I had occasion to walk past the car park at my local Tube station recently, and observed the following:
It is 40 paces x 30 paces big = 1,200 sq. yards.
It's well laid out, there are five rows of ten cars = 24 sq yards per car (this is about the bare minimum you need, because at least half the space is used for the access bits).
Charge per day = £4.50.
£4.50 x 5 working days per week x (say) 51 working weeks = £1,147.50
£1,147.50 divided by 24 sq yards = £48/sq yard/year.
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The house we rent at the other end of the High Street is £22,500 a year including Council Tax and it's a 500 sq yard plot = £45/sq yard/year.
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I've uploaded my spreadsheet as a Google Doc which assumes we replace all existing taxes with LVT. The first step was to divide required receipts by the number of square acres of developed land in the UK (about 2.4 million) which gives us £31/sq yard/year on average.
Then, to reflect variations in land values round the country, I made the rate in each local authority area proportional the average recent selling price of semi-detached houses in each area. This worked out at £47/square yard/year for my local authority area (which just scrapes into the top decile. For comparison, Blaenau Gwent is at the bottom at a princely £12/sq yard/year).
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UPDATE, on the way home I paced out the plot of the café-with-offices-above and back garden which I frequent, that's 500 sq yards as well, and the VOA website tells me it has a rateable value of £29,500, i.e. the Business Rates are about £12,000 a year, which would double under full-on-LVT (in place of Employer's NIC, VAT and corporation tax), which very conveniently works out at £48/sq yard a year as well.
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Just sayin', is all.
Sounds as if he's been reassured
6 hours ago
11 comments:
Sorry to sound thick, but how can I work out what my LVT would be under your scheme for comparison? If yours would be about the same as you are paying in rent now, would mine also be the same as the rental value of my flat? Because if so that would be a massive tax cut for me, but if my LVT was about the same as your rent then it would be about the same as what I reckon I pay in taxes now.
Or, knock the house down turn it into a car park and make an extra £3 a sq yard.
BE, or even more approximately, the LVT on a flat would (as you suggest) be = whatever gross rent + council tax is today. All depends on how many storeys the block is.
Anon, nope. Houses without car parking space are no good; car parks without housing is pointless. It's a question of getting the right mix.
I'm struck how much of the land in our local supermarkets' car parks is wasted. For a modest consulting fee I'd show them how to get more cars in at equal levels of safety and convenience. Unless they actually want to waste space: can you think of any incentive for that?
D, supermarket car parks are a whole 'nother topic.
Some are always full, some nearly empty; some belong to the council and some to the supermarket; even if they belong to the supermarket, it is usually part of the planning permission that shoppers visiting other shops in the area can use them; some are free to use, otheres you have to pay etc.
But as to incentives, I suspect it is because there is little or no Business Rates on car parks (from searching VOA database - if anybody knows more about this, then I'd be interested to know), the BR is just on the actual buildings.
PS - if and when you go into car park design consulting, tell them to have more entry/exit points!! That's where the bottlenecks/ delays happen. By simply having four exits instead of one, they could save every shopper five minutes of faff per visit.
If I had to pay the "full" 8% I would be about the same or a bit better off (42% of gross income), netting off CI it comes to 35% which would be a major reduction.
Bring It On.
BE, ta, I'm doing my best.
D, I've done a bit of googling, car parks are liable to business rates but I just can't find that particular one on the VOA list.
OK, OK, you've convinced me. But as I keep asking you - where do I sign?
Not particularly on parking - No doubt you posted on this one before: Bearing in mind that many salaries have national scales and the CI would be national, this means that regional (away from London/SE) homeowners will gain relatively to London/SE? Thus making it attractive for some to move? Thus raising land/home values regionally and lowering them in L/SE?
Charles Baz
CB, I don't think that having LVT means that more people will move from one area to another, most will trade up or down in the same area.
Remember that L/SE already pays about a third of all income tax etc, so if it ends up paying a third of all LVT instead, what's the big difference?
And most welfare benefits are flat rate across the UK anyway, why should a CI be any different?
Great post Mark!!
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