Would taxing property values be fairer than the Council Tax?

rash161

CKhalvashi wrote: »

I'm Soviet-born, and there was a government.

I was young in the days of Gorbachev and it wasn't bad at all; IMO, he did a better job than the current Russian leadership.

In Georgia (the part of the USSR I'm from), everyone has tried to do a good job, but being faced with huge debts from the collapse of the USSR, three wars and nearly 10% of the country internally displaced, there are still many challenges.

In other words, whilst capitalism is largely a good thing, the challenges to get there has been (and probably will be another 20 years) extremely hard.

But it wasn't Communist, since, as you said, there was a government.

Just because people called it Communist, doesn't mean it was.

CKhalvashi

rash161 wrote: »

But it wasn't Communist, since, as you said, there was a government.

Just because people called it Communist, doesn't mean it was.

The leaders, however, weren't democratically elected, but through the Communist Party, run over five year plans, with much trade (about 90%) internal and few exports.

That to me is communism, whether anyone agrees or not.

CK

antrobus

rash161 wrote: »

Yes...especially the Soviet Union, how can you not see that?...

Because I understand what fascism means, and the Soviet Union (for all its many faults) was not fascist.

rash161 wrote: »

...In Communism, there is no government, both of those states have/had governments?

First of all you must have the dictatorship of the proleteriat, then the state withers away.

rash161

CKhalvashi wrote: »

The leaders, however, weren't democratically elected, but through the Communist Party, run over five year plans, with much trade (about 90%) internal and few exports.

That to me is communism, whether anyone agrees or not.

CK

That's fascism

The name of the party is irrelevant, if you want to take party names seriously, Hitler was a Socialist.





Anyway, my point is, tax is theft under the threat of violence, you can agree with the concept and think that it's required but it is theft under the threat of violence.

Generali

chewmylegoff wrote: »

The council doesn't have to come round and take your Vodafone shares' bins out or roll a new tarmac surface over your bonds. There has to be some way of charging people for local services, a property tax seems a reasonable proxy in a society which seems to generally accept that "the rich" should pay more. People didn't seem to like each individual being individually charged for some reason...

But... we already have a property tax based on value. As PN says, it could just do with a couple more bands such on top.

It seems to be an increasingly anachronistic measure of wealth, especially given that you don't pay the tax on the house(s) you own, just the one you live in (holiday homes yadda yadda).

If you want to tax me for being 'rich' (rather than having a high income), tax me on my asset value not on the value of one of my assets.

The thing about Vodaphone not needing to have the bins taken out from outside my house is a good one but rather undermined by the fact that the vast majority of money that the council spends comes from central rather than local taxation.

CLAPTON

Generali wrote: »

It seems to be an increasingly anachronistic measure of wealth, especially given that you don't pay the tax on the house(s) you own, just the one you live in (holiday homes yadda yadda).

If you want to tax me for being 'rich' (rather than having a high income), tax me on my asset value not on the value of one of my assets.

The thing about Vodaphone not needing to have the bins taken out from outside my house is a good one but rather undermined by the fact that the vast majority of money that the council spends comes from central rather than local taxation.

it would be better maybe to divide the current level of council services into actual 'local' ones and national ones and have council tax paying for the local ones.

cepheus

If in doubt bring out the Communist or Fascist card. A worrying number of people on MSE forums have strong tendencies to authoritarianism which is a strong characteristic of Fascism. I'd love to know where Farage would come on this, well to the top right no doubt.

rash161

Generali wrote: »

The thing about Vodaphone not needing to have the bins taken out from outside my house is a good one but rather undermined by the fact that the vast majority of money that the council spends comes from central rather than local taxation.

What if you don't want the council to empty your bins? What if you want to do it yourself? What if you want another company to do it because you feel they'll do a better job and/or do it for a better price?

The same applies for all of the council's services.

In my experience councils are seriously incompetent, it takes them ages to get anything done, their employees are constantly on holiday or in meetings, when they are at work they couldn't get anything done to save their lives.

CLAPTON

rash161 wrote: »

In my experience councils are seriously incompetent, it takes them ages to get anything done, their employees are constantly on holiday or in meetings, when they are at work they couldn't get anything done to save their lives.

that's because the employees only work according to their abilities and not to meet the needs of the 'customers'

wotsthat

antrobus wrote: »

Indeed we do. At some point in the future some government will simply have to bite the bullet and have a revaluation. (They managed to do one in Wales without inspriring revolution.) Presumably adding a couple of bands at the same time might well generate an extra billion or two overall, which could be used to soften the impact elsewhere.

The purpose of a revaluation and adding bands would be to change the relative proportion of tax paid by each band.

If they just want to generate more council tax there's already a simple way to do this.