Mansion tax

[Vince Green]

They are talking cobblers. How could they operate the system? So you say all houses over a million. About 25% of the houses that might be in will be hovering around the million pound mark so the first thing every home owner will do is appeal. Then the whole system grinds to a halt.

 

Free bus/ train passes for only those on lower incomes? Each recipiant will have to be means tested. That will cost more than it will save. Easier to just do away with them, the vast majority either never get used or rarely get used. My great aunt has one, she's 93 and never goes on the bus yet a new one arrives each year without being asked for. These passes are not free, the local council has to pay the bus companies several hundred pounds a year for each one.

Edited September 26, 2012 by Vince Green

[Vince Green]

The banks are not to blame for Britain's bankruptcy. And we are bankrupt, at least fiscally. The money used by Brown to 'save the banks' was small change from the back of the sofa. It made no material difference to the long term financial mess. The cause of our ruin is a grotesquely distended Government portfolio. Successive Governments have bribed us with our own money to secure power for themselves, getting away with this grand disception by promoting the fallacy that the foundations of a prosperous and virtuous society can only be built on central government control and patronage. The result has been, since the second world war, society's continued slide into infantilism. We are a nation of babies looking to mummy and daddy State to deliver us from every difficulty. No individual can go through life in this condition of pathological helplessness and hope to prosper, and niether can nations.

Brown understood this suffocating cycle of dependancy and spent 13 years systematically extending the reach of the State until he had deluded even the affluent middle classes into believing that they could not survive without being in thrawl to the State.

Banks failed because Government ensured failure was commercially viable, so banks queued up to fail, just as the idle and the ignorant queue up to fail at benefit centres.

This mess is the work of politicians not speculators.

 

This is all basically true. We were talking about this only yesterday in relation to the meals on wheels service. In virtually every borough it is run by the council at great expense. Why? In virtually every other country in the world similar services are run by a charity and manned by volunteers.

[four-wheel-drive]

Its the middle class people who pay the most tax Ie people who work for other people and have good jobs the real rich people that are always complaining about that they pay 50% tax.

 

They may do on a small amount that they do not get there Accountants to ferret away to off shore banks etc if you work in a normal job you do not have that option it all goes before we even see it.

[Gimlet]

This is all basically true. We were talking about this only yesterday in relation to the meals on wheels service. In virtually every borough it is run by the council at great expense. Why? In virtually every other country in the world similar services are run by a charity and manned by volunteers.

 

Better still why don't we care for our elderly relatives ourselves? Other cultures do, they would be ashamed to do otherwise. We have somehow permitted ourselves to become institutionalised.

 

Hang on. I thought meals-on-wheels was a charity? It sure it was when I was a lad.

[Gimlet]

Its the middle class people who pay the most tax Ie people who work for other people and have good jobs the real rich people that are always complaining about that they pay 50% tax.

 

They may do on a small amount that they do not get there Accountants to ferret away to off shore banks etc if you work in a normal job you do not have that option it all goes before we even see it.

 

All the more reason to keep all taxation to a minimum. You elevate society as a whole by helping those at the bottom get off the ground not clippiing the wings of those already flying. Lets all be poor together may be 'fair', to use Cleggs favourite word, but its idiotic.

Edited September 26, 2012 by Gimlet

[Catweazle]

Many of the really rich pay little or no tax at all, they employ some very creative people just to ensure it.

[Robl]

Many of the really rich pay little or no tax at all, they employ some very creative people just to ensure it.

 

 

 

 

That’s not entirely true.

The really rich do try and pay a smaller percentage of tax – but they do often pay more than a little in actual amount.

 

Take the Jimmy Car situation recently.

He was critics for avoiding paying Tax – be he was still paying many millions of pounds of tax each year.

 

I wonder if Income Tax should be capped.

How about a 1 million cap – really, why should any one individual pay more than 1 million of their income as tax regardless of what they earn.

Except that the Govt. relies on that money.

 

Not to mention that the sliding tax scale means that anyone who earns more than about 50k pay proportionately more tax than those who earn less.

For all those who rant about the rich paying ‘their fair share’ that’s blatant double standards as even the moderately well off are paying proportionately more.

 

No wonder people try and find ways to avoid paying tax when they are being asked to pay more than their fair share.

[Cottonseed]

Listening to radio 4....take free bus passes from 'well off' pensioners, brilliant idea, also take the heating benefit (certainly from the OAP's who spend their winter in spain but still claim).

 

But the mansion tax? ***?

 

Over two million of house value and you get another bill, on top of (at the minute) a 40% tax bill to pay the Jeremy Kyle fodder??

 

Why on earth are people who have earnt well, been business accumen savvy, well educated or plain lucky paying for the deficit of billions of £'s paying for the illegitimate out of work.

 

**** that.

 

 

I agree with you fully, but I wouldn't mind a mansion tax on peoiple like, say, these Russian oligarchs who have bought up estates in the south with the money they stole from the Russian people after the collapse of the USSR

[Gimlet]

I agree with you fully, but I wouldn't mind a mansion tax on peoiple like, say, these Russian oligarchs who have bought up estates in the south with the money they stole from the Russian people after the collapse of the USSR

 

I agree with that. Why we welcome these mobsters to our country I cannot imagine. In any case foreign nationals should not be permitted to buy property at all.

 

All this talk of taxing the rich is a smoke screen set by politicians. They are the ones who have broken this country. If supertax was 80% and all of it was collected the only noticable difference would be the width of the smirk on Vince Cable's face. But we'd still be broke. We are borrowing £1billion every 3 days just to stand still. That's £120billion a year. And the spending deficit is expanding steatdily. The interest alone on that astronomical sum is larger than the GDP of many small countries. All of that, every single penny, is the miserable work of politicians. Not the rich, not tax dodgers, not bankers, but politicians.

[Catweazle]

Why we welcome these mobsters to our country I cannot imagine.

 

To give us a chance in the UEFA cup....

[HDAV]

The turn out at polls is so low it doesn't really matter IMO there should be a none of the above box and fines for not voting

[keg]

I have to disagree Gimlet, i agree with most of what you say but the banks made some very risky decisions..

[storme37]

seems the bankers may now have a problem http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/bad-bankers-warned-repent-or-go-to-jail-8191493.html

[Catweazle]

That’s not entirely true.

The really rich do try and pay a smaller percentage of tax – but they do often pay more than a little in actual amount.

 

 

From 2007, although I imagine it's similar now.

Treasury figures obtained by the Standard show that 65 people who filed a tax return in 2004-05 declared a taxable income of £ 10m or more.

But, according to the Sunday Times Rich List, there are more than 350 people in Britain with a fortune of at least £200m-enough to generate a return of £10m-a year through dividends, interest, rents and profits.

Furthermore, an estimated 30 City traders earn at least £10m, as do 30 company directors, including top hedge fund managers, private equity executives and industrialists such as vacuum cleaner tycoon Sir James Dyson.

 

 

Read more: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-1611272/Super-rich-paying-no-income-tax.html#ixzz282Q6cXUS

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[Gimlet]

I have to disagree Gimlet, i agree with most of what you say but the banks made some very risky decisions..

They did indeed. But they did it because they could. Brown emasuclated the Bank of England. He ensured it could not act unilaterally without the approval of the Treasury, or himself in otherwords, and he hid this by simultaneously trumpeting the 'independance' of the BoE in setting interest rates. In reality the BoE had lost its authority to intervene to rein in risky behaviour by the banks. Brown wanted them to take risks. He wanted the tax receipts, however illusory to pull off the conjuring trick of acchieving growth at the same time as a massive expansion of government and borrowing. He was building his Client State of dependancy. Or Command Economy as it used to be called when I was at school. He needed to create the illusion of prosperity to get away with increasing State spending as a proportion of GDP, and thereby increasing taxes. He knew that you can get away with increasing taxation by stealth if people feel they have money in their pockets and don't notice how leaky their pockets have become. The simplest way to do that is cheap credit. Brown increased the money supply flooding the country with cheap money and easy credit Everyone gorged themselves, businesses, households, individuals and Government - National and local. Banks fell over themselves to lend to anyone and everyone spreading the risk far and wide for easy return while the BoE watched with one hand tied behind its back.While we were enjoying this fool's paradise Brown was busy creating, with our money but without our mandate (New Labour had pledged in the 97 election to stick to Tory spending targets which it did until 2000 when Brown could contain himself no longer and turned on the taps) a hideously complex tax and benefit system that enmeshed as many of the population as possible including the affluent and extended State dependancy. To such an extent and so inextricably that today so huge a proprtion of the country rely (falsely) on some form of State intervention that no Government, especially a coalition one, dare unpick the mess for fear of losing votes. This was Brown's greatest and most sinister calculation. In an age afflicted by short-termism Brown was horribly long term. He was building a toxic socialist legacy that everyone might instinctively hate but no-one would dare demolish. And he has so for been successful.The show could not stay on the road if, or rather when, banks started failling, so Brown stretched a huge taxpayer funded safety net under them, they couldn't believe their luck, the Champagne continued to flow and we picked up the bill. Had Brown walked away from Northern Rock and let it fall, as he should have done, his house of cards would have collapsed. But that was never the plan. He effectively gold-plated suicidal behaviour in the banking sector and banks queued up to join in.Brown built a prison round the Nation and laundered the Nation's money through the banking system to pay for it. His chief architect in this was Ed Balls who is Shadow Chancellor and may well become Chancellor and First Lord of the Treasury in 2015.You couldn't make it up. Edited October 1, 2012 by Gimlet

[guest1957]

His chief architect in this was Ed Balls who is Shadow Chancellor and may well become Chancellor and First Lord of the Treasury in 2015.You couldn't make it up.

 

I'd be surprised if he were both Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer at the same time. It was 1905 since the office of Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury were held by different people.

[crosshair]

Why should people who have worked hard to build up their wealth have to pay a tax on their large house.

They have already paid taxes all their lives.

I have worked all my life, and paid my taxes, but it galls me when I see the benefit scroungers that have

never wanted to work, raking it in.

We all know some scroungers as they are in every village, town and city, and we work to give the lazy

toerags a better living than some of those that work, they will never look for work while they are

molycoddled by governments that are afraid to lose the unemployed vote.

I agree those unemployed should not have a vote.

They spend a lifetime on the dole, then claim old age pension which they have never contributed to.

This country has reached breaking point, these scrounger benefits should be at least halved.

[Catweazle]

I agree those unemployed should not have a vote.

 

There is a danger though, that a government can implement policies that cause massive unemployment and inequality and still remain in power. It's a recipe for a two-tier system.

 

Far better, I think, to look at the USA where you have a certain amount of social security to last your lifetime - and you'd better not squander it or you'll end up in the trailer park.

[Gimlet]

I'd be surprised if he were both Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer at the same time. It was 1905 since the office of Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury were held by different people.

 

I stand corrected. Though the prospect of Balls holding one office of State is enough to chill my blood.

[al4x]

same here it will go down in history as a complete balls up I can't imagine many people I'd like to see become PM less.