Over-occupation and under-utilisation of housing is A Good Thing
The Intergenerational Foundation had the gall and temerity to produce a report (Hoarding of Housing), pointing out that:
* Under-occupation of houses is encouraged by the tax [and welfare] system and there are 25 million [unused] bedrooms in under-occupied houses in England... Under-occupied housing has increased from 20% of all households to about 33%, according to the English Housing Survey.
* The divide between the housing-haves and housing-have-nots has moved from being one dominated by class to one dominated by age. The huge increase in housing wealth by the older generation was broadly matched by a big increase in mortgage debt by younger people. This is important as housing wealth has grown rapidly from about the same as GDP in 1980 to about twice that level over the last 30 years.
They offer a few commonsense policies on page 28, if you're interested.
The Powers That Be promptly unleashed the inevitable shit storm. Housing Minister Grant Shapps, bowing to his masters, said "Whilst this report makes interesting reading, we do not agree that people should be taxed or bullied out of their homes. Instead we will work with families to ensure that housing becomes more affordable over time."
What he really means that it fine to tax and bully young people out of the possibility of home-ownership (or at least making them pay the earth for it), and by implication that the UK government sees over-occupation, especially by older people, as A Very Good And Desirable Thing Indeed...
Over-occupation and under-utilisation of housing is A Bad Thing
... or does it? Meanwhile, a different government minister talks sense and acknowledges that it is A Bad Thing:
Spare bedrooms for people in social housing are a luxury the country can no longer afford, a minister has said. Tenants with spare rooms will lose £11 a week in housing benefit under changes going through Parliament...
Asked by You and Yours presenter Julian Worricker, if a spare bedroom should be regarded as a "luxury" for those in social housing, Lord Freud said: "Exactly - we have got a housing benefit expenditure that is simply out of control. It's very unfair for taxpayers to have to fund people to live in property that's larger than they can afford themselves. And also that means that people don't make the same choices, and are faced with those choices, that they would if they were non benefit recipients."
Can they make up their minds, please?
Wednesday, 19 October 2011
Good Thing/Bad Thing
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25 comments:
IF is a very new charity. Where is the funding from? If it's the taxpayer it's a fake charity and a very bad thing!
Their funding is a bit murky, but so what? Are you accusing them of lying about these basic facts?
Reading the article its a bad thing!
I would say the confusion comes from thinking that land is like capital. Private landowners must have created their land somehow (like pouring spoil into Port Solent!!) so they can use it how they like, whereas social tenants have received their land as a gift from society so they have to use it wisely.
In reality of course all landowners have received their land as a gift from society (so to speak).
This issue is really interesting. If we are genuinely short of space then as a society we should be seeking to reduce the wastage in the way that we try to curtail pollution and putting stuff in landfill. Based on this premise we should be trying to ensure the allocation of space as efficiently as possible.
However if we believe that it is a fundamental right to accumulate capital and space at the expense of everyone else who might want it then either we need to allow more to be produced or we should accept that we can only ever upgrade when our parents die.
I was thinking about this this morning as I noticed that despite earning double the London median salary I live in a run down shitty council flat.
The reason I can't afford to live in somewhere twice as good as the median is because everything is already taken.
The idea of under occupation is daft. You buy and live in what you are prepared to pay for, and if lots of space is what you want then that's fine. Furthermore if like me you have lots of children and they keep coming to see you form elsewhere in the UK then you need to have spare rooms. Also if you have friends come and see you. I mean, don't these charity bods have friends and families?
Now, as I am quite happy, nay would very much welcome, the switch from taxes on wealth creation to taxes on land, I really do not understand any of the above bleating.
Then why don't you just "confiscate" the aged people's
HOMES, you know you commies want to. Send them to the gulags that pass as "new" development sites, not a garden in sight everyone living on top of one another. marvellous places.
Just don't presume that it will be a walk in the park, a 76 year old Aussie has recently beat the living shit out of two youths that thought they were entitled to his property.
Bring it on.
Fuckov.
RA, we can round things off by reminding ourselves that the Homeys think it is a splendid idea to sell off council housing at undervalue. We then end up with this:
Council tenant with spare rooms = bad thing
Ex-council tenant who owns ex-council flat with spare rooms = good thing.
Therefore, we can turn ABT into AGT by giving away an asset belonging to the taxpayer, that's the magic of Homey logic!!
BE, exactly.
L, also exactly.
Comrade F, it's you and your Commie chums who are sending young people to the Gulags and worse with your endless bleating about The Hallowed Green Belt, and like most despots, you can dish it out but you can't take it, can you?
We shall see, one day.
Your forebears in the communist party thought it was a good idea for every person in the country to be given the "right" to purchase the HOMES that had lived in and paid rent on for years. A lot of these purchased council houses now have the second or third generation of families "owning" them.
I have never bleated about anything and I'm not about to start, all I will say is, If you want to steal/confiscate my legally owned and paid for HOME, take some martial arts courses.
Fuckov.
Comrade F, you're the Communist here, not me, and nobody wants to confiscate your HOME.
Your LVT liability will be calculated, your CI entitlement deducted and the balance due (if any - you might get a net payment) will be collected via the PAYE system or debited from your bank account or other savings, just like with income tax.
If that leaves you with not enough for food etc because you are too lazy to go out and get a job, well at least you will have your HOME, eh?
And if not enough can be collected via the PAYE system etc, then the shortfall just gets registered as a charge against your HOME for when you eventually die or try to sell it. All very simple, isn't it? No need for martial arts training!
Can't see the problem here, it all looks pretty clear to me. Elderly owner-occupiers tend to vote Tory and therefore must be cossetted. Social housing tenants tend to vote Labour and therefore can be persecuted.
B, that is exactly the contradiction at the heart of Home-Owner-Ism.
I can't believe the fuss that this report has caused. The only recommendation is to remove stamp duty for retired sellers, Grant Schapps leaps in to say that there is no way the government is going to tax people out of their homes? The proposal is to give them a tax break?
Of course stamp duty and inheritance tax should be removed for everyone with the difference made up by a revalued and rebanded council tax.
Anecdotally my brother in law who has two growing kids would like to swap their 3 bed semi with his parents who live in a 4 bed detached just across town. The parents are up for it, it makes total sense for everyone concerned but they are facing a tax to do it.
QP: what happens if they just swap houses but with nothing changing on paper? Do you expect the future inheritance tax to cost more (in real terms) than the CGT and stamp duty?
Grant Shapps jumps in to say that there is no way that the government is going to tax people out of their homes.
Bollux.
If the LVT/property is levied and people default or find themselves unable to meet the LVT/property tax bill, What is going to happen?
Think untaxed cars taken away and crushed by the police.
Fuckov.
Fuckov, have you ever answered Mark's simple question? What happens if you don't pay your income tax?
QP, read page 28!
The only tax your home-swappers would face is SDLT (unfortunately), or they can just swap in real life but not on paper. There wouldn't be any CGT on their main residences.
My bad. I should have actually read the report rather than just respond to what I heard on the Today programme debate.
This idea is truly stupid. So, a divorced man who has his daughter ever second weekend will be penalized. What next forcibly putting people into your room directed from the housing office?
WE are short of houses get them built and create employment
Anon, you clearly haven't read or understood the report at all, you are attacking something which it quite simply didn't say. Try reading it before you criticise it. Then we can discuss sensibly.
And the people who rail against LVT are usually exactly the same people who rail against new development. And then wail about pensioner fuel poverty and so on.
"WE are short of houses"
How do you know? Because lots of people want to buy a house but can't? That doesn't mean we are short of houses, it simply means that the houses we have are too expensive. Where are all the people who can't buy a house currently living? Not on the streets, but in rented accommodation, so it's not houses we are short of, but houses to buy at a price people, especially young people, can afford. That's not quite the same thing is it?
B, it's not just that young people can't afford to buy them (which would be bad enough) but the fact that most home-owners wouldn't be able to afford to buy their own houses at current prices. This is the clue that something has gone horribly, horribly, wrong.
I'm a 40 yr old professional with a good salary and buying anything other than a shitheap is unobtainable where I live, or anywhere within twenty miles.
We have a colossal housing bubble which the state is desperately trying to keep inflated. It is fucking outrageous that I can work 10 hours a day and be taxed at 40-50%, while people can make 100k just by selling an asset they've done nothing more than occupy for x years.
LVT sounds interesting but for now why not CGT on ALL house sales? 33% will do for starters.
Trouble with CGT is that it can potentially raise or depress house sales like nobody's business. Basically people can decide to avoid it by not selling their house unless they absolutely have to, in the hope that by the time they have to sell, CGT will have been reduced or removed from house sales.
So if there's news that the CGT rate is about to go up everyone rushes to buy/sell before the deadline; if there's news that it's about to go down nobody wants to buy/sell until after the reduction has happened.
CGT is one of those taxes that sounds like a good idea but can have some fairly bad unintended consequences. Plus it has no effect on someone who owns but never sells: think Duke of Westminster type of individual. It's also worth taking a look at the Swedish situation where they introduced CGT on housing and have been tinkering with it ever since to try and avoid the problems.
CGT is better than nothing but they'd have been still better to go with LVT.
Rob, CGT (like SDLT) is a tax on transactions, therefore it distorts the behaviour of individuals - as Derek explains - therefore it leads to an overall worse outcome. In the same way as VAT is worse than National Insurance is worse than income tax is worse than corporation tax - the free market depends on lots of people making individual decisions or transactions, it's best not to tax (and hence) influence these or you muddy the picture.
LVT on the other hand just looks at the overall picture, the rate depends on what the economy as a whole does, is payable whatever any individual does and therefore does not muddy the picture at all.
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