Experts say Scottish Government’s property tax is ‘flawed’

Shakethedisease

Thrugelmir wrote: »

But preferred not to highlight the story to others........;)

Ignoring bad news simply makes those that endlessly spin look stupid.

It comes to something when one is getting called stupid because they don't subscribe to the Times. Someone posted the link to the entire print version on Twitter. I read it there, you're free to do the same if you follow the journo's on twitter.

And anyway, this isn't bad news. It's 100% run of the mill totally normal and predictable repetition stuff from most newspapers when it comes any SNP policy from the last decade. It's nothing out of the ordinary. *shrugs*

Shakethedisease

michaels wrote: »

23,350, only 8k higher than in rUK....so there we have it, the good burgers of Scotland are so prosperous that eight thousand pounds is an 'only'

There's not a lot of people who buy half a million pound houses in Scotland. Let alone second homes costing that much. I suppose it might seem a bit weird to folks from places that can only afford 1 bedroom ex council house flats for the same money But it's a different market up here which requires different tailored policies. Is just how it is.

michaels

Shakethedisease wrote: »

There's not a lot of people who buy half a million pound houses in Scotland. Let alone second homes costing that much. I suppose it might seem a bit weird to folks from places that can only afford 1 bedroom ex council house flats for the same money But it's a different market up here which requires different tailored policies. Is just how it is.

Although the 8k extra was for a PPR not a second home.

I can't understand why population pressure in Scotland has not led to the sort of property prices seen in the SE - why on earth would so many want to live at such great expense in the SE instead of living for half the price in Scotland?

Shakethedisease

michaels wrote: »

Although the 8k extra was for a PPR not a second home.

I can't understand why population pressure in Scotland has not led to the sort of property prices seen in the SE - why on earth would so many want to live at such great expense in the SE instead of living for half the price in Scotland?

I expect they want to live quite near where they currently work. Most people do.

michaels

Shakethedisease wrote: »

I expect they want to live quite near where they currently work. Most people do.

So why have so many new jobs 'just happened' in London and the SE and not in Scotland?

GreatApe

michaels wrote: »

So why have so many new jobs 'just happened' in London and the SE and not in Scotland?

And this is despite not only much higher house prices but much much higher business rents and business rates and higher staff wages

antrobus

Shakethedisease wrote: »

I read this story days ago in the Times. I'll leave it to someone else who covered this story three days ago. The Scotsman is well behind, they have to be on the ball a lot quicker than this if they're to gain any traction from politically spun stories debunked with checkable sources days before they publish them.

You might not like the source ( Wings ), but at least he's given a proper analysis and context. One which will probably be read by about 30 x more people if not more than the poor failing Scotsman or the behind the paywall Times will.

Oh, Gordon Bennet, you still don't understand.:)

But then I suppose that might be expected given that you operate under the misapprehension that 'Wings' is a 'source', and one that actually gives no relevant analysis or context at all.

The only context and analysis that matters is this one;

A Review of Tax Revenue Forecasting Models for the Scottish Housing Market
http://www.gov.scot/Publications/2017/04/5182/1

This is what it is;

This technical report was commissioned by the Scottish Government in response to recommendations by the Scottish Fiscal Commission to explore the modelling options for forecasting the Scottish housing market, which in turn is required for forecasting residential Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT) revenues. It provides a comparative evidence base for forecasters to decide whether to change their current approaches, and how to proceed should they decide to do so. The findings of the report may also have a more general application in markets other than housing and for taxes other than LBTT.

Bascially it seems that, the UK govt decided to devolve the responsibility for SDLT to Scotland. The boys and girls in Holyrood set up a replacement tax, LBTT, and had a guess as to how much money would come in. It apparently turned out to be the wrong guess. I wouldn't he too hard on them. It was their first go. And I strongly suspect that they knew that it wasn't a very good guess, because that is why they commissioned a report from some (presumably) super-smart economists down in London to advise them on how to make a better guess in future.

This is because, whilst it's easy enough to spend money when you get sent a big wodge of money in the form of a block grant, things get trickier when you have to actually raise the money by setting your own taxes. You need some kind of forecasting model that gives you an idea of how much money you can expect.

IveSeenTheLight

antrobus wrote: »

Yes, very likely.

Except that this review isn't about the mechanism for taxing property, it's about the mechanism the Scottish government adopted for forecasting how much this tax would raise.

The Scottish government asked some economist type persons to have a look at the mechanism they used, and said economist type persons have said it's b0ll0x. This might mean that the tax itself is also 'flawed', or it might just mean they have made some 'wrong' assumptions. I don't know. I haven't read the review. And I'm not going to. Life's too short to worry about the details of Scottish property taxes. Unless you happen to live in Scotland.



Indeed I do. But it also appears that the messengers are being shot be people who don't even understand the message.:)

I've not dug into the detail, but it appears that the Scottish government has commissioned experts to look into the system and why the revenues were not as anticipated and they are being shot because the outcome is detailing what the baseline already know is.

Surely this is a positive to look into the detail and consider a solution rather than not commissioning the report

System

antrobus wrote: »

Let's shoot the messenger, eh?:)

Did you not bother reading?

Everyone on here is doing this at the moment, convenient deflection tactics usually.

westernpromise

It's actually quite funny and Osbornian though. London says SDLT raised X million in Scotland so we'll devolve it. The SNP being tax-grabbing left-wing spendthrifts promptly alter it to suit their hate-the-rich agenda and as a result have no idea how much tax their revamped version will raise, and it could, hilariously, be less than before!