Should we tax foreign buyers on property deliberately left empty?

ukcarper

CLAPTON wrote: »

Please correct me immediately with the correct information.

there are of course many people living in accommodation that many would deem unsuitable.

I suppose you should define homeless is someone sofa surfing or living in a hostel homeless or not.

CLAPTON

Graham_Devon wrote: »

There were 12,980 people accepted as homeless by local authorities in the 4th quarter of 2013. Over the year, thats around 52,000 homeless families accepted as being homeless under law. (This is excluding those who are intentionally homeless)

The people above are not neccesarily sleeping on the streets, but don't have a home. They could be on sofas, on floors, in hostels etc, but they ARE homeless.

There were 2,414 (up 5% on 2012) estimated rough sleepers in Autumn 2013 (the study happens each Autumn).

Official definitions are made for official convenience and should be qualified so no confusion is caused with reality.


In any event the figures you quote are trivial and are largely unrelated to the availability of property but derive from many complex social conditions.

Graham_Devon

CLAPTON wrote: »

Official definitions are made for official convenience and should be qualified so no confusion is caused with reality.

They are qualified. They are split down into acceptances of homelessness, intentionally homeless, rough sleepers etc etc.

How should they be qualified in order that you don't simply write them off as they don't suit?

And secondly, what was the point in asking me for figures if you were going to dismiss them in an instant?

In any event the figures you quote are trivial and are largely unrelated to the availability of property but derive from many complex social conditions.

Can't even be bothered with this claptrap.

antrobus

ukcarper wrote: »

I suppose you should define homeless is someone sofa surfing or living in a hostel homeless or not.

I'd hazard a guess that local authorities adopt the statutory definition of homelessness set out in s175 of the Housing Act 1996. That definition means that people can be classed as 'homeless' if it is deemed that it would not be reasonable to expect them to continue occupation of the accomodation that they do have. (Or words to that effect.)

Which isn't necessarily the same thing as the 'common sense' definition of homelessness.

cepheus wrote: »

Should we tax foreign buyers on property deliberately left empty?

I'm struck by deja vu all over again. Haven't we just done this? I'm pretty sure I pointed out that EU law prevented the UK from discriminating against other EU nationals, and we ended up discussing Denmark and the protocol to the Maastricht Treaty that enabled them to continue operating restrictions on second home owners.

CLAPTON

Graham_Devon wrote: »

They are qualified. They are split down into acceptances of homelessness, intentionally homeless, rough sleepers etc etc.

How should they be qualified in order that you don't simply write them off as they don't suit?

And secondly, what was the point in asking me for figures if you were going to dismiss them in an instant?

Can't even be bothered with this claptrap.

firstly the majority of people declared 'officially' homeless are not without places to stay.

secondly the period of homeless many be a little as a few hours but they will be included in the quarterly period figures.

even so the figures, (especially bearing in mind they are a flow and not a stock item) are very low and have nothing to do with £10 million penthouses in London.

ruggedtoast

CLAPTON wrote: »

there are no homeless in the UK except a few unstable/mentally ill people who refuse to be housed

and the wonderful people who resolved the Marie Antoinette issue went on to cause a European catastrophe and the death of millions
(mainly poor working class)


a typical win win for socialism

What absolute rubbish. Is that actually what you believe?

Words fail me. You are completely out of touch and seem to be living in a right wing bubble.

CLAPTON

ruggedtoast wrote: »

What absolute rubbish. Is that actually what you believe?

Words fail me. You are completely out of touch and seem to be living in a right wing bubble.

yes, I do believe the french revolution lead to a european wide war and led to the deaths of millions of ordinary people through war, starvation and disease.

what do you believe?

Graham_Devon

CLAPTON wrote: »

firstly the majority of people declared 'officially' homeless are not without places to stay.

secondly the period of homeless many be a little as a few hours but they will be included in the quarterly period figures.

even so the figures, (especially bearing in mind they are a flow and not a stock item) are very low and have nothing to do with £10 million penthouses in London.

I can't argue with such pompus arrogance.

So toodlepip!

CLAPTON

I know a family who had a daughter and they lived happily in a 5 bed detached house with a nice garden.

the said daughter (late teens) had a child .

the grandparents, daughter and grand daughter lived happily for a year or so in the 5 bed house.

daughter decided she didn't like that so, with the support of Citizens Advise, she went to the council and told them that her parents would no longer allow her to live in the 5 bed house and so she became an 'officially' homeless person.

she now lives in a nice 2 bed house although grandchild spends most of the time with grandparents.

neither she nor the child were actually homeless for one second but they would have been counted as 'homeless' on the statistics.

and as I say, the stats are flow quantities and are anyway very small

vivatifosi

Going back to the original question... should we tax buyers of prime property?

As CLAPTON says, we don't know what the numbers are. Whether it is 1%, 5% or 50% of property (realistically it is likely to be towards the lower figures) the issue is shortage of housing, generally at the bottom end of the market: ie people will get on to the housing market at the price point that they can afford. It is unlikely that someone will be unable to get onto the housing ladder due to a shortage of premium properties.

So will this actually address the issue, which is not taxing the rich, but is shortage of properties? It will make people feel better, it will probably raise some money. But unless that money is then directly taken and spent on building new houses and addressing the shortage, it will solve absolutely nothing. Even if it does go directly towards housing it is little more than tokenism.

The mega rich will still buy houses that they don't live in, they will just pay more taxes. That may make a miniscule difference to the deficit as it will increase government income by a small amount, but does nothing whatsoever to get to the root of the problem.