At what level of house value should people start being taxed from then?
250k, 500k, £1m? £2m?
And you could have someone earning £500k a year renting a cracking flat in London paying sod-all.
What’s this rich getting richer bollocks, when it comes to living in your main residence?
Your house may/ may not be going up in value , but it doesn’t put any of that in your pocket does it ?
If you make half a million pounds on your home, those earnings are untaxed. You may merrily tick along thinking you’re not rich, but you are. Ask someone who owns no property, has no decent pension fund, and is facing higher and higher taxes despite owning very little and having next to no disposable income.
Anyway, no politician dare tackle this, because the reaction from older voters is exactly as we’re seeing here. ‘Hands off the increasing capital in my house, tax everything else and everyone else’.
What normal person makes half a million on their home!?
You can tax me as much as you want as long as there’s a guarantee there will be someone to wipe my arse and wash my bollocks when I’m housed in a nice care home when I’m older. I have no faith ANY government would do that though.
Most peoples home is their care-plan.
What normal person makes half a million on their home!?
Those with normal homes not earning them large increases in their capital would pay little or no wealth tax. The wealthy doing well out of their property would be the ones paying more. Wealth tax wouldn’t hit the “normal person”, it would be a tax on the wealthy earning large amounts from their capital.
Anyway, this is never going to happen, because people see the money they earn from owning their property as untouchable when it comes to tax. No politician would dare go to the polls proposing to change this. So let’s stop talking about it and get back to what is actually happening.
You chucked the idea out there! 🤣
What normal person makes half a million on their home!?
its not hard down here. I bought a house for £500k 7 years ago. at the current rate of progress it would have been £1mm before 2025. Now, its likely that prices will drop in the next couple of years, so it will take longer than that, but thats just the market.
To give you an idea of what £500k would buy you today in our village (and might make you half a million in the next 15 years)..
https://www.rightmove.co.uk/properties/128193587#/?channel=RES_BUY
What normal person makes half a million on their home!?
Already made more than that on our house, although obvs all in theory as we can't 'cash in' as we live there. Paid £91k in '98, pre Truss houses in our street were going for £800k. Post Truss those that were for sale have been pulled as the market has ground to a hault.
But that would not qualify as normal to me.
Purchased our house in 98 for 70k its now worth 150k.
I consider it a nice area and a great place to live aswell.
Utterly bonkers the uk housing market, and shows just how dripping in money the uk actually is
Get ready for council tax increases.
If a council provides social care, they will be able to impose an increase of upto 5% without a local referendum.
If they don't provide social care it's 3%.
I think it's safe to say increases will be at, or near, the max.
For some people, this budget will be death by a thousand cuts - freezing allowances so fiscal drag, limited supported for energy costs, fuel tax levy relief possibly being removed in April; add that to rampant inflation and wage increases failing to keep pace.
Unless there is a general fall in prices, the current high prices if they don't rise further will become baked in and cease to influence the inflation rate over the next 12 months.
This will be a continuing but hidden pressure on the cost of living unless and until incomes rise considerably.
To give you an idea of what £500k would buy you today in our village (and might make you half a million in the next 15 years)..
Nice….if you like the urban office look 😉
It looks like a GP surgery.
IMO the UK should do more of this kind of thing, we need the experience!
Well maybe they could start with upgrading the Victorian infrastructure that is what we laughably refer to as the railways in the north as we literally watch it fall apart.
The long promised upgrades to which have all been scrapped to pay for an obscenely expensive commuter line from Birmingham to London (let’s face it… nobody with anything between their ears ever thought it would make it north of Brum)
Investing in rail networks is perfect ‘levelling up’ It allows poorer people to commute into prosperous areas.
I do hope the common peasantry of the midlands will be suitably grateful and doff their caps accordingly to their betters as they arrive in the golden city on the hill
These things benefit both ends
All evidence shows that they really don’t. Have a look what happened in Spain. Its literally a one way street
HS2 was always a ridiculous white elephant, but given the present economic climate it’s complete and utter madness
The HS2 business case was never well explained to the public but it's absolutely essential. Build that in full. Connect it in to Northern Powerhouse Rail. You open up a shitload of land, unlock masses of economic potential across the north of England, have future connectivity options to Scotland and north Wales and you free up the existing rail lines (East Coast and West Coast mainlines) to more regional / stopping services and more freight services.
All of that helps remove car and lorry traffic from the roads, aids in decarbonisation and does a lot less environmental damage than any of the road building projects.
HS2 has suffered massively from this "ooh the ancient woodland" which I absolutely get but it's less than the average year of road building.
We have to stop building roads and invest in rail. HS2 is not a white elephant at all, it's the absolute essential backbone of the next 100 years of rail in the UK.
The fact it's been badly managed from the start is just standard Tory. Honestly, if we'd have got the Chinese in to build it, it'd be up and running by now.
The Leeds/Sheffield end has already been dropped. They’re just biding their time until the Manchester section is binned too
It’s just a ludicrously expensive commuter line from Birmingham to London that will end up costing us all what? 120 billion? 150 billion? More?
The dictionary definition of a white elephant, the insane cost of which is just obscene in the present climate
Honestly, if we’d have got the Chinese in to build it, it’d be up and running by now.
Good point, they built the transcontinental railroad in the United States in no time at all.
The Leeds/Sheffield end has already been dropped. They’re just biding their time until the Manchester section is binned too
Yeah but guess what? It'll still be there in 20, 30, 50 years' time when our eventual socialist utopia decides to press on and get the next bit done.
It might allow workers to get from Birmingham to London, but it will also allow customers to get from London to Birmingham, which will help businesses in Birmingham. When you set up many kinds of business, you want to be accessible to potential customers for face-to-face dealings. That's why lots of businesses set up in London because you can easily get to other businesses with whom you want to deal. Better transport links effectively make places closer together, so you have a larger potential area from which to draw customers. A friend of mine ran a digital agency and lost many potential customers once they learned they were in Cardiff and not London.
Ironically, if HS2 continued further North, the cost per mile may have been less!
A lot of Victorian architecture has remained due to a very conservative attitude towards it.
We would certainly benefit from it being replaced when the time comes e.g. replacing old manual signalling with electronic, changing to continuous welded rail, rebuilding stations instead of restoring etc.
You can get from brum to London in no time hs2 won't speed that up much. Different argument thou.
Thay should have started in Manchester and worked down.
Manchester to Milton Keynes would have been a better idea
but it will also allow customers to get from London to Birmingham, which will help businesses in Birmingham.
Aah bless.
It's about speed AND capacity.
HS2 in it's current configuration of London to Birmingham is pointless; it doesn't link to anything other than Victorian-era lines.
Whatever happened to the Integrated Rail Strategy?
Where is the UK's rail transport vision - it's long-term strategic plan for the next 50 - 100
years?
Rail freight? Other than Stratford (London) and Daventry how few other international rail freight terminals/terminii are there in the UK?
No strategic vision, no creativity.
If it’s only going to Birmingham why is there a load of work going on north of Birmingham near Burton on Trent?
Whatever happened to the Integrated Rail Strategy?
It got levelled down, like everything else promised to the North by the Tories. We’re all shocked and surprised.
Yes kelvin, I know.
My comment was to make a point.
I was agreeing with your point. Or repeating it. Agreeing with you anyway.
As I said when Binners brought HS2 up, the problem isn’t building HS2, the problem is stopping there and not getting on with the rest of the new lines that were planned.
Whatever happened to the Integrated Rail Strategy?
As @kelvin says, it promised a lot then it was delayed again and again and when it was finally published (2 years later than promised) it contained a load of vague promises and no actual substance other than cutting out most of the original ambitions.
The northern leaders reacted with anger and dismay over the news - it was made worse because Boris had stood there on various northern stations banging on about Northern Powerhouse and levelling up and Great British Railways and "world leading" and then the north found out that it'd be getting a 4th hand intercity train and some bits of electrification.
HS2 is one of those things that the less you build, the less it makes sense. Build it in full and the actual value of it becomes clear. Build a quarter of it and it's pointless.
Imagine building a cycle lane that ducks onto various pavements then finishes at a main junction. It's shit, it's pointless, no one will use it.
Now build it properly using safe segregated lanes to navigate across the junction and actually go somewhere useful like from the residential area to the school and suddenly it's all worthwhile.
but it will also allow customers to get from London to Birmingham, which will help businesses in Birmingham
Yeah, the problem is definitely going to be those poor businesses in Brum unable to keep up with the insatiable demand that the high speed, golden age railway stampede from the capital will usher in
Meanwhile, everywhere north of Birmingham…
Meanwhile, everywhere north of Birmingham…
At least those run regularly and stop often, unlike HS2! 🤣
Stopping services could be increased on existing lines once HS2 opens… but no change North of Crewe in the deserted lands.
Spineless ******!
https://twitter.com/faisalislam/status/1593204069669212161?s=46&t=4d4eYqXM3mfgU2409ObffQ
HS2 is a nonsense
Northern Powerhouse rail or whatever it's called is another nonsense
There is no tangible benefit for the North in my y lifetime. HS2 is like Crossrail, we've all paid for it but over 80% of the population will never use it
Fun fact someone I know is driving/working the tunnel machine under long itchington. 3 years and they are packing up back to Hinckley C. No plans past Litchfield apparently.
Shocking they are ahead of schedule
There is no tangible benefit for the North in my y lifetime. HS2 is like Crossrail, we’ve all paid for it but over 80% of the population will never use it
That doesn't mean it shouldn't be built.
CrossRail, as a project, has been in the books since the 1980's in one form or another. Idea, ambition, design work, business case and so on. It was approved in 2007 and then took another 2 years to start construction.
There are plenty of people who were around in the 90's and early 00's who won't have lived to see the opening of it this year but that doesn't mean it shouldn't have been built. It's already up on predicated use and budget, forecast to start turning a profit in 2023.
This is the problem with politics, it's very short-termist which leads to big projects with long lead times being very badly managed because no-one can see further than the next election. Everyone (including the public and the press) want everything immediately.
No the problem is the inequality. We need infrastructure but all of the investment is to serve the SE thus perpetuating the inequality
How does Marjorie in Darlington benefit from Crossrail or HS2? She's lucky if there's a bus once an hour to get her across town to the GP.
It's been shown time and time again that the cash for HS2 could deliver tangible benefits for the entire country in smaller projects that could improve the lives of many people. Anyone who uses a train that goes East-West anywhere in the country knows how crap they are.
Why not give the whole country free high speed broadband ? Why not start with upgrading Liverpool to Hull?
Hunt missed an opportunity to simplify the income tax rules yesterday: when dropping the threshold for the additional rate he could have also increased the higher rate from 40% to 60% and done away with the personal allowance taper. Same effect, easier to understand, but likely even worse headlines.
he could have also increased the higher rate from 40% to 60% and done away with the personal allowance taper. Same effect, easier to understand, but likely even worse headlines.
it wouldn't have had the same effect at all. the only way to have the same effect would be to have a 60% rate but only from 100k-120k (or thereabouts), then back to a 45% rate.
It’s been shown time and time again that the cash for HS2 could deliver tangible benefits for the entire country in smaller projects that could improve the lives of many people. Anyone who uses a train that goes East-West anywhere in the country knows how crap they are.
Oh I don't disagree - you can argue about how badly it's been planned, for sure. But we need this as just one part of our national infrastructure, and it's important. Not a white elephant, nor is Crossrail for that matter in my opinion.
Why not give the whole country free high speed broadband ? Why not start with upgrading Liverpool to Hull?
Can you remember what happened to Labour's Northern support when they proposed things like this? Great ideas, and very sensible IMO but there certainly isn't the political will from the current government, or much support from the electorate for change.
What normal person makes half a million on their home!?
Just checked and 2-bed flats in Reading, a place famous only for ketted up teenagers, being the butt of Ricky Gervais jokes and being 25minutes form London. Are between £250k and £550k.
So the answer is probably "people who bought a flat in Reading 20 years ago".
A fairly average newbuild detached in the suburbs is getting on for three quarters of a million. So yes I absolutely think the owners (including myself) should be paying 20% tax on those profits.
But we need this as just one part of our national infrastructure
What is this 'national infrastructure' you refer to?
A high speed rail network covering the whole country? Like people are always admiring in other countries?
it wouldn’t have had the same effect at all. the only way to have the same effect would be to have a 60% rate but only from 100k-120k (or thereabouts), then back to a 45% rate.
Which is what I meant: increase the higher rate, leave the additional rate alone. Apologies if it wasn't clear.
