Milliband promises rent controls

buglawton

Has anyone calculated how much the govt takes per year in taxes on landlord profits and capital gains? (rental property sales attract CGT while owner occupier property sales do not).

It would be nice if the govt was ring fencing/ploughing this back into facilitating new housing.

Miliband's new policy may actually reduce the overall rental sector tax take.

cells

buglawton wrote: »

Has anyone calculated how much the govt takes per year in taxes on landlord profits and capital gains? (rental property sales attract CGT while owner occupier property sales do not).

It would be nice if the govt was ring fencing/ploughing this back into facilitating new housing.

Miliband's new policy may actually reduce the overall rental sector tax take.

There is no good in "ploughing back into housing" while stamps are limited all it does it increase the cost of stamps further

As for the tax take on landlords, its very likely that tenants if not spending that money on rent will spend it on something else. and a lot of things have VAT charged on them while rent doesnt so its likely to up tax take.

Also an increase in house building is an increase in aggregate demand which would increase tax take considerably.

If 200,000 additional homes a year were built it would result in a £60B boost to GDP (if not more) which would result in the region of 1 million more jobs and some £30B in additional taxes

Thrugelmir

buglawton wrote: »

Has anyone calculated how much the govt takes per year in taxes on landlord profits and capital gains? (rental property sales attract CGT while owner occupier property sales do not).

HMRC has had a dedicated unit to investigating residential property letting for some 18 months now. Such is the extent of undeclared rental income.

buglawton

For this landlord/tenants who use the official deposit schemes, and for property's sales CGT, these taxes must be among the very easiest to police.

Cash in hand transactions with dodgy landlords and unsafe properties, well that's the hard part. It would be interesting to see what this dedicated unit has cost the general taxpayer and how much revenue it's actually raised. I don't recall reading of one single case of property or assets being seized due to property tax evasion.

My suspicion is that this dedicated unit is stats driven and picks on easy targets, similar to the way that honest solvent motorists raise the most revenue for the traffic police.

antrobus

IronWolf wrote: »

Great plan.....

Or you could just, you know, build more homes

Why yes, the entire plan seems to consist of (1) Government introduces rent controls, followed by (2) Government realises this has made things worse, and so builds so more homes.

It does occur to me that, rather than waste all that time and effort convincing the government to adopt the first policy, you might as well cut to the chase and expend that same effort on persuading them that the second really is the solution.

antrobus

cells wrote: »

...Increasing cramming and overcrowded homes..

Do you have any evidence supporting that assertion?

There is certainly no indication that household size is any different in private rented as opposed to owner occupied homes.

antrobus

buglawton wrote: »

....My suspicion is that this dedicated unit is stats driven and picks on easy targets, similar to the way that honest solvent motorists raise the most revenue for the traffic police.

According to HMRC, there were fewer than 500,000 taxpayers registered as owning second properties, when there should be 1,500,000. Which would be quite a big difference.

Thrugelmir

cells wrote: »

it it better than not having 500,000 employed in building more homes?

There's already a skills shortage. Take 3-5 years to train and recruit even a fraction of the number you are suggesting.

Just like nurses. The NHS holds jobfairs in Eire as not enough suitably qualified people to fill vacant posts.

buglawton

antrobus wrote: »

According to HMRC, there were fewer than 500,000 taxpayers registered as owning second properties, when there should be 1,500,000. Which would be quite a big difference.

Is that because the tenant count is much larger than the landlord count?
Maybe there are 3 tenants in each property.

antrobus

buglawton wrote: »

Is that because the tenant count is much larger than the landlord count?
Maybe there are 3 tenants in each property.

I believe that the numbers are based on a comparison between Land Registry records and Council Tax records. LR records identify individuals owning more than one property; CT records reveal that there are other people living at these properties. There are of course, perfectly reasonable explanations as to why this could be the case, without giving rise to undeclerared income. But if you don't ask, you won't know.

It seems that the Let Property campaign has so far raked in £20m from voluntary disclosures. There will be more to come.

http://www.landlordzone.co.uk/press-releases/let-property-campaign-recovers-20-million-in-unpaid-tax