Nick Clegg will today demand new taxes on multi-million pound homes in the forthcoming budget.
The Liberal Democrats want to introduce either a 1% levy on properties worth more than £3m, or new council tax bands on expensive homes.
Mr Clegg will say in a speech: “I continue to believe we should ask for what would be a modest contribution from the very wealthy. We should ask a small number of very wealthy individuals to make a reasonable contribution, in order to provide desperately needed help for millions of ordinary people.”
Mr Clegg will laud the increases in the tax-free personal allowance which benefits anyone earning less than £100,000 and will suggest that extra money raised from the property taxes could be used to reduce income tax.
This will provide “desperately needed help for millions of ordinary people. Nothing could do more to demonstrate a commitment to greater fairness in our tax system,” he will say. Mr Clegg will, however, stress that the Coalition was right to reduce the top rate of tax from 50% to 45%. He will say the higher rate was ineffective.
Source: The Daily Telegraph
We say: A general tax on wealth might or might not be considered a legitimate aspiration: but it’s much more difficult to justify a wealth tax which is imposed on just one of the many possible forms of wealth – which is exactly what a “mansion tax” is – leaving all other forms of wealth untouched.
A much more sensible tax-raising measure would be to remove the exemption under which non-residents pay not a penny of Capital Gains Tax on profits from the disposal of UK real property.
