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January 07, 2007
Council Tax Stupidity
This idea that you should pay more council tax because you have improved your home is one of the utmost, glaring, stupidity. As The Telegraph says:
An Englishman's home may be his castle, but it will soon be open to inspection by officials looking for unregistered double glazing. And this, in truth, is the most objectionable aspect of the proposal. It traduces the notion of freehold, which is the basis of all liberal societies. Our homes will no longer be wholly ours, their contents no longer private. Everything that happens behind closed doors will now be of interest to the authorities.
But it is actually worse than that. The UK has some of the oldest housing stock in Western Europe. We desperately need (for climate change reasons, if nothing else) to encourage people to upgrade it. So, in the face of what we are told is a threat worse than terrorism, the government proposes to tax people who do so.
Morons.
January 7, 2007 in Your Tax Money at Work | Permalink
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There are many reasons people dislike the council tax, not least the absurdity of paying tax twice for improvements you make to your own home and the intrusion of the government into your home which this necessitates.
Tim Worstall has come up with anot... [Read More]
Tracked on Jan 7, 2007 3:59:22 PM
Comments
Yes... but the liberal elite don't want their nice homes to be outshone by any Johnny Come Lately nouveau riche types, do they? Better to keep those differentials, eh? I blame those TV property shows myself. Want Council Tax band does a Mongolian Yurt fall into?
Posted by: MarkS | Jan 7, 2007 11:14:44 AM
Got any room down there in Portugal?
Posted by: Gorsefox | Jan 7, 2007 11:18:24 AM
"This idea that you should pay more council tax because you have improved your home is one of the utmost, glaring, stupidity."
The idea that a property tax should be assessed on the value of property is stupid?
Tim adds: Yes. Because the tax should be on the value of the property before improvements, not afterwards.
Posted by: Jim | Jan 7, 2007 11:47:45 AM
I would have thought that taxing double-glazing
would be the last thing that a government would do
if it truly wanted to cut carbon emissions. The lure
of the lucre is greater than saving the planet. We
can all go to hell in a handcart but at least we'll
have local council outreach workers to take us
there.
Posted by: MarkS | Jan 7, 2007 12:18:35 PM
"the tax should be on the value of the property before improvements, not afterwards"
The house I live in is around 100 years old and has been 'improved' countless times and in any number of ways since then. You want the inspectors to potter around the place assessing in minute detail which aspects of it are 'original' and which are 'improvements'? That would be far more intrusive, far more time-consuming and probably far more unfair then simply taxing the full value of each property.
Tim adds: Come aong Jim, you've head the Georgist argument before now. Tax the land itself and any prmrissions to build upon it. The value of the unimproved land.
Posted by: Jim | Jan 7, 2007 1:14:48 PM
I think the government simply wants us to know who's boss. We can come in your home when we want and there's nothing you can do about it. The Sheriff of Nottingham's men used similar tactics.
Posted by: MarkS | Jan 7, 2007 1:20:58 PM
"Come aong Jim, you've head the Georgist argument before now. Tax the land itself and any prmrissions to build upon it. The value of the unimproved land."
And if the council tax was a land value tax your post might have made sense. But criticising the *implementation* (as opposed to the principle) of a property tax on the grounds that it isn't a land tax is absurd. So your statement "This idea that you should pay more council tax because you have improved your home is one of the utmost, glaring, stupidity" is itself rather stupid.
Posted by: Jim | Jan 7, 2007 1:50:29 PM
I might add that it's not like the Telegraph or its readers would support a proper land tax. They just hate the idea of any tax on property and bloggers who unthinkingly join in the chorus are fooling themselves if they think they're part of some Georgist coalition.
Posted by: Jim | Jan 7, 2007 1:56:56 PM
It's not about tax. It's a fundamental breach of human rights... the right to privacy. No government gauleiter should have the right to photograph and document the changes we make within our homes. This is yet more Nu Labour class warfare.
Posted by: MarkS | Jan 7, 2007 2:23:23 PM
Damn it! I can't afford to live here anymore. Anyone remember the brain drain of the 1960s?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/10/ncons10.xml
Posted by: MarkS | Jan 7, 2007 2:29:49 PM
Not morons.
Just greedy. Picking again on the law abiding middle class the ones with a few bob free that they will only waste on things for themselves when they should give it to the state.
Yet another straw. When will the UK's back break?
Posted by: Dave Petterson | Jan 7, 2007 4:18:12 PM
If some complete c**t from the council thinks they have some right to enter MY house to check for 'improvements' - then they are in for a fucking surprise when they knock on the fucking door. This will result in the demise of quite a few council workers and hence could result in a cut in council tax! :)
Posted by: zorro | Jan 8, 2007 12:55:17 PM
Nobody here has broached the fundamental (and commonsense) basis for taxation based on full (i.e., improved) valuation. That is the fact that the good supposedly delivered by the government is security--and that both the costs and value of such security is roughly proportional to the value of that being secured.
Few are those who like taxes that devolve upon them personally. But even fewer like taxes that devolve upon them essentially for the benefit of others (and THAT is the objection of most to full-value taxation: the realization that it's just another mugging).
Things are essentially similar here in the US. An illustration will be, well, illustrative.
Years ago, schools were financed almost entirely through local real-estate tax. The wealthy (and some not so wealthy but desirous of decent public education) taxed themselves sufficiently to afford a degree of excellence in that regard (and they could have done otherwise had they so chosen). But, some decades ago, both the federal and state governments began being more intrusive in all education-related matters, including financing, at least partly through a desire to assure some wider distribution of some minimal standard. Courts found the local-tax "discriminatory" and undertook a more equal distribution (mostly via sales and income taxes, since the wealthier could no more be relied on to so lavishly spend on the facilities of others by raising their own taxes). Local taxes were "reformed." The wealthiest actually saw a reduction in their burden. But the many middle-class communities saw dramatic rises in their property taxes, most of which went to improve other--primarily "inner city"-- schools.
My own community had, formerly, the lowest tax rate in the state and fairly decent schools. The low rates were because several (chemical, refining, and distribution) industries "picked up most og the tab" and, thus, the low taxes were a "trade-off" of sorts. With the new tax regime, however (and diminished operations and contributions of several industries), local taxes are now more than quintupled and the relative desirability of such real estate has been stagnant where they had formerly been buoyed by its low-tax status.
A friend in another area of this state saw his taxes go from just over $2000 to over $50,000 per year and, surmising that more was in store, sold (and, with the proceeds, bought a house with 500 acres in a desirable Montana area).
Posted by: gene berman | Jan 8, 2007 1:18:51 PM
"Nobody here has broached the fundamental (and commonsense) basis for taxation based on full (i.e., improved) valuation. That is the fact that the good supposedly delivered by the government is security--and that both the costs and value of such security is roughly proportional to the value of that being secured."
You mean like a protection racket?
Posted by: markS | Jan 8, 2007 1:28:30 PM
Why would the Government need to come inside your home to see if it had double glazing? This is usually found on the outside. It adds only marginal value to a house anyway. Yet more stirring by the media I assume...
Posted by: Corky | Jan 8, 2007 6:44:10 PM
Yes, Mark, you might certainly liken it to a protection racket. But, at least in the simpler (and earlier) forms, the "racketeers" had no surreptitious violent methods to inflict on either persons or property; they were, in fact, those voted into such positions by the property-owners themselves, were themselves, usually, fellow property-owners subject to the tax, and were subject (for job tenure) to the very next election. I'm sure you'll agree that there is some difference.
Posted by: gene berman | Jan 8, 2007 9:26:47 PM
