Rumours of property tax spark backlash ahead of Autumn Budget

Reply to the comment left by Sally Robinson at 23/08/2025 – 08:21
I can’t see much detail of the proposal online so its hard to comment but from what I can see of the proposal it’s not been thought through. There would be a lot of collateral damage…although, like the recent changes to employers NI, the minimum wage and proposals that will make taking on employees more risky for employers that’s generally true of what this government does.

Eg. You have a band D, 3-bedroom property valued at £400,000. You extend the property to provide 4-bedrooms and spend £30-50,000 on energy efficiency improvements such that it provides extra accommodation at EPC band A and it’s value becomes £510,000. Under what I can see of what have been reported as Rachel Reeves’ latest (rather desperate) looking proposals you’re not going to get a big thank you for doing this are you?

Or, supposing I have a 4-bedroom house that’s just been valued at £500,000 at EPC band C, B, or A. There’s no VAT on new-build but there is on anything else. So all of a sudden it makes sense for me to demolish it and build two new 2 bedroom houses worth £300,000 each. There’s an environmental cost for me to do that and no net-gain for the market.

All labour’s policies and proposals are blunt instruments with a lot of collateral damage. Their proposals exacerbate the shortage of housing and are environmentally damaging. They also store up big financial and other liabilities for future generations.

Reply to the comment left by Sally Robinson at 20/08/2025 – 11:32
I had a look around…I still can’t find much detail on the proposals. The i paper carried a bit of news on this link below which probably does equate to ‘everybody south of Bedford’:

https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/money/property-and-mortgages/areas-where-possible-property-taxes-would-hit-hardest-mapped-3877446?srsltid=AfmBOorGpOdVWG0ZREw204igf7fhGDDeRvwLfx5JHPQWscBxqGpMVEQd

But today, everybody south of Bedford is probably also facing a water shortage and the i paper also covered water shortages here:

https://inews.co.uk/inews-lifestyle/water-shortage-collecting-rain-germany-3874327?srsltid=AfmBOopHDTcJR8FYnPgc8cXFa0xPvIYaWTKTzKQImKe9TpuvGfyjVOOX

This article “Britain’s running out of water – so why aren’t we collecting rain like Germany?” covers the fact that other nations incentivise property owners to harvest rainwater, something topical at the moment anywhere south of Bedford.

But where are the labour tax incentives for property owners to harvest and store either water or power? We just seem to be back in 1976 with Harold Wilson, James Callaghan and no new ideas…or at least no ideas that are sustainable.

I think labour need to do something socially useful now, like change the party name to the Offshore Finance and Off-Balance Sheet Party. That way, when it went to the ballot-box in a couple of years’ time the electorate would be offered what is actually “on the tin”. And they could go to grandad and say “..hey grandad, tell me about the 1970s and how the UK had to go to the IMF for a bailout at the same time that the Norwegians were starting to build up one of the biggest sovereign wealth funds in the world.”

Unless labour give up the centralised control-freakery and decide to empower citizens, property owners and businesses to store water, generate and store energy and grow the economy (60% of which is in the small business sector), then what’s going on now is just as unsustainable as what was going on in 1976.

In fact, what is going on now is even more unsustainable because in 2025 you don’t have to be a rock-star or film star to relocate part of your business or the financing of your business to an off-shore location.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79O_Nv0RFXs

Here’s the tip of the iceberg of money that is badly spent on the ongoing genocide, love the way it says passenger handling.. RAF military planes.. the UK government has awarded a £66 million contract for a new Passenger Handling Facility at RAF Akrotiri as part of the APOLLO Programme to upgrade infrastructure and support ongoing operations in the region

Reply to the comment left by Disgrunteld Landlady at 30/08/2025 – 11:06
Without going into the rights and wrongs of whether we need extra defensive capability at Akrotiri (because I simply do not know enough about it to know) this is itself an interesting question.

We need lots more residential accommodation. UK law allows me to invest my SIPP funds in commercial property, but not residential property…not even at Band C +. I could invest my SIPP funds in companies bombing the Yemen, making luxury cars that use large amounts of petrol, oil-drilling companies, companies that sell cheap cigarettes to third-world countries, or companies that get UK children addicted to vapes. But I can’t directly invest my SIPP funds in putting a roof over somebody’s head in the UK.

UK law could allow me to invest in residential property at EPC band C or above, thereby at least not penalising me for investing in residential property, but it doesn’t. Instead, UK law allows a limited company invested in residential property to offset its finance costs against rents…but not me, as a small portfolio landlord. Although as a small portfolio landlord I’m penalised for housing people in the UK, I could legally invest in companies supplying methadone or alcohol to people in the UK.

Furthermore, UK law is regressive because as a small portfolio landlord, the only thing that I can do legally to offset the extra tax burden being imposed on me by government is to increase the rents to tenants. Like Donald Trump’s tariffs, these kinds of policies result in higher prices for consumers and typically they affect consumers at the lower end of the economic spectrum.

No competent government would do this.