Tim S Kemp wrote:
Less controversially, isn't it time that second homes
attracted the normal (ie non-discount) rate of council tax?

only if occupied - as council tax is meant to pay for
services and an empty house requires exactly none. You
should be forced to declare how much time you spend in the
houses and pay pro-rata, and if you rent the second home
out at all it should attract full rate.

What are the possibilities, do you suppose, of a local authority devising a
scheme to monitor usage and then arriving at the appropriate amount of
Council Tax payable?

The solution is simple, price them out of existence.

"Cast_Iron" wrote in message
...
MrBitsy wrote:
Oliver Keating wrote:

snip

And as people keep seeming to forget, every pound that one
of these rich kids pays is a pound that the poor don't
have to pay.


Perhaps they ought to do something about it and become
richer? A lot of people can't be bothered to improve,
prefering to stay poor by choice and moan about 'rich'
people.

An unfortunate aspect of English culture I feel, it's easier to sit and
slag
off those who make the effort than to get off one's arse and do something
to
improve one's situation.

I once heard and interesting definition between the British and American
outlooks. A Brit sees a desirable car pass him, and thinks, "Why the f**k
should he have that?" whereas an American thinks "Hey, that's nice, I'll
get
one" and makes the effort to achieve that aim.

The richest people in this country are Estate agents and Lawyers, and they
get rich by screwing other people.

"Doki" wrote in message
...

Oliver Keating wrote in message
...

Because they if they are rich enough to be buying a second house (which
I
regard as the ultimate frivoulous activity), they can certainly afford
to
be
screwed for every penny by the tax man.

Why is owning a second home "the ultimate frivolous activity"? It's well
known that property is as a general rule a solid investment. You get the
benefit of having an appreciating asset whilst having a house in the
country, or nearer your family etc. Why should activities you consider
frivolous be taxed heavily, rather than ones I consider frivolous? Why not
tax gambling like mad?

Oh it is in financial terms a relatively sensible thing to do -as an
investment, but it is only accessible to the very rich.

Incidentally, I think gambling should be banned alltogether (including the
"lotto") but that is another story.

And as people keep seeming to forget, every pound that one of these rich
kids pays is a pound that the poor don't have to pay.

The argument about heavily taxing high earners is going on elsewhere in
the
thread, so I won't repeat myself here.

What I'd like to know is this: If you're so bothered why go to the
frivolity
of buying a new car when you've got a couple of apparently servicable cars
knocking around? Why not give what you've lost in depreciation on the CLK
to
charity? You don't actually give a toss, but like to think, and for others
to think that you do. Same goes for you being bothered about the
environment. I don't suppose you considered that manufacturing a new car
is
widely acknowledged to pollute more than running an old one. If you're
going
to constantly bang on about your politics you ought to have the decency to
stand by your views.


blah blah blah

"Duncan McNiven" wrote in message
...
On Sun, 21 Dec 2003 00:54:37 -0000, "Oliver Keating"
wrote:

Because they if they are rich enough to be buying a second house (which I
regard as the ultimate frivoulous activity), they can certainly afford to
be
screwed for every penny by the tax man.

Between us, my wife & I own 2 homes & rent a 3rd. Does that make us rich?
Hardly. We have
our family home. We also own the home which, before our marriage, I shared
with my mother;
my mother still lives there. My wife also rents an apartment near her work
(1000 miles
from home).

You are obviously very rich.

Now should I sell my old home, thus making my mother homeless? Should my
wife commute
daily?

If you want to tax rich people, tax income, not what people choose to
spend their money
on.

Increasing income tax is a political no-no.

Besides, houses are a form of investment, which is only accessible to the
very rich.

--
Duncan

"MrBitsy" wrote in message
...
Oliver Keating wrote:

snip

Because they if they are rich enough to be buying a second house
(which I regard as the ultimate frivoulous activity), they can
certainly afford to be screwed for every penny by the tax man.


Buying a second home can be a sensible option. My mother in law is 79. She
was paying £250 per month in rent. We purchased it for £18,000 (after the
discount as she lived there for years) with a mortgage of £90 per month.
She
now lives rent free and we get a second home (towards our retirement
income)
with a current value of £100,000.

If she was to die soon, we would have 2 homes and we may not sell the
second - does that make us 'rich kids' and should it make us a target for
massive tax?

You could get around a second home tax if the home was owned in your mothers
name. And its far too little to be elegible for inherentence tax when she
dies, so what would be wrong with that?

In 1993, I was an unemployed taxi driver and my wife was a dinner lady. I
am
now a software engineer and she is a teacher. We both went back to college
and university for 5 years. During that time our sons didn't know what a
holiday was and we lived out of jumble sales. I was receiving £120 per
week
in benefits and had to take a cut in that amount when I started uni.

You want to clobber 'rich kids' in an effort to ease congestion on the
roads - what about incentive to get people better off? We lived on £1500 a
year then and £55,000 a year now, but that was done through sheer hard
work.
Take your average 'I won't come off benifits until I earn £200 per week'
moron - how are they going to deal with your clobber the rich kids
attitude?

I don't know

--
MrBitsy

"Doki" wrote in message
...

"Oliver Keating" wrote in message
...

I can't say I have a second home, but why should a second home be
heavily
taxed?

Because people who own 2 houses are clearly very rich, and the rich
should
be targeted for tax for two reasons:

1) Social justice

What on earth is social justice? I don't know if you've ever noticed, but
people who have a fair bit of money chucking around generally have it for
a
reason. The average rich person probably runs a business which employs a
fair few people, or is high up in a business and through their work
ensures
the business is profitable, thus employing people. It's not like they've
made their money by walking around flogging the working classes and
killing
their children. The aforementioned rich ******* and his employees go and
spend money, which makes more jobs for the people selling goods and
providing services. You tax people purely because they're rich and all you
do is put off people from being enterprising.

Well, this is starting to get into a very old left vs right argument, but...

The fact of the matter is that while it is true rich people may work harder
than their poorer counterparts, they also rely on the social backbone to
gain that wealth, they could not become wealthy unless there were a basic
infrastructure around them - be that social, financial and legal. Many
people become highly rich through chance, quite a lot do so by ruthelessly
scewing people over, setting high profit margins, or owning a resource which
gives them effective monopoly. It is only right that such people should be
asked to contribute more back to society.

2) It would actually be impossible to raise enough revenue if everyone
was
taxed to the same %age because the rich provide a disproportionately
large
chunk of revenue.

But if you reduce the tax burden surely you encourage enterprise, which
moves more money around the economy and thus you still get your tax. I am
not an economist, but AFAIK there are still arguments about high vs low
tax
. The rich will always provide you with more revenue per capita as
they're
spending and earning more cash.


You will encourage enterprise, and according to Conservative government this
will eventually trickle down to help the poorest member of society.

It doesn't work. Over the last 20 years, the middle class has become
steadily more wealthy thanks to economic growth, but the working class have
remained pretty much static, they haven't shared in the growth at all.

On Mon, 22 Dec 2003 20:07:40 +0000 (UTC), "Cast_Iron"
wrote:


If you were to believe the CPRE, the SE is currently like
downtown Hong Hong during the rush hour, when the reality
is that approximately 15% of the land within 1 hours
commute of charring cross is built on.


A one hour commute by your favoured mode is only about ten miles at most.

What are you wittering on about ?

Are you suggesting that there are open fields within that area?


If you had a point you would have made it by now.


greg


--
Once you try my burger baby,you'll grow a new thyroid gland.
I said just eat my burger, baby,make you smart as Charlie Chan.
You say the hot sauce can't be beat. Sit back and open wide.

"Vulpes Argenteus (formerly M)" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 20 Dec 2003 19:19:42 -0000, "Oliver Keating"
wrote:


"Mikael Armstrong" wrote in message
...
I can't say I have a second home, but why should a second home be
heavily
taxed?

Because people who own 2 houses are clearly very rich, and the rich
should
be targeted for tax for two reasons:

1) Social justice
2) It would actually be impossible to raise enough revenue if everyone
was
taxed to the same %age because the rich provide a disproportionately
large
chunk of revenue.

Therefore ... accepting your arguments, the Government should tax the rich
very heavily and directly. Taxing people who have second homes is
inefficient - you use the word 'clearly' but don't / can't justify.

Of course the Government hasn't got the guts to tax heavily - that would
involve looking less voter friendly !

Of course, there is no need to go to extremes. Taxing an economy very
heavily has negative effects because you are distorting the markets and
reducing incentives, so a compromise must be met between how much poverty
you allow vs overall prosperity.

I like the idea of 'social justice' insofar as a second home is much less
heavily used in terms of local resources: waste disposal, road maintenance
and so forth, and should therefore be comparatively lightly taxed.

Excatly, it is underutilised, and in a country with limited homes and people
finding it difficult to buy, anyone not making proper use of property should
be made to compensate the rest of society through the tax system!

Mikael Armstrong wrote:
"Cast_Iron" wrote in message
...
Mikael Armstrong wrote:
"Robin May" wrote in
message
.4...
Living many miles away from where you work and having to
travel a long distance to get there is something that
should be discouraged. Not encouraged so that the rich
can
buy another castle and leave it empty for most of the
year.

Very true, so why not let people build a few more houses
in
such areas? The main problem is the lack of supply that is
driving up the prices.

errrr, no. The only thing driving up house prices is greed.

So why do we not have the same situation with cars? Cars
themselves can be bought for less now than ever in real
terms. This is due to the fact that there is far greater
supply so people buying cars can shop around for a good
deal. The laws of supply and demand will always work things
out, and in the housing market, the market is artificially
being held high by restricting supply.


If you were to take note of news broadcasts you would have noticed that the
present government took action to force down the price of cars.

Another part of the reason is that houses last considerably longer than cars
generally speaking. But just for the hell of it, see what price you would
have to pay for a Mk1 Cortina now, it will be significantly above it price
when new.

wrote:

[ ... ]

... houses are a form of investment, which is only accessible to
the very rich.

If you can't post something sensible, you'd give a better impression of
yourself if you posted nothing at all.