cost of administration and collection will outweigh any benefit and those rich enough will find a loophole not to pay. It will just hurt the most vulnerable cash poor asset rich unfortunate people stuck in areas where ordinary property has appreciated at a time when all living costs are rising. They will then struggle to sell.
Indeed one can, which is why I’m asking about this one. I don’t see why asking what the government needs this new, additional tax for is irrelevant.
they want to use it to expand defence. That’s why there is no “black hole”
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I think you only need to look at cuts in services, struggling to fund the NHS, pressure to increase defence spending, need to invest in infrastructure, costs of an aging population and the growing national debt and just maybe within all of that is a need to raise tax revenue. Or have I missed some point you wish to make?
Phew, a point upon which we agree.
Ref spouse remaining in the house when one goes into care. It is not as simple as you put forward. The value of the former home of the spouse in care is not, cannot be, included in the financial assessment of that person - at most only the half (if shared ownership) of the person going into care. So the spouse remaining at home will still retain the remaining half value. At £1m+ per person this is more than sufficient to cover many years in care. The vast majority of people remain in care for less than 3 years and the high end of nursing care is £100k pa. You are highlighting a non-issue compared with the issue of affording care if your total assets (including property) are £200k or less. Why are not worrying about people with little property wealth who need to go into care?
Rather aggressive response to a simple query.
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If you jointly own the home rather than “tenants in common” the entire property is taken into account for care costs. Tenants in common is 50%. it’s not a non issue for someone living on a state pension with rising living costs existing high council tax and an inability to rent part of the property (because of new stringent rental laws) or sell because of the mansion tax. Lots of these properties will take ages to sell.
You cannot be serious Lincs… 
We’ve been here before…Within a five mile radius of my house there have been at least a thousand houses built in the last 2 or 3 years. The area I worked as a postman (fifteen miles away) has been increasing in size since 2007 at least. Even during the time I worked there I delivered to 300 new properties, and since I left the area it has increased tenfold.
Not the distribution I would have expected Annie…
I’ve re-read my response and obviously I apologise if you felt I was being aggressive. However, on re-reading I cannot only see a straightforward and clear reply. Along with a request for clarification if I’d missed something. That is, I do not think I was really that aggressive at all, but simply stating what is fairly obvious. But the apology stands as its all about how it is received.
I’d note something else about the notion that any new tax must come with clarity on where the spending goes. That may sound reasonable until one reflects on whether a tax reduction also comes with clarity on what specific service gets cut. I do not think it works that way.
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Where did that figure come from Primus…Did you just make it up…?
Perhaps you might like to show us a breakdown of how you arrived at that figure…
Did it come from the same party who told us about the 22 billion black hole…?
And did you factor in the 30 billion we don’t have to pay now for the subscription to that elite European club?
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The seriousness of my comment is based on the fact that the UK has failed to meet government goals for house building by about 50% year on year for many years now. I know that new home building is very visible in some areas - your point - but it is not close to the target to maintain & grow sufficient housing stock - my point.
You are right to point out that council tax banding and rate setting is all wrong. The valuations were flawed at the time and very much in need of updating. The decisions by some well funded councils to reduce council tax when in fact their residents are some of the richest, and in some of the most expensive houses, is all wrong.
You are also most likely right in that sorting council tax to make it more equitable has the potential to raise revenue more than this proposed mansion tax. But I’d still like to see a tax on high value assets to force the rich to cough up close to what a PAYE pays in percentage terms…
Thanks for highlighting this. This is the now accepted level of pain that Brexit has caused - Bank of England, Bloonberg’s, and others. This is lost tax revenue, reduced trade and reduced GDP growth. Even the Times and the Telegraph have now admitted that Brexit was a mistake and needs to be addressed. I’ve seen no report that finds Brexit to have been an economic success. All the information confirms what I’ve thought since 2016 - the UK will trade less with the EU, there will be negligible trade growth to other countries, inward investment will decline. Very predictable and sadly now proved to be the case.
As I understand it local council tax value is set on how poor the council was when it was introduced rather than how rich the residents are. It was based on getting people to pay for the original gap in local authority accounts in the 90s and I’m not sure how much it’s moved since but presumably there’s some attempt at moving councils to target.
Changing the value is not simple because it would lead to some local authorities being hugely overfunded or vice versa. The highest in 2024 was Rutland in Leics. The lowest was Wandsworth in London.
So the mansion tax is an awkward attempt to address this because it’s a more palatable way to present what is a chaotic financial mess.
This is a perfect example of why they are rolling this out, not because it makes a great deal of sense (you yourself have said it shouldn’t stop at 5k for properties that might be say 35m), but also because the general population lap this sort of label up. Also far easier for the Govt to roll out than the hard work of properly investigating local authority murky balance sheets.
Actually I suspect the general population are largely unaware of the impact of the massive & growing wealth gap - and the need to curtail it. Who for example, is aware that the combination of post-2008 and covid government investment in the economy amounted to over £1 trillion. That would be £20,000 per man, woman and child in the UK. But I’ve not had that money - who has? Mostly it ended up growing the assets of the already rich. This gap gets bigger each year meaning more and more of the UK’s wealth is held by a very few. A very few who are already astronomically rich (with the £35m houses).
The general population might sign up to something called tax the rich. But not “rebalance the taxation to rebalance the wealth inequality”. Some, as we have seen, even think reducing tax on the rich will benefit everyone. Go figure.
Surely this highlights the need for a revaluation? The shift of funding can be addressed by shifting the government central funding. My own experience is that a new build flat, worth half of a local 4 bed house (and our development paid for all our street lighting, refuse collection, street maintenance, etc.) was a band higher than that 4 bed house. Unfair new valuations are done all the time. Why not a complete revaluation?