The Tax That Ate the Housing Minister

I'm not an Angela Rayner fan. Not for a second. I think she is a button-pushing hypocrite who is the living embodiment of the socialists George Orwell described in Animal Farm. But I also rather suspect she is not nearly as monstrous as she is depicted by those on the other side of the political argument. I also don't think we have seen the last of her and she'll be back again within 18 months.

However, I do not buy this narrative that she took bad advice. She's no different to the rest of us. She doesn't like paying tax. She wants to minimize what she has to pay.

I've taken advice many times on all matter of subjects. We all have. Often I've been given advice I didn't want to hear - and as a result I've chosen to ignore it. Instead, I've listened to the advice that was what I wanted to hear, even if it was bad.

Trying to fob this off on bad advice is both disingenuous and a deferral of responsibility.

We all know what is or isn't going to be our main home. It's only when confronted with the option of paying £70,000 or £30,000 that we start mentally to fudge things and get into grey areas and legal niceties.

Of course, she knew she had to pay the full £70,000. But like anyone faced with an OTT £70 grand tax bill, she's thinking "Shoot, that's a lot of money. I don't want to pay that." I don't blame her for thinking that. The reason most people in this country who would otherwise be moving are not is that same cost of Stamp Duty.

It's patently an awful tax. It punishes people for moving, and so creates immobility. It gums up the housing market. It gets in the way of all the knock-on economic activity that stems from people moving. It taxes transactions not wealth: two people with identical houses pay totally different amounts of tax depending purely on whether they've just moved. It hurts the young and mobile most. It disincentivises downsizing. And on and on and on.

Now this "house tax" has undone, of all people, the Housing Minister. Surely that in itself should tell the powers that be that it needs doing away with, as, more generally, the complexities of almost all UK taxes. But there is no chance of that happening, and Chancellor Rachel Reeves and those who advise her will go on wondering why they can't get Britain's economy moving.

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I used to go out with a tax lawyer once upon a time and she would always say, “Don’t try and evade taxes. It’s not worth the agro”. Here we have a case in point. Now Rayner not only has to pay the full amount, plus fines, she has lost her job and a large chunk of the income by which she would pay it with the result that, not only has trying to dodge forty grand cost her her career, she might lose her new flat to it as well. And - do you know what? - given the way the housing market is going, because, in part, of Stamp Duty, I bet she won't find a buyer who'll pay the £800 grand she paid for it.

After all the times she has called out others for not paying taxes, and nastily, there is a lot of karma here. Whatever. The more important message is that for umpteen reasons Stamp Duty needs abolishing.

Until next time,

Dominic

PS If you missed my midweek commentary here it is:

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