[Closed] Tax exemption for castle owners called for by men who own castles : Ukip content

In my work capacity I was talking to a UKiPer last week. Not a stupid man,not someone I would want to spend time with; runs a quite successful small business. The utter crap that he was spouting was just depressing, get past the immigrant bit and he was clueless as to what they actually stand for.

Lord we could be in a mess come the next election.

The established parties are so much better at this kind of corruption. Needs a bit of refinement.

Why do you give these twunts the oxygen of publicity?

Why do you give these twunts the oxygen of publicity?

Whilst in no way supporting UKIP, there is some merit in a tax break (e.g. alleviation of VAT) for [b]restoration/repairs[/b] to listed properties.

They're listed because they're deemed by the state to be of historical/architectural significance and repairs have to be done in a certain manner, and that manner is often not the cheapest way. So, the state 'chipping in' towards those costs seems fair. And, importantly, not all listed buildings are mansions...

"Nigel Farage’s party has promised to exempt historic buildings from VAT at 20 per cent on their building work, in a move that could save wealthy owners of historic mansions and castles hundreds of thousands of pounds. It would be replaced with a rate of 5 per cent."

Now, I dont like the UKIP party but I do think our heritage needs to be protected. I think there is a difference between giving a multi millionaire a tax break and helping to preserve building for next generations.

I think this could be more effectively applied where the owner is also part of the buildings heritage. I'm sure that this heritage brings lots of tourism in to the uk.

To be clear, we are not talking about millionaires in mock Georgian mansions.

According to local papers/village newsletters It seems that round here (Northants) many residents of the sleepy villages and market towns which are normally tory strongholds will be supporting UKIP on the basis of their proposal to scrap HS2.

Its become a single issue election for many and immigration doesn't seem to be the issue. Deluding themselves if they think UKIP actually would scrap HS2 though.

Worth remembering that it was only the evil Tories who made castle alteration works taxable as recently as 2012 😉

An acquaintance of mine is a UKIP member, (can't really call him a friend now 😀 ) and last time I saw him he was full of the fact that they could be the minor partner in a coalition come May next year.

It did make me wonder if Labour and the Tories would form a grand coalition rather than having to deal with these toe rags.

It did make me wonder if Labour and the Tories would form a grand coalition rather than having to deal with these toe rags.

Deep down the tories will be loving it, a far right party getting loads of media attention allows them to move their own policies further to the right with barely any exposure.

Perish the thought that the party of government should be implementing policies [url= http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/apr/28/britain-plutocrats-landed-gentry-shotgun-owners ]subsidising rich landowners[/url] like this?

[i]On Friday the government announced it would raise the subsidy it provides for grouse moors from £30 per hectare to £56. Yes, you read that right: the British government subsidises grouse moors, which are owned by 1% of the 1% and used by people who are scarcely less rich.[/i]

Monbiot has been on this for a while.

http://www.monbiot.com/2014/12/02/breaking-the-silence/

I don't know if this particular policy is good or bad but we will be getting loads of cockwombles making desicion because genuine concerns about immigration have been ignored or ridiculed by the more mainstream politicians who are probably better at the administration of a country but know **** all about life in a shit northern town.

[i]So, the state 'chipping in' towards those costs seems fair. And, importantly, not all listed buildings are mansions...[/i]

Other houses are available, if you cannot afford the upkeep on your house, move to a cheaper property. Alternatively how about if you want part public help with your costs accepting Part public ownership of your property seems fair

Other houses are available, if you cannot afford the upkeep on your house, move to a cheaper property.

Nail on head. If you live in a caaaaaaahncil haaaaaaaarse with a spare bedroom you're a parasite and a drain on the taxpayer. Get yourself to a smaller property, you leech!! Or pay the price!!!!

But If you live in an effing huge stately home, surrounded by all your land. Neither of which you can afford (yet you've still no plan on doing anything as frightful as working for a living) but you believe you've some kind of god-given entitlement too, then its only fair that the taxpayers of the nation should be subsidising you?

😆 Binners will you marry me 😆 that is so perfect.

We all know poor people can't cook a daft rich women told us last week.

Many of these houses are family homes held for generations, the upkeep is very high. The money spent on upkeep is VAT-able and owners of these sorts of houses already pay plenty of taxes that way

binners you've spun a typical yarn from facts of owning a large family home into the idle rich. Many of these big places the land is farmed and the owners work on/let the farm land. See my point above the state isn't subsidising them. If you want all these properties owned by foreigners who visit once or twice a year and pay virtually no taxes then go ahead. Your point on grouse moors is similar. Without these grants the land will just turn into commercial forests with non local spieces planted and then the land destroyed ecologically. Grouse moors provide local jobs and maintain historic skills. This provides the government with taxes. Do you not think that the government provides tax breaks to other businesses including in cities in the North, of course it does.

By the way the reason so many historic buildings (chateaus etc) in France are so derelict is the French have no tax exemptions for them, the owners cannot afford to maintain them so they rot. A lot of the decent ones (with vinyards) are now owned by the Chineese, the houses are locked up and unused.

Nail on head. If you live in a caaaaaaahncil haaaaaaaarse with a spare bedroom you're a parasite and a drain on the taxpayer. Get yourself to a smaller property, you leech!! Or pay the price!!!!

Binners, the problem with the Monbiotised version of the truth about 'grouse moor subsidy' is that it's false

The CAP payments for [b]farming[/b] on moorland have increased from £30 to £56 per Ha

It's got nothing to do with grouse shooting - it's also paid to moorland farmers without grouse shooting on their land, so it's completley inaccurate to say it's got anything to do with subsidising grouse shooting, because there is also the 'active farmer' criteria that limits payments to landowners unless the land is used for farming, so a moor that was used just for shooting would not get the subsidy

Regardless, its under EU rules anyway, what we actually see is re-balancing of subsidies from intensive lowland arable & grassland to upland farming areas, not just grouse moors.

Oh do shut up Jambalya ever heard of the single farm payment, people paying a grand a day to shoot pheasants fed to much to fly etc etc

Yes Binners may be going over the top but so are you, the only poor land owners I know are hill farmers in Wales not some Laird in a castle. Poor is when you are going to a food bank not when you cant afford a new Range Rover.

Wow I am really in a shitty mood today.

Many of these houses are family homes held for generations, the upkeep is very high

Why the **** do Lord and Lady Huffington-Toss think that saying 'well its been in the family since 1638' gives them blanket exemption from the laws of economics? And justification for the rest of us (who don't live in Effing huge houses, with vast amounts of land) paying their way for them.

You can't afford it? Sell it! And move to somewhere you can afford! Like everybody else has too!

You're living beyond your means. A lifestyle you can't afford! Remember Dave lecturing us on a 'Culture of Entitlement'. Well this is it personified!! Only a pathetic legacy of deference makes this kind of thing remotely defensable, when it clearly isn't!

Trust me any "mansion tax" will be a tax primarily on London and the South East and will be nothing to do with mansions, it will be a tax on flats in central London and 4 bedroom family houses in the suburbs (which already pay significant amounts of stamp duty not least after recent changes), it will have numerous unintended consequences which will hurt the middle and working classes particularly.

[i]binners you've spun a typical yarn from facts of owning a large family home into the idle rich. Many of these big places the land is farmed and the owners work on/let the farm land. See my point above the state isn't subsidising them. If you want all these properties owned by foreigners who visit once or twice a year and pay virtually no taxes then go ahead. Your point on grouse moors is similar. Without these grants the land will just turn into commercial forests with non local spieces planted and then the land destroyed ecologically. Grouse moors provide local jobs and maintain historic skills. This provides the government with taxes. Do you not think that the government provides tax breaks to other businesses including in cities in the North, of course it does.[/i]

And, many, many listed building, like I said, are not mansions, they're very 'ordinary' properties.

Anyway don't be coming round here with your explanations that the arguments around this, like many areas of taxation and subsidy, are actually quite nuanced. Rich people are bad; hasn't Binners taught you anything?

And for the record, I think the Mansion Tax is just the next Fox Hunting debate. An utterly pointless waste of everyones time, which is purely symbolic in an equally pathetic 'look at us, we're waging class war on your behalf comrades!' way, and will make no difference whatsoever to the truly stinking rich, who have probably already structured their 'ownership' so they'll never have to pay it anyway. The same way as they all still go fox hunting

Though if you could go into some more detail about how it'll impact the woking classes, I'm all ears.....

Many of these houses are family homes held for generations, the upkeep is very high.

owners of these sorts of houses already pay plenty of taxes that way

I'd be all in favour of a tax break if the houses qualifying for and taking advantage of it are opened to the public. after all, if they're part of the heritage I'm supprting, I should get to have a look.

For info
This

jambalaya - Member

Trust me

Your point on grouse moors is similar. Without these grants the land will just turn into commercial forests with non local spieces planted and then the land destroyed ecologically. Grouse moors provide local jobs and maintain historic skills. This provides the government with taxes.

Personally, I would grant more micro hydro schemes, more planning for small developments. I would shoot 90% of the deer, plant vast new, connected forests of various kinds, and work hard to manage and re-introduce as many of the 'big ticket' wild life as I could - and the supporting species. Then get the tourists in.

I'm not the only one. See the plans for the great Trossachs forest, and how that is slowly reaching out to connect Lomond and Trossachs with Cairngorm NP. See how we are quietly allowing beaver back into the wild. How there are plans for Lynx release, possibly wild cattle in the forest, and to get rid of miles and miles of fencing. There are many who now see the money that wildlife and recreation tourism brings - and are acting on it in spite of the landed gentry claiming to be guardians of the land and having everyone's best interests at heart.

Yes grouse moors/deer forests/sheep farming works in a fashion, but it is not the only way, and I refute the claim that they should recieve such generous tax breaks and subsidies.

interesting post!

Well said Matt!

There are some socialist idiots spouting the politics of envy on this thread.

Nah, they are just useless twunts. 😉

Can you talk us through why objecting to taxpayers subsidising the rich is 'the Politics of Envy' please? Because normally when people spout that stupid, lazy phrase it's when they haven't actually got an argument.

A socialist idiot

Why would I be envious of someone who has a big house but can't afford the upkeep so lets it get run down? I'd prefer to live in a smaller house that's not a dump.

Can you talk us through why objecting to taxpayers subsidising the rich is 'the Politics of Envy' please?

it will have numerous unintended consequences which will hurt the middle and working classes particularly

and who could disagree that taxing the rich will harm the poor....an excellent well made point.

There are some socialist idiots spouting the politics of envy on this thread.

Apart from that minor flaw in your argument its an excellent well made point.
As binners notes its just a lazy insult as you have no means of justifying it. Its an exercise in defend the indefensible

Lets punish the poor for an extra bedroom when there is no other suitable housing and fund the east wing for the wealthy.

Overall on a human level you feel sorry for folk who have owned an estate for generations and now find themselves unable to afford it. However my compassion and sympathy does not extend to subsidising them to live in luxury whilst others go to the food bank to eat. Forgive my "envy" will you 🙄

I've nothing against people owning a bigger house than me, in principal, I just don't want to subsidise it while being told we have to cut benefits and we're all in it together. I don't think that's the politics of envy, that's the politics of not being a ****.

But it's a wee bit more complicated than that, because of this:

nickc - Member

Other houses are available, if you cannot afford the upkeep on your house, move to a cheaper property.

Yeah but... There's not really a huge queue of rich people lining up to buy mouldering listed buildings in the middle of nowhere. So if you want to actually preserve the building, in some cases the best way to do it really will be to leave the current occupier in it and help them out with the costs.

Maybe there's a way to strike a balance... You can receive a tax break on your castle, as long as you guarantee a decent level of public access to the building and grounds.

@matt, we both want the same thing and there are many different ways of contributing to makig it happen, I do think the changes to taxation being muted in Scotland will prove counterproductive.

What I would say is that putting more things under government/local authority control is not the way. We've all witnessed what is happening to The Dark Peak when some CYA numpty is put in charge of "maintenance"

@Northwind, there you make the point about cuts in benefits and services, someone will always say these are more important and cut the resources available to the countryside.

Property taxes will have unintended consequences. They change behvaiour, why buy a £2m house if you are going to pay so much extra tax, just buy a £1m house and 2 investment properties if not more, or spend that money abroad. If you do buy an expensive property that's more money going to the government instead of being spent in the economy, I really don't think the government needs even more money it cannot manage what it has properly.

JY we've been round the bedroom tax before, there aren't enough small (1 and 2 bed) flats available. Our social housing stock has been depleted and needs to be rebuilt. The bedroom tax was the wrong solution to a real problem, too many people living in rented properties which are larger than they need.

too many people living in properties which are larger than they need.

Does anyone else see the irony?

Does anyone else see the irony?

yeah but poor people aren't entitled to a home cos they rent.

I've nothing against people owning a bigger house than me, in principal, I just don't want to subsidise it while being told we have to cut benefits and we're all in it together. I don't think that's the politics of envy, that's the politics of not being a ****.

Agree 100%, although....

Yeah but... There's not really a huge queue of rich people lining up to buy mouldering listed buildings in the middle of nowhere. So if you want to actually preserve the building, in some cases the best way to do it really will be to leave the current occupier in it and help them out with the costs.

If there's no one queuing up to buy them then they'll have to lower the price, just the same as everyone else. Why should a house be kept at an artificially high price just because it's of interest or is stately?

I know, why don't the owners of these national treaures throw open their doors to a new source of revenue - housing the overspill from the council estates in their piles and using the rental revenue to maintain them?

It's beautiful, I can see it now...

'Jayden, CHardonnay we is retirin' to da library for aperafahkinteefs, innit'
'Quite right, Jizzelda dahhling, Smithers will be calling us through for our turkey dinosaurs, presently.'

Castle owners wanting tax breaks on repairing castles?

Whatever next? Outdoor enthusiasts wanting more access to the outdoors?

@chest and @klunk

There is a fundamental difference between someone owning a larger property than they need and someone who is living in one being fully/partially paid for by the state whilst there are families needing a bigger property who cannot be found one or that property costing the local authority a very high rent

We have a social housing crises as too many have been sold off and far too few have been built.

The thought of any historically and/or architecturally important homes being left to crumble appals me. I don't believe that every inhabitant is rolling in dosh and would like to see a middle ground where each one is looked at and treated accordingly.

These homes and their land are very much part of the British landscape and can enhance all our lives even from just passing by when out walking.

Whilst I frequently agree with Binners on political issues I do believe that we need to open our minds on this topic.

Maybe there's a way to strike a balance... You can receive a tax break on your castle, as long as you guarantee a decent level of public access to the building and grounds.

This is how it often works with the added ingredient of the National Trust.

EDIT: Although the whole listings system is a bit of a mess, I own a listed building which means I have to get permission for any alteration from the point it was listed. This bizarrely means that restoring previous features, for instance installing a wood burner, which were removed pre-listing requires permission. In some cases some pretty awful 70s additions are being protected because they happened pre-listing.

I rarely agree with jambalaya but his last post makes a valid point I can agree with working in this area.

I also think we need to take a slightly more pragmatic approach to preserving listed buildings, as they seem to in some European countries. Far better to keep a building sound and in use and 80% historically accurate, rather than insist on extortionate perfection and see it crumble to the ground.

Obviously the 20% you allow them to change will be open to some argument!

jambalaya - Member

@Northwind, there you make the point about cuts in benefits and services, someone will always say these are more important and cut the resources available to the countryside.

It's not "the countryside", it's a whacking great house. Don't try and play the country v city card, apart from being feeble it's just factually wrong, not all listed buildings are in the countryside.

This isn't about city vs country, it's about giving a tax break to someone who lives in a massive house, while taking money away from someone who can't afford their rent.

someone who is living in one being fully/partially paid for by the state whilst there are families needing a bigger property who cannot be found one

Oh hold on this time you have excelled yourself and are contradicting your earlier posts

JY we've been round the bedroom tax before, there aren't enough small (1 and 2 bed) flats available

Still failing the Turing test I am afraid.
You must be trolling on here as no one can be this daft can they ?

The thought of any historically and/or architecturally important homes being left to crumble appals me.

I couldn't give a flying **** about them, I want the state to build for the future, not try and preserve some pastiche false utopia of the past that never really existed anyway.

it's about giving a tax break to [b]someone who lives in a massive house[/b],

Well, the original story seems to be...

UKIP has pledged to cut the tax bills of the owners of [b]listed buildings[/b]

So,

1) not necessarily the occupant
2) not necessarily large, or small, or even a medium sort of size

Just saying, like.

Property taxes will have unintended consequences. They change behvaiour, why buy a £2m house if you are going to pay so much extra tax, just buy a £1m house and 2 investment properties

2) the market has a solution for this and the state doesn't need to interfere: the price of the £2m house will drop until someone who wants to buy it does

3) the market has a solution for this and the state doesn't need to interfere: if a property is listed and maintenance obligations, the market value will fall to reflect those ongoing costs

how is it that all the "socialists" want the market to fix this (supposed) problem and the marketeers want more state intervention?

Because one lot are egalitarians and one lot are elitists.
Your own personal politics/moral compass can let you work out which side is which.

konabunny - Member

how is it that all the "socialists" want the market to fix this

You seem to be confused... Socialists aren't inherently against market forces, they're just against letting the market run the world to the detriment of the people that it depends 100% on to exist.

Meanwhile, capitalists tend to want a free market when it suits them but state support when they demand it, for them and their mates.

[i]Maybe there's a way to strike a balance... You can receive a tax break on your castle[/i]

Pay day loan?

I like your thinking emsz

Socialists aren't inherently against market forces...

the thing is that its likely they would apply the mansion tax using the existing framework for homes held through companies, which have an annual tax charge (annual tax on enveloped dwellings). That has reliefs if the house is open to the public, so I think there are reliefs already likely available to cover the right situations. The UKIP proposals are a step further than this...

I think the sporting rights in Scotland is already addressed by changes coming in next year, where there's a substantial amount of sporting activities going on - the single farm payment then won't be available.

konabunny - Member

yes, they are

No, they're really not. I mean, you even pointed out yourself that socialists are happy to let the market deal with some problems like you thought it was a clever observation, rather than a statement of the obvious.

you even pointed out yourself that socialists are happy to let the market deal with some problems like you thought it was a clever observation