Discussion paper on housing

[Tennentslager]

For once a housing policy report that makes some sense to the layman...

 

Robin McAlpine, Common Weal director, said of the report: “Malcolm Fraser is a visionary architect and a respected thinker on how we should build and indeed how we should live together.

 

“Housing very often comes up as one of people’s top priorities when they’re asked about what government should be doing, but too often the agenda is set by so-called volume housebuilders who simply want permission for more and more low quality new build.

 

“What is so valuable about this report is that it asks what a proper, integrated vision for housing and urban development in Scotland would look like if the policy was designed for people who live in houses rather than people who make profits out of building them.

 

“Any report which concludes that designing the places our children play so they are bathed with sunlight is more important than a quick buck is a report that people should read.”

The full report is here.

https://www.commonspace.scot/articles/9619/new-report-housekeeping-scotland-new-agenda-housing

 

[ProDave]

I have just had a read.

 

The 3 things I got from it  are:

 

Renovate all the empty existing homes.

Concentrate new builds in town and city centres.

Raise the council tax for larger homes to tax "the rich"

 

I don't see anything there for the self builder unless you love living in a small house crammed in a city centre.  I suspect a lot of folk on here don't aspore to that way of living?

 

I guess i will carry on being a "rich" dinosaur prefering to live in a modest detached house in the peace, quiet and clean air of the countryside.  And the fact I have scrimped and saved all my life to afford this goal makes me a "rich" target to pay more than my fair share of council tax.

 

(A topic for another thread perhaps? "Council Tax Poverty", where 10% of your income goes to pay your council tax bill, that is about to get bigger still next year)
 

[MikeSharp01]

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

(A topic for another thread perhaps? "Council Tax Poverty", where 10% of your income goes to pay your council tax bill, that is about to get bigger still next year)

 

Crumbs - never thought of CT as a percentage of income but I guess it is not insignificant - do we get value for money....?

[Tennentslager]

Don't think it said that...the big question is how to tackle the housing 'problem' for everyone in an affordable way.

It's a multi faceted issue that clearly needs a wider response than how things work at the moment.

Probably unlike most folk on here I have modest means but I'm still doing alright thank you...what about the young, the poor and folk who can't.

I think the present policy ignores them to the detriment of all our communities.

[SteamyTea]

I think that the problems with the housing market are not as simple as most people (who write about it) think.

There are often reports like this that think one simple fix will sort everything out.

But the main things is the geo-demographic distribution of the nation.  This is why we have empty and derelict properties, as well as overcrowding.

 

As for council taxes, just reintroduce the poll tax.  If you are an adult that lives in an area, you contribute for the local services, simple.  If you don't like the price of those services, then vote the council off, or move.  Basing it on income or wealth is a difficult thing to do, too difficult in reality.

Edited October 22, 2016 by SteamyTea

[Crofter]

I wonder if people from different ends of the political spectrum could get behind 'build to let'? Replace the sold off council houses with new builds, capital comes not from the LAs (who don't have any money) but from the private sector (where there are cash-rich people getting 0.1% interest on their savings).

This is fundamentally a more sound approach than 'buy to let' as it enables creation of new housing.

[Tennentslager]

18 minutes ago, Crofter said:

I wonder if people from different ends of the political spectrum could get behind 'build to let'? Replace the sold off council houses with new builds, capital comes not from the LAs (who don't have any money) but from the private sector (where there are cash-rich people getting 0.1% interest on their savings).

This is fundamentally a more sound approach than 'buy to let' as it enables creation of new housing.

He advocates just this approach via the Scottish Investment Trust...

I also like the idea of a 5% flat rate of VAT for new build and repair. Refurb and extend benefiting small builders while encouraging better use of existing stock.

[ProDave]

I think the problem is, as Steamy has mentioned, a lot of derelict empty houses are in places where there are no jobs and nobody wants to live.  "Builders" can't solve that problem
 

[SteamyTea]

The VAT issue is a bit of a red herring in my opinion.  What is important is the total size of the investment pot.  It is that which will influence the number of places built, it don't matter if VAT is set at 0, 5, 10 or even 20%.  The free market is quite adept at reducing costs to meet the amount of money people want to spend.

I bet most people on here who have built a house have had to make major savings somewhere.  Add all those individual savings together and I am sure that the VAT issue would be negated.

The caveat is that people should not be unrealistic in their initial costings.

[ToughButterCup]

On 21/10/2016 at 19:04, MikeSharp01 said:

Crumbs - never thought of CT as a percentage of income but I guess it is not insignificant - do we get value for money....?

 

An accountant friend of mine pushed that thought more firmly into my head when he suggested I

• work out how long I have to work to cover the tax I  paid  each month
• and how long do I have to work to pay my NHI contribution

Made me gulp a bit when I worked it out.

[SteamyTea]

I seem to remember that it is only after June something or other, that the money we earn starts to become ours, so we pay a total of about half our wages in taxes of all sorts.

I did work out a few years back that if all the UKs taxes where put onto income, then the tax rate would be 65%ish.

Not too bad really when you consider that everything else would be totally tax free.

[ProDave]

46 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

I seem to remember that it is only after June something or other, that the money we earn starts to become ours, so we pay a total of about half our wages in taxes of all sorts.

I did work out a few years back that if all the UKs taxes where put onto income, then the tax rate would be 65%ish.

Not too bad really when you consider that everything else would be totally tax free.

That's a very interesting analysis.

 

I suspect our situation is very atypical, but we "made our money" in an earlier life down south. We now live mortgage free in a large house, due mostly to the difference in house prices between SE England and the Highlands.  So now we don't earn very much, about 10K each self employed both only working part time.  What we find is we no longer pay income tax as the threshold is something like 11K so above what we each earn.  With no mortgage to pay, we find we can live comfortably under the income tax threshold.  We both pay a little national insurance, and of course VAT on most things we buy, and the BIG one for us is council tax is now our second largest bill (second only to food and more than heating or road transport costs)

 

The most bizarre thing about our situation is they choose to give us money "back" in the form of tax credits.  Who designed such a bonkers system?

 

I have to say, having such a high threshold before you start paying income tax is no incentive to "work hard"  Towards  the end of the financial year, I see little point personally in chasing more work if it would push me into the income band to start paying income tax again.  But again I am very atypical, as an older worker, working towards retirement and looking to reduce, not increase the amount of work I do.

 

It would be interesting to see if we are in fact net contributors or not?

 

[Stones]

Over the years I've read various different ideas about the best ways to collect the tax take, from putting everything on income to putting it all on consumption.

 

Tax authorities like property based taxes as property is immobile. 

 

Fairness is the most often used phrase when discussing who and how to tax. The difficulty is that the word fairness usually means someone else should pay. A difficult square to circle!

[ProDave]

The SNP promised us they would replace council tax with a local income tax which would have reflected your ability to pay. They cowered away from that and stuck with the council tax, but in the process increased the council tax rate for higher banded properties to "tax the rich".  Excuse me for feeling a little betrayed. I am certainly NOT by any measure "rich"

 

Regarding the word "fair"  you can usually change the phrase "it's not fair" to "it's not to my advantage" and in 90% of cases it wil have exactly the same meaning.

 

[Stones]

Council tax was devised as a sort of hybrid - rates and community charge combined, supposedly taking the best parts from each. Larger more valuable properties would pay a lot less than under a rating system but there would still be a 'progressive' element rather than a simple flat rate applied to everybody.

 

The SNP have taken the easy sound bite way out, rather than the root and branch reform they promised (to busy expending political capital elsewhere I think). It'll be interesting to see how they deal with the little old lady in a large house who can't afford to pay the higher rate of tax, when the press gets hold of a particularly heart wrenching story.

[ProDave]

I am VERY cynical about property taxes.

 

I had just bought my previous 2 bedroomed 1930's  ex council semi detached and it had an ANNUAL rates payable of £260.  I paid that one year before the POLL tax was introduced.  Now as a single person at the time, you might think if everybody (not every property) pays, then it would be cheaper. WRONG when the poll tax came in I paid more.  Then when eventually the poll tax was scrapped and the council tax introduced, guess what , the council tax on the same house was MORE than my poll tax had been.

 

Now the SNP have "reformed" the council tax an hey ho I will pay MORE.

 

Forgive me for being just a little cynical about it all.  Change = MORE
 

[SteamyTea]

One of the things I find hard to fathom is why councils should be involved in social reform.  It is not really their 'job' to make the country a more equitable place (or not), that is for governments to do.  The council is there to provide local services in the most cost effective manner.

 

[ProDave]

2 minutes ago, SteamyTea said:

One of the things I find hard to fathom is why councils should be involved in social reform.  It is not really their 'job' to make the country a more equitable place (or not), that is for governments to do.  The council is there to provide local services in the most cost effective manner.

 

And leading on from that is why party politics has any part to play in the local council?

 

The council is there to provide the services that central government say they must. So why should there be any difference in how a "labour controlled" and a "conservative controlled" council deliver those same services or how much it costs to deliver them?
 

[SteamyTea]

Too true.

 

[ProDave]

31 minutes ago, Stones said:

 

The SNP have taken the easy sound bite way out, rather than the root and branch reform they promised (to busy expending political capital elsewhere I think). It'll be interesting to see how they deal with the little old lady in a large house who can't afford to pay the higher rate of tax, when the press gets hold of a particularly heart wrenching story.

There is a simple answer to that, sell your big house and buy a smaller one. Oh hang on, ours has been on the market coming up to 2 years without a buyer, suddenly it's not as "simple"

 

[Tennentslager]

I don't know how to do the linked multi quote thing but to respond to the last number of posts.

The SNP could not pass local income tax because they didn't have a majority in that parliament.

Next time around they dropped the policy...it is allowed you know...and instead advocated a council tax freeze. They got elected.

They stuck to their promise.

Next time they continued the policy. They got elected.

Local government finance has been a political nightmare since Thatchers hated poll tax. Remember the policy that was trialled in Scotland and led to riots on the streets of England steamy?

It's political I'm afraid.

Final word, unlike any other tax you have to pay this one. I.e. it's not wrapped up in the price or deducted at source. That's why it's noticed because you see it going out of your account.

[Crofter]

I vaguely remember some shenanigans around the time that the first SNP government tried to introduce LIT, and that a big chunk of money was going to be lost out of Barnett if it went ahead. Maybe somebody can remember the details. At the time I recall the Lib Dems also supported the concept, and I was personally a big fan of it. Shifting taxation towards income seems inherently quite appealing as it avoids the problem of e.g. the little old lady in a big house who has no income... and on a practical note, those with income *can* pay, whether they *should* pay is a matter for personal opinion!

[SteamyTea]

11 hours ago, Tennentslager said:

Remember the policy that was trialled in Scotland and led to riots on the streets of England steamy?

It's political I'm afraid.

Yes, so maybe education is the real answer (not what we call education at the moment).

 

Where I lived at the time of the Community Charge, I saw a huge reduction when the tax came in.  Nearly everyone benefited.  It was a well run council (Aylesbury).  Where there seemed to be problems was areas of high population density and high unemployment, coupled with a lower than average age.  So large towns and cities became worse off.

Then there was also the removal of the 'shire counties' subsidies central government (or in other words, the local taxes where going to go up anyway).

 

The really odd thing about basing local taxation on property wealth is that wealthy people use local services less than poorer people (based in household income).  If any group should be protesting, it should be the wealthy.

[jack]

13 hours ago, Tennentslager said:

I don't know how to do the linked multi quote thing but to respond to the last number of posts.

 

I don't think it's particularly intuitve.  Basically, you want to:

- Click "Quote" under the first post you want to quote from

- Type your response, including editing the quoted part if desired

- Put the cursor where you want the next quote to appear

- Click "Quote" under the next post you want to quote from

- Rinse and repeat as necessary 

 

One thing I find very annoying about the quoting system is that if you're not careful when editing the quote, you can lose the ability to get the cursor underneath/outside the quote so you can comment.  If that happens, CTRL-Z to undo until you get back past the edit that caused the problem.  As far as possible, I always type at least a couple of characters under the quoted section before editing the quote, as it avoids this problem happening.

[SteamyTea]

Or highlight just the text you want to quote and click on "Quote this"