Sunday, 30 September 2007
Abolishing Stamp Duty
Why stop at the first £250,000? Surely there must be a better way of raising government revenue than taxing mobility and aspiration ? People move to go to better jobs, or jobs at all, to live in a better area, to enjoy a bigger house or, in the case of some, a smaller house. Why can't the state leave us all alone to arrange our living quarters to suit our taste or needs without trying to profit from us? They can leave me to arrange my housing as I choose and I will not trouble them for free open heart surgery.
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4 comments:
Knowing how people frequently push themselves to the limit (and beyond) in house-buying, wouldn't abolition of Stamp Duty simply add to the price of houses ?
The banding effect introduces a slight distortion in the market, and maybe there are some psychological aspects but otherwise, with house prices being so much higher than 'cost' SD is neutral as regards 'what people can afford to buy'.
I don't think a 'saving' on SD will fund anyone's private heart surgery ...
As the next post shows, stamp duty impinges on much more than house prices, and it is for its effects on wider economic behaviour that it should, together with other transaction taxes, be reconsidered, ND.
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Self-induced heart damage is one of the things this massive influx of cigarette smoking people is threatening; the health service is having to be retailored to cope with essentially 1950s and 60s social behaviour. The health service isn't supposed to be a heroic health system but a preventative and basic system. Most people would benefit much more from NHS dental and eye care than benefit from open heart stuff.
Perhaps we could have a normal health system and a higher insurance payment crisis intervention system? I don't know much about health economics so someone who does might have much to tell on this kind of problem.
Quite so (the original post).
Stamp duty is an iniquitous tax penalising those seeking to make modest improvements or merely wishing to remain productive and self reliant after upheavels at work.
Of course I wouldn't be moaning about any of this were there not such generous and comprehensive benefits lavished on people whose behaviour is actually damaging to society.
All these impositions, E-K are interference with what I suppose should be called the developmental cycle in domestic groups.
What are you going to do to pass your house, your savings, the fruits, quite literally, of your labour, on to your boys? You write about the efforts in your family to pass on a decent level of culture - they can't tax that, though they make very serious efforts to disrupt and interfere with it - but just let another decade pass and then you'll run into all sorts of other crap designed to break you all up. And if they hang on to power, which is their primary over-riding goal, it will be worse.
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