13 Aug 2014

Mansion tax is misguided

Blog

Liz Peace of the British Property Federation explains that proposals to introduce a “mansion tax” would apply disproportionately to Londoners, with around 90% of predicted payers located in the capital. She argues that reforming council tax instead would be a much fairer way of redistributing the property taxation burden.

Source: Evening Standard

Mansion tax is a partial misnomer, and could indeed put many modest home owners (by which we mean owners of modest homes, not homeowners with Facebook-unfriendly personality traits), especially in London, in a position to quote with sarcasm the Kinks’ song Sunny Afternoon: “The taxman’s taken all my dough and left me in my stately home.” We commented on the principal argument against mansion tax in our BKL Property Round-up last month (also quoted by the UK200Group, who quoted us on the subject in June too).