Stamp Duty

[Vic]

My problem with this "tax" is the rate rather than the duty itself, rather like inheritance tax. Some people really can get clobbered financially.

In case you're new to the thread, we have a Tory complaining about a tax that the Tories have raised from a maximum of 4% under Labour in 2010 to 12% now.

 

[Gareth Barry Conlon]

Suppose someone owns a £1m house - just picking a number. They work hard for the next 5 years, earning a decent whack of say £100k a year and pay around £170,000 in income tax and national insurance. Quite a lot of money by nearly everyone's standards.

Then they need to move to a slightly larger house down the road so one of their 5 kids can have their own bedroom. The new house is £1.1m. They have to pay (In addition to all the other moving costs) ANOTHER £50,000 in tax out of their savings that have already been taxed.

God help them if they wanted to move every 2 or 3 years because of their job, paying £50,000 every time.

Honestly, I think it's ridiculous and people being worse off than them, does not make it sensible.

People really need to think about the effect of our crippling levels of taxation and the long term effect it has. In the UK, we've seen around a 10% rise in the FTSE since Jan 1st 2000. A miserable 10% over the last 23 years. Shockingly awful.

For example compared to a 300% rise in the Dow Jones over that same period. The US having much lower sales tax (often zero), similar or lower income tax and - incidentally - a stamp duty rate of zero. People being allowed to keep more of their money and spend/invest it more wisely than any government ever could.

Total BS. We need tax revenue to fix the mess the tories have made. Taxes should be targeted at people who can afford them.

If you can afford a £1m + house you can afford the tax. I know a few people who've done this in recent years. On the other hand there are millions of people who can't afford shit and anything that helps them have a bit more cash to spend is a bonus.

 

[Gareth Barry Conlon]

In case you're new to the thread, we have a Tory complaining about a tax that the Tories have raised from a maximum of 4% under Labour in 2010 to 12% now.

I'd imagine most tories now consider themselves disgruntled tories. What with the woke blob kneecaping low tax liz. If only those murky operatives* that forced her and Boris out had given them more time we wouldn't be in this mess.

*who did force them out remind me.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Total BS. We need tax revenue to fix the mess the tories have made. Taxes should be targeted at people who can afford them.

If you can afford a £1m + house you can afford the tax. I know a few people who've done this in recent years. On the other hand there are millions of people who can't afford shit and anything that helps them have a bit more cash to spend is a bonus.

I don't agree at all.

It's not the job of the better off to pay with arbitrarily high taxation for everything that poor people cannot afford.

And, as an aside, there's tens or hundreds of thousands of people in the south east who have expensive properties and very little income and savings who are unable to move because of punitive stamp duty. The idea that everyone with a £1m home has a spare £50,000 lying around is nonsense.

 

[Chippy_boy]

In case you're new to the thread, we have a Tory complaining about a tax that the Tories have raised from a maximum of 4% under Labour in 2010 to 12% now.

Banging on about the Tories again Vic. If you're not obsessed with them, you're doing a fine job of pretending.

I don't give a shit who has raised the rates. Its the rates I object to. (And I am not even paying them, since I have no intention of moving. I just think it's a shite form of taxation, as explained)

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

I don't agree at all.

It's not the job of the better off to pay with arbitrarily high taxation for everything that poor people cannot afford.

And, as an aside, there's tens or hundreds of thousands of people in the south east who have expensive properties and very little income and savings who are unable to move because of punitive stamp duty. The idea that everyone with a £1m home has a spare £50,000 lying around is nonsense.

Do they have such poor credit that they can't secure a loan?

 

[roubaixtuesday]

The idea that everyone with a £1m home has a spare £50,000 lying around is nonsense.

If you're moving this is actually almost always true - you can just move to a house £50,000 cheaper than you would otherwise.

I do agree with your points about the inefficiency of a transaction tax, but equally:

- this is a tax that can't readily be evaded
- it goes some way to addressing the accumulation of unearned wealth in housing which distorts many other aspects of the economy.
- it's bloody difficult to raise taxes commensurately elsewhere on wealthy people, so removing it is likely to further exacerbate inequality, which is already a big problem for the UK.

So I think you're stuck with it.

 

[inbetween]

Fine Conservative principles. I like that.



Wouldn't that be marvellous.

The rather small fly in your ointment is that you fund a given level of public spending by tax receipts and borrowing. If you cannot increase borrowing (i.e. debt) then you have 2 choices - either cut spending or increase taxes.

I do not remember much enthusiasm for tax increases back in 2010 - or in 2023 for that matter. Sure, their might be those in favour of tax increases on "other people, so long as it doesn't impact me". But that's unrealistic. Significant tax increases place additional burden on most people, necessarily. So inevitably, reducing the deficit had to be done by slowing public spending and tax increases via things like freezing allowances. That's what the Tories did.

The buffoons banging on about "needless austerity" - would have just seen the debt go much higher, which as you say, would never even be allowed in Germany.

Fundamentally those arguing to increase taxes are just rubber stamping a continuation of the same old. They're basically saying that currently everything is fine as it is but it's just underfunded. However that's not always true, it's instead true that the money we do spend doesn't actually get spent on building stuff or running services.

Trains for example aren't complicated. A train runs on a railway line and all it has to do is turn up at a certain place at a certain time and then it moves to the next place. How can this system not work properly and how can it not have worked properly for years? Many will jump on me and say well this is because of profiteering but that isn't necessarily true, it's actually just a lazy argument.

Northern was taken into public ownership 3 years ago but what's changed? My local train station is operated by Northern, it always had a free car park and from December they're now charging us £2 per day for the privilege. They've decided to do this no not in January but at the busiest time of the year for a key line into Manchester, surprise!

The state of this country is if we decided upon a massive spending infrastructure revolution then you can bet that we'd spend most of the money on consultants and lawyers. The actual building and running part would be allocated the dregs at the bottom and after 10-20 years of delays we'd probably come to realise that actually we can't afford it.

HS2 has just been found out on that given they've cancelled the Manchester element of the line. What sums it up though is nobody has questioned how the hell can a 100 mile railway line cost 2-5% of GDP of the 6th largest economy in the world.

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

Northern was taken into public ownership 3 years ago but what's changed? My local train station is operated by Northern, it always had a free car park and from December they're now charging us £2 per day for privilege. They've decided to do this no not in January but at the busiest time of the year for a key line into Manchester, surprise!

Not many places you can park all day for £2.

 

[metalblue]

Suppose someone owns a £1m house - just picking a number. They work hard for the next 5 years, earning a decent whack of say £100k a year and pay around £170,000 in income tax and national insurance. Quite a lot of money by nearly everyone's standards.

Then they need to move to a slightly larger house down the road so one of their 5 kids can have their own bedroom. The new house is £1.1m. They have to pay (In addition to all the other moving costs) ANOTHER £50,000 in tax out of their savings that have already been taxed.

God help them if they wanted to move every 2 or 3 years because of their job, paying £50,000 every time.

Honestly, I think it's ridiculous and people being worse off than them, does not make it sensible.

People really need to think about the effect of our crippling levels of taxation and the long term effect it has. In the UK, we've seen around a 10% rise in the FTSE since Jan 1st 2000. A miserable 10% over the last 23 years. Shockingly awful.

For example compared to a 300% rise in the Dow Jones over that same period. The US having much lower sales tax (often zero), similar or lower income tax and - incidentally - a stamp duty rate of zero. People being allowed to keep more of their money and spend/invest it more wisely than any government ever could.

All very fair points. I suspect if you’re planning on moving that frequently you’d just add it to your mortgage but your example stands.

The government gets pretty much all the money you earn after it goes through about 15 or so transactions. I posted in another thread the only difference between capitalism and communism is time in terms of the government getting everything from your labour. People will generally be happy to pay fair tax, but where it’s not perceived as fair then they reach fof legal methods to minimise it. In the overall scheme of things I don’t think stamp duty is a “bad” tax.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Fundamentally those arguing to increase taxes are just rubber stamping a continuation of the same old. They're basically saying that currently everything is fine as it is but it's just underfunded. However that's not always true, it's instead true that the money we do spend doesn't actually get spent on building stuff or running services.

Trains for example aren't complicated. A train runs on a railway line and all it has to do is turn up at a certain place at a certain time and then it moves to the next place. How can this system not work properly and how can it not have worked properly for years? Many will jump on me and say well this is because of profiteering but that isn't necessarily true, it's actually just a lazy argument.

Northern was taken into public ownership 3 years ago but what's changed? My local train station is operated by Northern, it always had a free car park and from December they're now charging us £2 per day for the privilege. They've decided to do this no not in January but at the busiest time of the year for a key line into Manchester, surprise!

The state of this country is if we decided upon a massive spending infrastructure revolution then you can bet that we'd spend most of the money on consultants and lawyers. The actual building and running part would be allocated the dregs at the bottom and after 10-20 years of delays we'd probably come to realise that actually we can't afford it.

HS2 has just been found out on that given they've cancelled the Manchester element of the line. What sums it up though is nobody has questioned how the hell can a 100 mile railway line cost 2-5% of GDP of the 6th largest economy in the world.

Add to that the National Program for IT for the NHS. Canned when costs spiralled to £10bn.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) calls the saga one of the “worst and most expensive contracting fiascos” in public sector history, and adds: “Although the Department told us that the National Programme had been dismantled, the component programmes are all continuing, the existing contracts are being honoured and significant costs are still being incurred. The only change from the National Programme that the Department could tell us about was that new governance arrangements were now in place.”

The estimated costs of the scheme rose from £6.4bn to £9.8bn, but ongoing costs arising from legal battles and other issues will keep dragging this figure higher, the MP said, especially the price of terminating the Fujitsu contract in the south of England, and the ongoing costs of Lorenzo in the north, Midlands and east.

 

[bluethrunthru]

Add to that the National Program for IT for the NHS. Canned when costs spiralled to £10bn.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) calls the saga one of the “worst and most expensive contracting fiascos” in public sector history, and adds: “Although the Department told us that the National Programme had been dismantled, the component programmes are all continuing, the existing contracts are being honoured and significant costs are still being incurred. The only change from the National Programme that the Department could tell us about was that new governance arrangements were now in place.”

The estimated costs of the scheme rose from £6.4bn to £9.8bn, but ongoing costs arising from legal battles and other issues will keep dragging this figure higher, the MP said, especially the price of terminating the Fujitsu contract in the south of England, and the ongoing costs of Lorenzo in the north, Midlands and east.

Considering Fujitsu also developed Horizon for the Post Office I am surprised anybody listens to a word they say

 

[Chippy_boy]

Considering Fujitsu also developed Horizon for the Post Office I am surprised anybody listens to a word they say

But Fujitsu run many successful projects, as do IBM, Accenture, Deloitte, EY etc and all the rest.

So what went wrong? What's the common denominator. It's the government. Everything it ever touches turns to shit. And yes I know the Post Office is not a government body any more, but old habits die hard. I see it myself with work on British Steel (as was, before it became Corus and later Tata. Public sector mentality. Be busy on something because you need to be busy, but for god's sake don't ever finish anything or else you might get reassigned to something else, or god forbit, be made redundant. So just plod along wasting your time, turn up at 9, fuck off at 5pm sharp and make sure you take your sick days, everyone takes them you know, so nothing to be ashamed of. In short, a fucking disgrace. No accountability, no responsibility, just buck passing and not giving a shit. I see it in the NHS all over the place. I see it at the Council offices. It's endemic in our public sector and former public sector businesses.

 

[hilts]

Suppose someone owns a £1m house - just picking a number. They work hard for the next 5 years, earning a decent whack of say £100k a year and pay around £170,000 in income tax and national insurance. Quite a lot of money by nearly everyone's standards.

Then they need to move to a slightly larger house down the road so one of their 5 kids can have their own bedroom. The new house is £1.1m. They have to pay (In addition to all the other moving costs) ANOTHER £50,000 in tax out of their savings that have already been taxed.

God help them if they wanted to move every 2 or 3 years because of their job, paying £50,000 every time.

Honestly, I think it's ridiculous and people being worse off than them, does not make it sensible.

People really need to think about the effect of our crippling levels of taxation and the long term effect it has. In the UK, we've seen around a 10% rise in the FTSE since Jan 1st 2000. A miserable 10% over the last 23 years. Shockingly awful.

For example compared to a 300% rise in the Dow Jones over that same period. The US having much lower sales tax (often zero), similar or lower income tax and - incidentally - a stamp duty rate of zero. People being allowed to keep more of their money and spend/invest it more wisely than any government ever could.

Like a modern tale of Oliver Twist that, brings a tear.

Work hard, a decent wage of 100k, a million pound house.

Real life problems.

Build a fucking extension:-)

 

[Kompany Car]

I don’t see how it’s that much different to other places in Europe.

In Germany you pay around 1% but if you sell the house after less than 10yrs you pay 25% capital gains tax.

Sweden similar but it’s 30% CGT plus you pay local council taxes based upon income.

Italy 2% up front and 26% CGT if you sell it within 5 yrs.

Spain it’s between 8% and 11.5% of the purchase price.

USA is different but some states have a “mansion tax” however it’s quite small, but as you know there’s a big difference in welfare and healthcare between the US and Europe.

Personally I don’t mind paying taxes if the proceeds are not wasted and spent wisely. The problem of late is that the waste has been monumental.

If the stamp duty was that big a burden then it would suppress the rises in the top end of the market however I don’t see that happening.

 

[bluethrunthru]

But Fujitsu run many successful projects, as do IBM, Accenture, Deloitte, EY etc and all the rest.

So what went wrong? What's the common denominator. It's the government. Everything it ever touches turns to shit. And yes I know the Post Office is not a government body any more, but old habits die hard. I see it myself with work on British Steel (as was, before it became Corus and later Tata. Public sector mentality. Be busy on something because you need to be busy, but for god's sake don't ever finish anything or else you might get reassigned to something else, or god forbit, be made redundant. So just plod along wasting your time, turn up at 9, fuck off at 5pm sharp and make sure you take your sick days, everyone takes them you know, so nothing to be ashamed of. In short, a fucking disgrace. No accountability, no responsibility, just buck passing and not giving a shit. I see it in the NHS all over the place. I see it at the Council offices. It's endemic in our public sector and former public sector businesses.

You wanna listen to to Andy Burnhams evidence to the Covid inquiry today - Govt acting in the manner you describe.

When asked for patient specific data Govt ignored the request then said we don't have that info ( despite the multi billion pound test, track and trace which surely did have that info ) so Burnham and the other Metro Mayors had to point to the Covid Emergency Legislation that they had JUST PASSED making Covid 19 a notifiable disease so by law the Govt had to have been notified as to who had reported a positive test plus when and where

 

[Chippy_boy]

I don’t see how it’s that much different to other places in Europe.

In Germany you pay around 1% but if you sell the house after less than 10yrs you pay 25% capital gains tax.

Sweden similar but it’s 30% CGT plus you pay local council taxes based upon income.

Italy 2% up front and 26% CGT if you sell it within 5 yrs.

Spain it’s between 8% and 11.5% of the purchase price.

USA is different but some states have a “mansion tax” however it’s quite small, but as you know there’s a big difference in welfare and healthcare between the US and Europe.

Personally I don’t mind paying taxes if the proceeds are not wasted and spent wisely. The problem of late is that the waste has been monumental.

If the stamp duty was that big a burden then it would suppress the rises in the top end of the market however I don’t see that happening.

I'm with you that I really wouldn't mind paying more if I actually got something for it. But our NHS is shit, our road and rail infrastructure is shit, schools are shit. I am sorry but that's the facts. Our country is a pale shadow of its former self and in terms of quality of public services, we have more in common with Greece than Germany. In fact Greece is arguably better.

And the answer from the lefties on here is that this is all because the rich don't pay enough? What nonsense. They pay plenty already, and if they paid a bit more it would make fuck all difference.

 

[Mr Kobayashi]

I'm with you that I really wouldn't mind paying more if I actually got something for it. But our NHS is shit, our road and rail infrastructure is shit, schools are shit. I am sorry but that's the facts. Our country is a pale shadow of its former self and in terms of quality of public services, we have more in common with Greece than Germany. In fact Greece is arguably better.

Stop voting Tory then. :)

 

[Chippy_boy]

Stop voting Tory then. :)

If you think Labour will spend your money more wisely mate, then I have to tell you, you are in to one hell of a shock come 2025. But doubtless they will spend more money and everyone will think it's better for a minute or two, until the wheels fall off.

 

[inbetween]

Not many places you can park all day for £2.

It's cheap enough I agree but it was free and nothing beats free. You'd think in this climate aware age that they'd want people to make better choices but nevermind.

There is a Tesco next to the train station and the roads nearby are not marked with single/double yellows.... You can sort of predict what's going to happen next. I might buy a share in a local company that makes yellow paint.