it would really hit the relatively poor. Property is vastly overpriced, so replacing an unrealistic rent with an unrealistic tax might not change much. The problem is the scarcity of housing.
why just a few minutes ago someone was just doing an expose on eu MPs expenses...including ukip. He chooses to quote the payment to the EU and ignore receipts back to the UK.
Nor, it seems do they know the size of the national debt. But they do hold local surgeries so you can go along and have a moan about the local council....which they have absolutely no power whatsoever to influence.
Hey, we agree. I dont think you can do it with taxes though. Rationing is the only way if you refuse to build enough houses. So massive taxes on second homes. Or simply ban them, as some countries do. Major program of cheap social housing.
The poll tax is the complete opposite to a land tax, the former taxes people, the latter taxes land rental values.
It's not a tax on factories, it's a tax on land. Taxes on factories just stop factories from being built or make it more expensive to build factories.
You've actually hit the nail on the head here.
Yes. Best advice to save a bit on the heating is turn down the thermostat. So if its cheap, hell, turn it up!
Not really. Land taxes tend to work on (amount needed)/(value of land). You pay a bit more if you have more valuable land, and a bit less if smaller, but really its (amount needed)/(number of households). It is just a rogh and ready way of giving everyone a bill roughly in line with their income on the assumption they live in a house they can afford.
So tower block factories on tiny plots? Never works like that. What you are suggesting is a subsidy on skyscrapers.
well, you might think they are linked in this way, but in reality the rise in property value subsidises the intertest payments. Rental income £100, annual value increase £100. Now after your tax landlords income is still £160. remember the most the punter can afford to pay is £100, so you cannot tax him more than that - he would be evicted, even if he owned the house himself. Maximum possible land tax is 50% of the real income. Property speculation is not about rents but future values.
Most people will be paying market price for their housing anyway, and those that aren't are receiving subsidies (which you're clearly against as you demonstrate with your next point) So either way the taxation won't have the negative effects you're alluding too.
Skyscrapers are generally found on the most expensive pieces of real estate available, they'll be paying their fair share.
I think you've misunderstood my point. I wasn't talking about the interest you pay on a mortgage, I'm talking about interest rates in general.
Did someone recently mention the 'tragedy of the commons'? Because what is a good choice for an individual is also a bad choice for society as a whole.
I'm not saying it will have a bad effect. Im questioning that it is the solution.
Skyscrapers maximise the use of expensive land, yes. So in an average town of 2 story houses paying £50 tax each, someone will now build a 10 storey tower of 5 dwellings paying £10 each. Soon that little village is a nest of towers. Did we really want that?
Most people borrow to buy property, and this is secured by a mortgage. In general, land taxes are irrelevant.
Imagine your plot of land is 100x the size needed for a house, so attracts 100x the land tax. no more farmers. Land taxes have to be relative to the income potential of that land.
People manage to get by paying market rates without resorting to building tower blocks as far as the eye can see. But I agree with your overall sentiment, taxing land encourages a more efficient use of this finite resource (something I though you're all for given you're support of energy taxes).
An LVT would reduce the amount that can be earned via idle landlordism, home owners intuitively know this which is why most are dead set against such a tax.
Except that the system as it currently exists is ANYTHING but fair.
