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.