‘Research from Knight Frank shows that the Treasury is earning less from the sale of Britain’s most expensive homes after the Chancellor’s reform of stamp duty rates late last year. The figures show that for the first seven months of this year, the value of property bought and sold in London’s Westminster, Kensington and Chelsea, and Hammersmith and Fulham is down by almost a third, cutting the stamp duty revenue by almost 10%.
Figures from Lloyds Banking Group show that the number of sales of homes worth more than £1m in London in the first half of this year were 15% down on those in early 2014. Writing in the Mail on Sunday, Jacob Rees-Mogg MP, says George Osborne’s stamp duty rise may have been good politics but it is distorting the market and cutting government income.
Source: The Mail on Sunday’
Goose? Golden egg? You would have thought that the lesson might possibly have been learned at some point in the 2,500 years since Aesop first so elegantly framed it, wouldn’t you? But politicians never learn, do they?
