UK Landlord Forum / Life

Which do you hate more?

Stamp duty is second only to inhertiance tax when it comes to unpopularity, a new survery has found.

Research by Co-operative Financial Services has found that the housing levy is the second most hated tax in the country, with 23 per cent waiting to abolish it altogether.


What do you think? Do you loathe stamp duty? I must admit, I agree with which order the results came out in. Inheritance tax is criminal, and deserves to be #1 on the list.

I think the original idea of inheritance tax was to improve social mobility, by stopping absurdly rich families from guaranteeing their offspring a work-free life by giving them more money than they could ever dream to spend. By this token, the rich stay rich and the poor don't really stand any chance of catching up.

I don't know if I agree that this works or that its even the right way to tackle it. Surely supporting free post-16 education and tackling social deprivation would be better ways. But if they absolutely have to keep it, the limit should definitely be increased; £300,000 is the average price of a house these days!

The others I must confess I don't know much about - stamp duty is a percentage of your house sale over £125K when its sold isn't it? Seems harsh, and again the limits haven't been increased in line with inflation in the housing market, more Gordon stealth tax. Depressing.

I think capital gains tax deserves a place, mind, because basically when your capital 'gains' it is doing so as a direct result of inflation, but somehow the government seem to think you're not entitled to keep up. Its totally counterintuitive to enterprising culture to say to people "come on, try and profit" then slam an absurd tax on anything they succeed in making.

Most of all, what I'd like to see is the books of exactly where my tax goes. I have a theory that the government and local government isn't a very financially efficient organisation, and I'd like to see on paper exactly why all these taxes are necessary. Take flights for instance - the cost of a flight these days is sometimes lower than the tax on it. How can that be? The flight company have to buy the planes, service the planes, staff the planes, eqiup them with fuel, arrange with the different airports to get in and out of the country, train people, manage their retail sales of tickets and arrangements with travel agents ... and they can do all that for less-per-passenger than the government charges in tax. What's going on?

V

I understand the purpose of inhertance tax, I just don't agree with it. My problem with inheritance tax is that it's taxing money that has already been taxed!!

If someone works hard their entire life just to secure the future of their children- what's the harm? Just seems unfair to me.

Stamp duty is the tax you pay when purchasing property, not selling.

I hate um both, but i supose if i where to chose which one i hated more it would be stamp duty, at least with inheritance tax you dont mind so much as you are getting something you didnt have, if that makes sense.

Yes, I guess to be fair inheritance is something you don't "work for", someone else worked for it and now you're just getting it.

For balance, the dangerous myth that counteracts my argument about encouraging enterprise is that everyone can succeed. If everyone has succeeded, we're all in the same place relative to one another that we were in the first place - and this probably doesn't correlate to most people's definition of success. Its like parents all wanting their children to go to the best schools ... well, much as it may be a bitter pill to swallow, if every little johnny went to "the best school" it probably wouldn't be the best any more. So while I would encourage policies to reduce taxation and encourage enterprise - or at least to improve the honesty, visibility and transparency of taxation - beware anyone who tells you that if you vote for them "you will be richer", because most of us are not special, and its impossible for all of us average joe's to 'pull ahead' ... an environment that allows more people to win must by definition also allow more people to comparatively lose.


V

Success for me is little Johney who didnt go to the best school, but who made it regardless, this is a true success story for me.
People in power are funny little beings aint they always wanting whats best for the majority but infact making for the minority. clever that !

Well exactly, I find the whole "omg I have to move house to get my child into a school at the top of the league tables" thing somewhat sickening tbh, because it demonstrates an immense lack of faith in one's children. Of course if you can its great, but to take it to the lengths some people do - to the extent that its clear to the children what is going on - and to have such wringing of hands if it turns out to not work can't be healthy for the children involved. I say this as someone who did a 40 mile commute for just over a year to get from the family home (near a grammar school that closed) to one of the then-best-performing grant maintained schools in the country. It was great that my parents were prepared to do that and that I was prepared to do it as well ('cause it was trying sometimes) but it probably wouldn't have done me too much harm had I gone to one of the other fairly decent schools closer by. By the time I did my A-levels they'd had a bad Ofsted report anyway!! (they won't let me in again HARHAR)


V

I think folk who want to send there kids to the best schools do it for their own selfish reasons,
#1 they are to stipid themselves to educate there kids
#2 they have no time to spend with their kids to help
#3 they need to keep up with the Joneses
#4 they want their kids to do well, so they can help out when the parents get older.

lol