Gordon Browns Tax Plans,

[iranu]

you're in a tax band of over 50%? impressive, when the most in this country is ~40%..

actually you will find that the poorest people pay 60% taxation.

"Nearly 1.7m of the lowest-paid people in this country now suffer marginal tax rates of more than 60 per cent , according to HM Treasury."

Have a read here

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/mai...09/cmian09.xml

and learn the appalling truth that is NuLiarbor's "social justice". It's a ****ing disgrace. And these are not some random figures picked by the torygraph they are from the treasury's own statistics! They know they are screwing over the poorest yet fail to do anything about it.

There is also a nice bit at the bottom of that article regarding cars and taxation too.

[5lab]

actually you will find that the poorest people pay 60% taxation.

"Nearly 1.7m of the lowest-paid people in this country now suffer marginal tax rates of more than 60 per cent , according to HM Treasury."

Have a read here

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/mai...09/cmian09.xml

and learn the appalling truth that is NuLiarbor's "social justice". It's a ****ing disgrace. And these are not some random figures picked by the torygraph they are from the treasury's own statistics! They know they are screwing over the poorest yet fail to do anything about it.

There is also a nice bit at the bottom of that article regarding cars and taxation too.

looks like they're only getting taxed 60% on the money they're getting free from the government. i'm not sure what the problem is really. they want more free stuff? i also strongly doubt that effects childless couples looking to buy a house, cos if it does i need to go get me some free money

[badass]

Well if you say "the sun will set", eventually it does. What's your point? I say that eventually house prices will rise by 200% and i'm just as right as you

I've said there will be a correction within the next 3-4 years.
However of course you are right. Even if you buy at the very top of a peak, prices long term will still rise.
I'd just rather not wait 10 years before a house is worth what I paid for it - buy low and save a fortune.

[chicken]

I haven't posted back to badass through being busy and Rave posting most of what I was going to anyway but I've noticed one main thing here, there seems to be a load of people bashing young people for wanting houses and not at the inflated prices they are today.

I wonder how many of you own your own house, I wonder how many are Buy-To-Let landlords...

I don't see what's so wrong about people saying "Look at this market, see how many people are buying easily, see who's struggling. Can we not help the first-time buyers?". It doesn't matter if they're 20, 30, 40, 96, if they're a first time buyer and the market is being swamped by wannabe landlords then maybe something ought to be done? It's not a "Ooh gimmie money off a house cos I can't be bofered to werk", it's a "Look how much prices are up, is there anything that can be done to counter this?".

Also one final point for those who ask why landlords should have to pay extra. Most landlords charge rent to cover the mortgage and any work that might need doing, this means that other than the odd call of "Help my sink's leaking" they end up with a house for free. Why shouldn't they have to pay for what they will end up owning? Especially when it is a £200,000 property.

[TheAnimus]

Or, I reckon they should stop exempting principle private residences from capital gains tax. Maybe have some kind of long-term taper relief so that you only get the gain tax free after many years of ownership. Not completely sure that this would work, it might be counterproductive and disincentivise people from selling at all rather than just at inflated prices.

I'm a big fan of redistributive tax in general and inheritance tax in particular because of it's effect on the housing market, certainly the limit should not be raised to take higher house prices into account.

No.

What happens when someone retires? House prices are rising at 10%, if they had to pay 4% on the average london semi of say £350k then its a bit of a problem, why should they move, they've worked hard and paid tax all their life, why should they now have to find £14k. Thats more than most peoples pensions!

Paying tax on sensible savings is moronic and is the quickest way to destable an economy. Theres a reason the margins in the equity derivities market are hudge.

Now the funny thing is, i've started a rather well paid job, i could buy a flat in a bad area using my bonus as a 10% deposit. But i'm not going too. I'm tempted to buy with a friend, but i think our feelings for each other might cause a problem. But i realise that until i'm on well over 60k, i've got no chance buying a flat on my own. So whats left, buying a place with some friends.

Hardly a new idea but, i'm looking to do this in about 18 months. 4 of us will have no problem buying a nice terrice house. Should be able to afford 300k house quite easily with 5 people, also should be easily able to clear the mortgage in 5 years!

My point is, moaning gets you no where, and anyone want to buy a house

[JPreston]

No.

What happens when someone retires? House prices are rising at 10%, if they had to pay 4% on the average london semi of say £350k then its a bit of a problem, why should they move, they've worked hard and paid tax all their life, why should they now have to find £14k. Thats more than most peoples pensions!
...

Eh? You only pay capital gains tax when you sell, you wouldn't get taxed annually on the notional increase in the value of your house.

By taking 40% of the gain straight back out of the market, there wouldn't be such a huge difference between first time buyers and those already on the ladder. Say taper the gain over 20 years, to discourage people from moving spuriously and so cool down the market. As I say, I don't know if it would work - I'm an accountant, not an economist - but were I Chancellor I'd try it out for a while

Paying tax on sensible savings is moronic and is the quickest way to destable an economy. Theres a reason the margins in the equity derivities market are hudge.

Nah, tough. The wealthy can still confer every conceivable educational and social advantage on their children to let them go out and earn their own money at the expense of everyone else, so let them pay up when they die. The children will be middle-aged anyway by that time, so will have made their own way in the world.

What's hudge? Some kind of banking term?

[Rave]

They were saying exactly that three years ago too, when we bought ours . Since then we've seen a capital gain in excess of the 30% or whatever the doom-mongers are prophesizing will evaporate in the impending crash, and we are still enjoying low interest rates.

Not for much longer, I contend.

Believe it or not the UK housing market is nowhere near as over-heated relative to average earnings as other places in Europe, eg urban Spain,

Eh? Urban Spain? Never heard that before. I know the market in touristy parts of Spain has been massively overheated by the Brits and Irish remortgaging their homes to buy a holiday place- a crash there will simply follow on from the crash here.

and with no signs of easing over there we may well have a long continued period of un-affordability here as well.

The crash is well underway in the States, however.

You won't get a balanced opinion from housepricecrash.co.uk though!

Actually you'd be surprised. Quite a few bulls post there, and there's a wide range of bearish opinion.

There will never be an obviously right time to buy a house if you think about it as a pure investment (that's how markets work - especially for those with low purchasing power eg first time buyers) but medium- to long-term you will always come out ahead whenever you buy.

In inflation adjusted terms, people who bought at the top of the market in 1973 had to wait until 2000/2001 until their house was worth as much as when they bought it. That's a hell of a long time. Of course, in the 70s we had massive inflation so peoples wages rose rapidly in relation to their debt (thereby increasing their ability to service it)- but we supposedly have a low inflation economy now; the BOE's main job seems to be to keep inflation as near to 2% as possible.

WAAAAAH!!!!! WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH!!!! You want the moon on a stick you do; the UK has a rather higher population now and more people tend to work hard and live alone than they did in the 1970's hence the apparent shortage of houses.

Yeah, all of which was entirely predictable. The government should have allowed more houses to be built. What's not to complain about?

But, seemingly everyone who 'cannot afford' to buy can afford to rent in the private sector (or else qualify for social housing) - those houses belongs to someone...the problem (as pointed out above) is one of increasingly unequal wealth distribution. You can call for more houses to be built but it won't help, because only those with existing equity will be able to afford to buy them, and will buy-to-let. Heck, I'd even buy one.

No, I disagree. At the moment, BTL yields are so poor that most recent entrants to the market aren't covering their costs- they're effectively subsidising their tenants. Eventually they'll get fed up with doing that, and new entrants to the market will be deterred- especially if interest rates rise, making the whole thing even less economic. This idea of BTL landlords continually recycling the equity out of one property to put a deposit on another- thereby freezing out FTBs forever- is entirely dependant on prices continuing to rise, and interest rates remaining low enough for landlords to keep servicing their interest payments. Eventually you will get to the stage where, despite their paper profits, landlords just don't have the cashflow to keep going, and when that happens, defaults, foreclosures etc. spike through the roof. IMO we're starting to see it already, but we shall see.

Building more houses would not per se cause the crash to start, but that's not the point- if there are plenty of houses around, the next bubble might not even get going, and that would be a good thing. Meanwhile we all get a nice affordable place to live.

Most homeowners have had to make compromises (I know I did), if we all had instead sat around waiting for the gods of market forces or govt regulation to drop property in our laps we would all still be renting

I genuinely don't have much of a choice- but happily I have absolute faith that market forces will come to my aid. This book cheered me up immensely:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Crashes-They...e=UTF8&s=books

[badass]

I haven't posted back to badass through being busy and Rave posting most of what I was going to anyway but I've noticed one main thing here, there seems to be a load of people bashing young people for wanting houses and not at the inflated prices they are today.

If you were expecting me to start baiting you for not responding, dont worry. I am just winding Teepee up, and that is reserved purely for him. Why? I spend all day working for a boss thats never wrong (TBH the vast majority of the time he is actually right but he is incapable of admitting to being wrong when he is) so I took pleasure in winding someone else up like him as I cant do that to the boss.

I wonder how many of you own your own house, I wonder how many are Buy-To-Let landlords...

I'm not a homeowner nor a landlord

I don't see what's so wrong about people saying "Look at this market, see how many people are buying easily, see who's struggling. Can we not help the first-time buyers?". It doesn't matter if they're 20, 30, 40, 96, if they're a first time buyer and the market is being swamped by wannabe landlords then maybe something ought to be done? It's not a "Ooh gimmie money off a house cos I can't be bofered to werk", it's a "Look how much prices are up, is there anything that can be done to counter this?".

Yes. Something can be done. Be patient. The market will cool down. It always has in the past and it is showing every sign that it will again.

Also one final point for those who ask why landlords should have to pay extra. Most landlords charge rent to cover the mortgage and any work that might need doing, this means that other than the odd call of "Help my sink's leaking" they end up with a house for free. Why shouldn't they have to pay for what they will end up owning? Especially when it is a £200,000 property.

Landlords are taking a risk for profit, and providing a service. That service is a place to live without having to arrange a mortgage and the risk is that prices may go down as well as up. The reward is that they are slowly getting closer to owning their property in full.

I am not going to respond with any of Rave's points in his last post since I agree with all of them.
The only thing I dont agree with him on in terms of house prices is the timescale for the coming price correction.

[Rave]

I am not going to respond with any of Rave's points in his last post since I agree with all of them.
The only thing I dont agree with him on in terms of house prices is the timescale for the coming price correction.

First time for everyting eh? I should clarify: I think the correction will start next year, but house prices are far 'stickier' than, say, stockmarket prices. A stock can easily lose 5 or even 10% in a day's trading, but sellers of houses will not simply cut 10% off their asking price in a day. A house price crash is a process of sellers lowering their prices to meet the (continuously dropping) expectations of sellers. Prices are 'sticky downwards'. I think the next house price 'bottom' will be anywhere from 4 to 8 years from now. Which obviously is when we're aiming to buy.

[Cromlech]

Scottish Socialists:

[Oobie-]

Public transport = Run by retards, thats why people want cars, as a majority. Using a car is far cheaper/quicker than using public transport.

I was reading the paper the other day, and there was a quote from someone who was questioned on the rising of Congestion charge for 4x4's and it read "This increase isn't going to stop me from using my 4x4, Im on a big salary and can afford it so it doesn't bother me"

2 things from that - 1) NOt everyone is on a big salary (but fair doos to the guy, if he has the money he shouldn't be worried about rubbishrubbishrubbishrubbishrubbish like GB) 2) If they have so much money why aren't they the ones sustaining the heavier taxing.

I believe this rings a bell, communism is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

WHere does all this money go is my question. And I hate the fact that we won the olympic bid, the sacrifices are going to be huge compared to the "profits"..

[TheAnimus]

I believe this rings a bell, communism is that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

WHere does all this money go is my question. And I hate the fact that we won the olympic bid, the sacrifices are going to be huge compared to the "profits"..

no communism (of which there are many paradigms) is generally about everyone been equal.

Capitalisim is about people getting what they put in, not the rich get richer. However the rich are born with more, so have more to put in to get more out.

But then again people who blame their situation are retarded, its because their too busy blaiming something else, smoking weed, buying guvara t-shirts to go out and work hard.

Its much more important to have good parents, than wealthy ones. I left secondary school when i was 13. I earn over 3 times my parents combined income. They're piss poor.

Now the tax been proposed is going to effect, as useual only the poor to middle class. Rich will always find ways around it, thats why cunning tax lawyers get paid soo much.

With regards to rave's comments about house prices. Sorry, they are most likely going to rise this year, by at least 8% on the whole the general concensus of the analysis i've seen (as an equity derivities developer).

House prices do have an enertia yes, but house price crashes do happen far more swiftly than base inflation. Within 6 months its very possible to have a postcode shift by as much as 20%, this is not out of the ordinary, and given 10% deposit mortgages its a very quick way to negative equity.

Now i'm going to do my best to not get too economics langauge but house prices follow a curve (from supply n demand) now this curve is already shifted, imagine the effect inherritance tax, and stamp duty have. This causes there too be un-natural demand for houses under stamp duty, thus raising the price of properties that aren't worth as much as market demands. Inheritance tax on the other hand works as increasing the availability of these expensive properties (which are well beyound the reach of 21 year olds such as myself, even when buying in fairly large groups). As such innheritance tax does little to increase the amount of properties available too first time buyers because any change up above stamp duty dosen't get reflected benith it.

Now i find it very intresting how new labour have allowed uni's such as oxford, to 'charge more' than sh!t holes like portsmouth/lsbu. Ok they don't charge more, but they don't give burseries (cash back). It's not just moronic property taxes that are worrying about this government

[Oobie-]

Doh, no idea why I was thinking it was communism, sorry