Soldato
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https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/165011
Please vote lets see if we can get the required amount of signatures.
Long walk, short pier.
Introduce Land Tax or similar reform so super rich can't avoid Inheritance Tax
- Thread starter johnloo
- Start date
Long walk, short pier.
Man of Honour
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- 29 Mar 2003
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- Stoke on Trent
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/165011
Please vote lets see if we can get the required amount of signatures.
Since these petitions never do anything can I instead change my Facebook profile picture or I could post in Comic Sans with Italics and Bold and underlined
"Inheritance" tax is a double (or more) tax. You are taxed when you receive the money, quite possibly when you buy the asset, and then when you die the government slap another 40% tax on your assets.
The Inheritee isn't taxed at all on that asset., otherwise someone on £5k a year receiving £10k from a £1m estate would pay a different rate of tax as someone on £1m a year receiving the rest of the estate.
Unless of course you are a proponent of a flat tax system, in which case it's still not "fair", but at least it's fairer than most taxes (such as income tax).
How can you be taxed when you no longer exist..?
Your estate still does.
And the recipients of the estate certainly aren't taxed, so it's not an inheritance tax...
So that means one persons money has been taxed two to three times by the end of it.
I'm a minimum wage flunkey and I own land. How the hell would I pay more tax on it? Or should I not be able to own land because I'm a peasant?
Taxation is a much more complicated issue than many people make it out to be.
I dislike the whole idea of inheritance tax, let alone using it in a punitive manner. Taxing income is fine with me, but taxing income and then taxing what was bought with that income and then taxing the income from what's left isn't fine with me. Taxing things that generate no income isn't fine with me either.
When I die, one of my relatives will get my house and the bit of land it's on. Why should they have to sell it for whatever they can get for a quick sale and give 40% of the value to the state? They certainly won't be able to afford to pay that amount without selling it. Or should the state seize all of it because they can't pay up immediately? State seizure of assets after death occured quite a lot in the past and, unsurprisingly, it made rich people richer and poor people poorer.
Taxation is a much more complicated issue than many people make it out to be.
I dislike the whole idea of inheritance tax, let alone using it in a punitive manner. Taxing income is fine with me, but taxing income and then taxing what was bought with that income and then taxing the income from what's left isn't fine with me. Taxing things that generate no income isn't fine with me either.
When I die, one of my relatives will get my house and the bit of land it's on. Why should they have to sell it for whatever they can get for a quick sale and give 40% of the value to the state? They certainly won't be able to afford to pay that amount without selling it. Or should the state seize all of it because they can't pay up immediately? State seizure of assets after death occured quite a lot in the past and, unsurprisingly, it made rich people richer and poor people poorer.
That's silly.
Someone that works on average won't even have any IHT to pay due to the £325,000 per individual allowance E.g. £650,000 for couples. Plus there is legislation adding a further increase for main residences.
That doesn't even take into account basic planning such as the 7 year survival rule, small gifts of £3,000 P/A, gifts out of unused regular income or the fact Pensions since the 2014 budget changes are fully IHT free.
Saying we should tax land as a way of getting round IHT planning is completely bonkers.
That's silly.
Someone that works on average won't even have any IHT to pay due to the £325,000 per individual allowance E.g. £650,000 for couples. Plus there is legislation adding a further increase for main residences.
That doesn't even take into account basic planning such as the 7 year survival rule, small gifts of £3,000 P/A, gifts out of unused regular income or the fact Pensions since the 2014 budget changes are fully IHT free.
Saying we should tax land as a way of getting round IHT planning is completely bonkers.
They will pay lots under IHT they will lose the home past down to them, LVT would eliminate or greatly reduce tax on your labour, it would over night eliminate tax loop holes for the rich, productive use of capital etc...
why have you quoted him then totally ignored the point he made
the vast majority of people won't pay inheritance tax at all as he's pointed out
no it likely won't
granted people won't likely be able to escape it through tax planning but if this was inspired by the Duke of Westminster's trust it would seem to be rather flawed... for starters you can't just target the tax at him, it has to be made workable ergo charged at a rate that people can afford to pay in general... unless you propose that all private property is confiscated by the state. that means you've inherently got a cap on how much you can realistically charge people... this amount would likely be easily payable from the income earned by the Duke's trust who run rather a successful property business (frankly if it wasn't affordable for professional landlords/developers like them it wouldn't be realistic for most of the rest of the population either).
The people who'd lose out are people not actively making money from their property/land.i.e. not people like the Duke's trust.
Fancy turning farmland into a wildflower meadow... that suddenly becomes a very expensive hobby. Have an old house with a bigger garden than most new ones... new developments start being built around you, some developer applies for planning permission to build 4 houses on your land... suddenly your tax bill is much higher, maybe to the point where you're forced to sell.
Is this some kind of logic I'm unaware of?
Imagine you're a landlord and all landlords suddenly have to pay extra costs which tenants no longer have to pay.
Do you:
A) Pay for it out of your profits
B) Pass the costs back to the tenants again
Those are some interesting organisations being targeted for land tax.
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Why do you think that landlords could just suddenly set higher prices? Why don't they do it already, if they could just do it by a simple decision?
Reality is that landlords are already asking as much as possible. If they suddenly increase prices, people will move to smaller flats, flat share more etc. reducing demand and leaving some flats vacant. Which would mean very angry landlords with tax bills piling up and no income to cover them -> they'd need to lower their asking prices until they find tenants.
Land tax doesn't reduce supply, because land won't disappear anywhere only because it is taxed. Normally if you tax resource X, then less of this resource X will be produced and consumed. Since land is not produced or consumed, supply doesn't change and if demand and supply stay the same, so does the price.
Economics 101
Have a look at that economist article that I linked earlier.
Because he said the landlord would pay land tax instead of the tenant paying council tax.
So the landlord puts that cost in the rent and the tenant will get the same expenses as they had before but renamed.
It is exactly the same thing as a landlord paying utility bills personally but putting the cost of them in the rent.
Or the landlord letting the tenant pay the utilities themselves.
The tenant is still paying for it.
You don't see the difference between a cost affecting all landlords impacting rental prices vs an individual landlord in a competitive market deciding to hike prices above those of his competitors on a whim?
Why don't OCUK just drastically hike memory prices unilaterally? Why does it take a hike in wholesale prices for OCUK and other retailers to hike memory prices significantly?
Inheritance is a gift directed once one has passed away. What an individual does with their personal possessions and assets after their death is up to them and should not be taxed.
By that logic, commercial transactions are just gift exchanges. I gift cash, you gift items so why pay taxes?
You can't make your own definition and then use it as an argument.
But if you own the freehold on £10bn of property, tax is still continuously being paid to the treasury in terms of property and business taxes, tax on trusts themselves at decadal intervals produce a steady income. This proposal will create a massive burden on Government and HMRC with accountants and lawyers reaping the benefits.
It is good in principle as a concept but a nightmare in reality which would produce Dickensian cases lasting generations. It is a largely punitive proposal which would be hard to limit to the intended targets so I am against it.
It is good in principle as a concept but a nightmare in reality which would produce Dickensian cases lasting generations. It is a largely punitive proposal which would be hard to limit to the intended targets so I am against it.
Soldato
- Joined
- 23 Oct 2002
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- 13,598
The rich pay tax? What do you think this is..... a democracy. Dream on.