Grombles

I got an email from Ed Miliband in reply to one I sent him about a job creating idea as an alternative to their impractical Mansion Tax. See  Entrepreneur's Credits . Buried within his bleat about 'fairness' and all the other popularist mantra about 'millionaires' needing their arses kicked, was a paragraph revealing how little they'd actually thought through their Mansion Tax promise: "We recognise that it is important that any mansion tax should be designed to overcome issues affecting those who may be capital rich but income poor. There are many ways in which this could be done, such as deferring the charge for some people, and our Treasury team is consulting on the best way to do this. We will ensure that the details are right so people would not be thrown out of their homes." "Deferring the charge"? So if you can't afford to pay the tax from income (that's a fine of £20,000 every year for owning a £2m house), when you sell...

It keeps rearing its head. Tax the rich! Make them pay their 'fair share'. It's the rich that got us into this mess. And all those other 'make them pay' soundbites designed to grab votes from our ever more squeezed population. The net effect is that wealthy people are pouring money into the Conservative party to help them fight off the scary wealth taxing parties. But all wealthy people aren't the same. What's important is not what they have, but what they spend their money on. And what the UK badly needs is for the people who know how to create jobs and wealth, to do more of it. I've written previously about why mansion or wealth taxes are both impractical and counter-productive in terms of helping the economy to recover. They are also unlikely to reap vast rewards for the treasury, but popular soundbites put left-wing parties into power. It's not about whether it actually makes money for the country, it's about whether it's popular and s...

My previous post about why a mansion tax would not only be wrong but impractical, seems to have persuaded most of the government together with all sensibly-minded folk, but not, apparently, the unconvinced Vince. From the Guardian today: Cable did not rule out new, higher council tax bands on multimillion-pound properties. "There are vast numbers of extraordinarily valuable properties now around the south of England netting very large gains for their owners – many of whom come from abroad, incidentally – and it's not taxed at all," he said. "Basically, you get people with multimillion-pound properties paying exactly the same council tax as somebody in a three-bedroom semi. So the system doesn't work." What does he mean " netting very large gains for their owners"? Is he under a delusion that by sitting in an expensive property people are somehow making money from it? Quite apart from the obvious point that a bigger property costs more to run (m...

A 'mansion tax' would be unfair, impractical to implement, and would bite hands that feed us. What's the difference between a hoodie who raids a shop to take a TV because he doesn't have enough money to buy one for himself, and a politician who advocates taking someone else's money because it doesn't affect him or most people who vote for him? This might sound a ridiculous comparison, one party being irresponsible, and the other believing they're taking responsibility for the well-being of society, but I'm suggesting in reality there are some unhealthy similarities between their attitudes. "It doesn't matter if I'm not the one losing out - it will only affect a small number of people who can probably afford it". The hoodie grabs TVs they can't pay for, the latter is planning to grab money from people who own larger houses than them. Both do it because it's easy and their peers encourage them to do it. It makes them popular a...