Stamp Duty - The Worst Tax

roswell

surely that would be volume / number of properties

meanmachine_2

Gorgeous_George wrote:

The solution could be to base SD on the size of the house and the land that it occupies.


GG

SO a millionaire in Mayfair with a 700ft flat priced at 1m would pay £500, but a 3 bed ex council house with half an acre would come with a £25,000 stamp duty tax?

Or do you include the value of the land in that calculation? The land value being much higher in Mayfair than Lincolnshire.

There's actually nothing wrong with the CGT idea.

I know people whinge that, because my house has gone up X amount I'd have to pay X amount more. That surely isn't the point. This move would kill property inflation and therefore there'd be little CGT thereafter.

Which, thinking about it, is the big flaw, of course, because how would the govt make its money without property inflation?

Gorgeous_George

meanmachine wrote:

SO a millionaire in Mayfair with a 700ft flat priced at 1m would pay £500, but a 3 bed ex council house with half an acre would come with a £25,000 stamp duty tax?

Why should the millionaire pay more SD? He will have paid loads of tax already and why should millionaire No1 pay over and over again when he moves house whereas millionaire No2 doesn't move and therefore doesn't pay any SD.



GG

Greed

Percentages suck. These things should be a fixed price.

MOTs for cars are a fixed price, they're not a percentage of the value of the car. Petrol is not charged at a rate that increases with the cost of the car.

I believe stamp duty and VAT have something to do with funding wars and they should have ended with the war that they were supposedly supporting.

Spicyhotone_2

meanmachine wrote:

Which, thinking about it, is the big flaw, of course, because how would the govt make its money without property inflation?

But if people don't have to pump stupid amounts of their income into property, they can spend it on something else.

Potentially (perhaps unlikely in today's UK unfortunately, but even that is a perhaps a consequence of HPI) that something else could be something that's been made here. So instead of pumping huge amounts of make-belief money around an artifically inflated property market we could start to pump money around a "real" economy of things of real value.

Once this happens, the government make their money through reduced unemployment, increased personal income tax revenue and corporation tax revenue

Alan_M_2

Greed wrote:

Percentages suck. These things should be a fixed price.

MOTs for cars are a fixed price, they're not a percentage of the value of the car. Petrol is not charged at a rate that increases with the cost of the car.

I believe stamp duty and VAT have something to do with funding wars and they should have ended with the war that they were supposedly supporting.

Fixed prices penalise the less wealthy so that's not a great argument.

In a round about way, petrol generally costs more as the car value increases, but that's more due to the more expensive cars becoming less economical, but in turn they pay more in VAT at purchase time, and more IPT on the insurance and increased road tax. If it happens to be a company car more income tax is paid - so poor example there.

VAT is simply a wealth tax, the more money you have the more you spend therefore the more tax you pay on purchases.

The purest form of tax would be VAT only, with all other froms of tax removed, no income tax, no stamp duty blah blah. just a flat high rate of VAT on every purchase, the only problem with that is it's open to abuse via cash. But eventually cash won't exist, not sure I'll see it in my lifetime, but any government would be delighted with a cashless economy where every payment is made by traceable payment card.

BT_man

So instead of pumping huge amounts of make-belief money around an artifically inflated property market we could start to pump money around a "real" economy of things of real value.

I like the way you put that spicyhotone. How very true...

Gorgeous_George

meanmachine wrote:

There's actually nothing wrong with the CGT idea.

Except everything. It would stifle moves and therefore hardly ever be paid leaving the Chancellor needing to visit other avenues of income.



GG

nmiah786

MSE_Martin wrote:

How stamp duty works.

The buyer pays the stamp duty (tax) based on the price of the property being bought.

Property price less than £125,001 no stamp duty
Property price £125,001 to £250,000 and it’s 1% stamp duty
Property price £250,001 to £500,000 and it’s 3% stamp duty
Property price £500,001+ and it’s 4% stamp duty.

What’s the problem?

The ridiculous anomaly here is the stamp duty tax rate is set at an absolute rather than marginal level. In other words, rather than you paying 1% stamp duty on everything above £125,000 you pay 1% on the whole amount. If you’re still confused…. the following examples show the nonsense.

• Property price £125,000. Stamp duty = £0
• Property price £125,001. Stamp duty =£1,250
• Property price £250,000. Stamp duty = £2,500
• Property price £250,001. Stamp duty = £7,500

So by increasing the cost of the property by just £1, you increase the tax by £5,000 meaning no buyer in their right mind will go for it!

Slight typo error but it can/might confuse some people:D

ginger_nuts

I think stamp duty should be paid by the seller not the buyer .That way first time buyers wouldnt have to pay ,and if you decided to move to a more expensive house you would pay Stamp duty on your old cheaper house .