Would taxing property values be fairer than the Council Tax?

rash161

All tax is theft under the implied threat of violence

The only tax that could be semi-ethical is VAT and nothing else, that way people are only taxed on what they actually use

Bantex_2

rash161 wrote: »

All tax is theft under the implied threat of violence

The only tax that could be semi-ethical is VAT and nothing else, that way people are only taxed on what they actually use

Sounds great, I would just buy everything from abroad.

IveSeenTheLight

cepheus wrote: »

Seems a good idea to me. Unearned capital is taxed, and most people gain.

I don;t like the idea.

You could live in a family home for over 40 years that you have paid for, paid stamp duty on and have paid years of council tax on simply to mean that you could be forced out of that family home on retirement because your retirement income is not sufficient to maintain the tax on the size of property.

In other countries, tax has been applied on the width of properties hence the built thin and high (Amsterdam), or a window tax, where windows were essentially then boarded up.

Much better to replace this with a local income tax.

antrobus

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

I don;t like the idea....

Yes that would be the issue. People don't like property taxes. Well I suppose people don't like taxes full stop, but they especially don't like property taxes.

IveSeenTheLight wrote: »

...Much better to replace this with a local income tax.

A genuine local income tax suffers from certain disadvantages. Such as the cost of building the infrastructure necessary to run one in the first place. A property tax on the other hand, is really cheap to run.

antrobus

rash161 wrote: »

All tax is theft under the implied threat of violence...

All property is theft.

Why should governments be any different?

cepheus

Property tax is perhaps the fairest tax along with inheritance; since these are unearned. A proportionate tax would also prevent housing bubbles. No doubt a share of the property could be donated to the government if they don't wish to pay in cash, thereby they don't need to pay anything whilst living.

Bantex_2

cepheus wrote: »

Property tax is perhaps the fairest tax along with inheritance; since these are unearned. A proportionate tax would also prevent housing bubbles. No doubt a share of the property could be donated to the government if they don't wish to pay in cash, thereby they don't need to pay anything whilst living.

Tax based on just owning a property seems unfair, but I can see an argument for taxing any increases in value (above inflation) as income.

molerat

wotsthat wrote: »

Don't know why we're locked into the idea that the proportion we pay towards local services should be linked to the size of our houses.

They tried it once and I quite liked it. The problem is that the unwashed had to pay their fair share and didn't like it, personally my household bill doubled when they ended it.

BillJones

Bantex wrote: »

Because it is simple and easy to collect, even very rich people now tend to pay property taxes whereas most don't pay income tax.

Most rich?

Where do you get that idea from, and what's your lower bound for "rich"?

In the city, we pay on PAYE, so the few of us on £1m+ are pretty much all paying £500k+ income tax annually.

Whenever I've pointed this out to people, they always switch to meaning some "other" vaguely defined rich people.

Bantex_2

BillJones wrote: »

Most rich?

Where do you get that idea from, and what's your lower bound for "rich"?

In the city, we pay on PAYE, so the few of us on £1m+ are pretty much all paying £500k+ income tax annually.

Whenever I've pointed this out to people, they always switch to meaning some "other" vaguely defined rich people.

By "the very rich" I mean those that have very large amounts of wealth. They would tend not to be PAYE employees but usually owners of companies.