£24 000 stamp duty!!!! I feel ill.

Mrs_Optimist

Why is it that we are taxed more, have higher council tax, living costs etc and yet on top of all that we are expected to save for our old age. With what exactly? Our council tax has rocketed and yet services are being cut left right and centre. There is money to spare for asylum seekers, wars and benefit scroungers, yet I have to pay for private dental treatment so that my two children can have their teeth regularly checked. The NHS is full of workshy dogsbodies taking up valuable money which should be spent on retaining decent nurses at a fair wage. The NHS Consultants have a lucrative sideline in the private sector as well as being paid a wage to work in the public sector. We have had perfectly good schools knocked down and rebuilt here in Devon under the PFI which will mean higher taxes again for everyone whan that chicken comes home to roost. The problem is that there is no credible alternative to the government we already have.

waterbaby

gingerdad wrote:

I do begrudge the pfi as well, the NHS staff paying a proper wage depends what you call proper! it does say a lot about where i live that the best paid jobs are in the civil service/govt

That's not always the case though, government tends to pay the same wage right across the country (for the same job and except London). A wage might seem high in the north of England but it'll be much lower in relative terms in the south east. I work in the south east and get paid the same as colleagues in south wales, who can buy houses for prices much cheaper than here.

Or did you mean that other jobs in your area are really low paid. Sorry if I've misunderstood!

No hard feelings though as I could easily move but I choose not to.

That's why the key worker thing arose, because in the more expensive areas, public sector workers wages were much lower in relative terms and they were choosing to move elsewhere for a better standard of living.

I don't know enough to say what is a proper wage for NHS staff, but it should be a wage to attract enough people that you can be selective and choose the best. Low wages don't attract the most able staff.

jyonda

Yes the SDLT is unfairly balanced as it applies to everything over the threshholds but it only affects the property prices and nothing else so that cash may as well go to the public purse IMHO. But, as a first time buyer whose not been lucky enough to benefit from a decade of HPI i'd like to see FTB's exempt from this 'duty'.

It makes me chuckle to hear people congratulating themselves on having 'invested wisely' in the housing market. Any fool could have made money in the last 10 years! Did you really consider putting your money into stocks & shares??? Whatever money was left after paying the rent of course.:rotfl:

dougk_2

I just read this about property in france - So maybe a 3% SDLT is not that bad after all!

[FONT=Arial,Verdana]Fees[/FONT] [FONT=Arial,Verdana]You would expect to pay a total of over 12% of the selling price; less for properties under five years which have VAT (20.6%) built into the price.
The Notary fee would be around 3%, transfer tax 7.5% (less than 1% for new properties) and registration fees around another 6%.
The vendor should pay the Real Estate Agents fees.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Verdana] Property Tax in France[/FONT]

[FONT=Arial,Verdana] Real Estate taxes are levied on property plus residential tax for living as a owner occupier or as a tenant (renting or not). Both are calculated on the average property rental values.[/FONT]
[FONT=Arial,Verdana]*In France new property purchases attract Vat of 19.6%.[/FONT]

cashdaddy

There is an interesting article taken from the Telegraph titled 'Homebuyers hit by £1bn stealth tax'.

Part of it states, "While people may be able to buy first homes for below the threshold in certain areas of the country, the change offers little or no relief to those who want to get on the property ladder in London or the South.
Failing to uprate the starting point of stamp duty in line with the rise in house prices make this levy a classic 'stealth tax'."
Here is the link

ReportInvestor

There are some unintended consequences of this stamp duty.

People are less willing to move, which might hurt the economy.

People are more willing to improve their houses with extensions. There's nothing wrong with that. It improves the national housing stock, but don't forget to factor it in when working out how much your (unimproved) house has gone up when using national averages.

Older people who have lost their partners are less willing to downsize, reducing the amount of housing space available. This may also put pressure on their income. It is likely to be a factor in persuading some people to take out equity release mortgages (OK but be careful) rather than downsizing (preferable if you can stay close to friends and family).

Overall, perhaps it's a further factor in less housing coming onto to market - which the EAs tell us is contributing to this recent mini house boom of 8% in the last year.

It's a big tax on the south (average London property is taxed @ 3%) - another aspect of wealth redistribution.

The tax is due a reform as it's not functioning as originally intended. The start rate is again too low, hitting first time buyers. In addition there needs to be a sliding scale so that we don't have these bizarre and totally unfair sudden jumps that distort the property market - especially the one from 1% to 3% at £250K. Why should you pay £5K more to Gordon because your house is worth 1p more than the one next door? . Finally there should be a commitment by the Treasury to review future rates by comparison with a house price index [and pigs might fly :rolleyes: . The concept of "fiscal drag" almost has cult status in that government department ].

Tim_L

irnbru wrote:

As opposed to what, budgeting properly in the first place?

I don't begrudge paying NHS staff a proper wage.

I do begrudge paying over the top on PFI projects.

In comparison with NHS staffing costs, the costs of PFI are pretty small. If you're trying to argue that public sector spending on projects is more efficient than the way the private sector works, then you're flying in the face of the evidence. The rationale behind use of the private sector for big projects is that the public sector is so mind-bogglingly inefficient that it's perfectly possible for private companies to do the job AND take a stonking profit.

Incidentally one of the reasons for the amount of money the public sector costs in tax is the extremely generous pension provisions, coupled with absolute paralysis from a government that is scared witless of the unions and which therefore will not scale this back. Those of us in the private sector who are seeing our own benefits reduced and being asked to increase payments to our own pension schemes, as well as having stealth taxes piled on - council tax, inheritance tax, stamp duty, NI contribution increases, and so on - may be expected to be a little less sympathetic to the complaints of public sector employees as time goes on.