On this week's Question Time, starting at 18 minutes 44 seconds.
Glorious. And he's favour of raising the personal allowance for income tax as well.
Thanks to Robin Smith for the tip-off.
Saturday, 5 December 2009
Clive Anderson: Sixty seconds on Land Value Tax
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9 comments:
His input was very astute all round. I especially liked the comment (on the Swiss ban on Minarets) that the majority should not be alloweed to subjugate a minority.
Andrew Lansley agreed and used the same words. Lansley, the prospective Health Minister who has reportedly said he isn't going to revisit legislation which unfairly denies choice to a minority IYSWIM. ;-)
The thing is DC that the Minaret claims the land around it as forever Muslim and this invites AlQ.
One thing that occured to me when Kirstie Alsop tried to play the Old Widow card was that, in the kind of cases she mentioned, the house would have been bought in the time of domestic rates, so the buyer would have been well aware of the presence of an ad-valorem tax at the time of purchase.
Maybe a good first step would be a switch back to rates, making any complaints about the system being changed to the detriment of asset-rich pensioners, who bought their houses decades ago, indefensible.
DP, remember the rules of Victimhood Poker. Smokers get negative points.
AC1, is that really true?
Paul, excellent point. Only does anybody know how high Domestic Rates were? From the Northern Ireland experience, who went straight from DR to the 0.78% progressive property tax, I'd guess around 0.78% of capital values.
As far as I can remember, domestic rates were a fairly crap system, because the "rateable value" was usually years out of date and fairly arbitrary to begin with. Also ISTR that one of the "selling points" of the Council Tax was that, since it was based on the value of the property, this would be updated every time the property changed hands, which of course didn't happen, presumably for political reasons. I do remember that estate agents used to quote the rateable value of a property in the particulars, so you definitely knew what you were getting.
B, so people criticised Domestic Rates for using out of date valuations, so they were replaced with Council Tax, which uses ... out of date valuations?
"For political reasons" = because of Home-Owner-Ism, nobody cares if VAT or National Insurance go up by thousands of pounds per household per year, but woe betide a politician who hikes property taxes by more than a few pence.
As it happens, my old house was Band D, and after I did the loft conversion was told it would be moved to Band E, but only after the next sale, i.e. the chap who owns it now is paying Band E council tax.
"B, so people criticised Domestic Rates for using out of date valuations, so they were replaced with Council Tax, which uses ... out of date valuations?"
Exactly, and when, like a good citizen, I told them the value of my house in the last revaluation exercise, they ignored me and stuck it in a lower band. How incompetent is that?
"but woe betide a politician who hikes property taxes by more than a few pence."
LVT is vulnerable to this sort of chicanery, too ("Lets not revalue that area, because it's mostly people who vote for us and we don't want to upset them")
Bayard.
A Market based system is not vulnerable.
B, sure, if you leave the valuations to 'experts', that is what will happen.
Which is why I recommend the simplest and most easily verifiable system for annual re-valuations, based on actual selling prices in each area and actual plot sizes, however rough and ready, at least it's pot luck and not up to political manipulation.
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