Wednesday, Jan 30, 2008
More sneaky taxes on the way ...
Telegraph: Ministers snoop on 16m house sales
The Government has gone ahead with a deal with Rightmove, an online property search firm, to give HM Customs and Revenue [HMRC] staff access to its records of transactions. The records contain details about individual properties, including their sale price as well as any internal features and modifications that may add to their value. The Conservatives say the contract is proof ministers are planning to press ahead with changes to council tax bands despite Labour promising last year to postpone a sweeping revaluation.
Posted by uncle chris @ 04:47 PM (1025 views) Add Comment
14 Comments
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1. hpwatcher said...
Simple answer to all this...boycott right move.
2. mark said...
maybe the data protection agency should be contacted about this misuse of personal details, as I am sure this would be misuse....., while i am thinking about it i wont buy those new windows with my dodgy cash now...
3. mark said...
this is the email address talk-to-us@rightmove.co.uk
email them to say we are all boycotting them.... that will worry them... especially in hard times like now..
4. su said...
You could threaten to boycott them and they may say they won't go ahead after all. but what is to stop them re-making a deal, behind closed doors, next week? I think you'll find the Customs and Revenue workers will have already signed the official secrets act, so how will Joe Public find out?
5. drewster said...
The country desperately needs a revaluation of council tax bands, they haven't been touched since 1991. It's a political nightmare because the losers will complain louder than the winners will gloat, even if the rebanding is revenue-neutral. Most other countries which levy a property tax (including America) revalue property annually. In most years, the revaluation consists of adding x%, where x is the national or local average price rise.
Might be best to wait a couple of years til after the crash though. Many of the new-build BTL flats in northern cities are rated as Band D or E, even though they soon won't be worth half as much as a band D house.
6. mark said...
drewster do you really think re-banding will be neutral... it will be an excuse to steal more money from the hardworking commoners whilst the filthy rich pay less tax than a a toilet cleaner...
7. jack c said...
A system based on genuine affordability would surely be better than one based on property bandings - why should the payment for local services have anything to do with property prices?
8. drewster said...
Mark, sadly I don't think the government would make it revenue-neutral. But if it was, it would be a good revaluation.
Jack C.: Part of the idea of council tax is to prevent over-consumption of housing. Picture a family home, the children have finally all moved out and the parents have just retired. The house is in a high council tax band, but they are no longer working and they struggle to pay the tax. So they decide to downsize, leaving the larger house for another family to move into. However if there was no council tax but just income tax, they would have less of a reason to downsize. As a result there would be just two adults occupying a four-bedroom house, while other families around the country can't afford to move up the ladder. It's like bed-blocking in the NHS, only it's House-Blocking.
9. stillthinking said...
To speculatively assign any reasons to taxes misses the point that they are there only to raise government revenue, which are not assigned to the respective area of taxation. Road taxes don't go to roads, national insurance doesn't go to national insurance, and council taxes certainly are not connected to housing needs.
I can't remember the exact figure, but some 30% of council taxes go to outstanding liabilities to retired public sector workers alone.
To suggest council tax is designed to prevent over-consumption of housing ignores many things, mainly that it does no such thing at all in any way, as council tax is an occupier tax not an owner tax.
There is no plan or higher purpose to any tax other than to raise government revenue.
10. jack c said...
@Drewster - I take your point - Houses are fixed in place and so are a form of wealth that cannot be hidden or moved abroad. This makes council tax easy to collect. The only information required is address, band that property is in and number of adults in the property.
Lets hope they dont revalue properties for council tax bill purposes as this would likely double my annual payments !
11. enuii said...
Mark, I've asked the question and look forward to their standard reply.
12. it_is_going_with_a_bang said...
I can understand rebanding properties that have had extensions etc. and basically are not the same property as before.
But other than that whats the point?
Gordon will be shooting himself in the foot if he introduces any higher taxes - by stealth or otherwise.
Less money to spend and hence an even worse economy!
13. Drewster said...
StillThinking, you make a valid point. In its current form, council tax is not perfect. But it doesn't matter where the money goes, any tax on the land value would encourage more efficient use of land. It wouldn't take much to turn council tax into something resembling a land value tax, which is closer to being "economically perfect".
As for your point that it's an occupier tax, that's incorrect. Whether your house has zero occupiers (e.g. a second home) or twenty, the council tax is the same. Second-home owners pay 90%-100% depending on the area. (Ok there is a 25% discount if it's just one person). It wasn't originally designed to prevent over-consumption of housing, but as it increases that is one of its side-effects.
Jack C: Yes if we taxed the property of the non-domiciled people living in London it would go at least part-way to addressing the inequalities!
14. enuii said...
Rightmove politicianesque reply for the record,
Your e-mail to the Rightmove talk to us e-mail address has been passed to me for reply.
Although you will appreciate that I am not familiar with your personal circumstances, I am happy to clarify the position for you.
Rightmove member estate agents have access to a "Market Comparable Tool" which allows them to search and access records of property details that have been published on the Rightmove web site. This helps our member estate agents arrive at accurate property pricing recommendations for the benefit of their vendor clients and provide relevant and helpful information for both buyers and sellers.
The Valuation Office is one of the largest employers of professional surveyors in the UK and naturally uses comparable evidence from a wide variety of sources, including, most importantly, house sale prices which are published for every property transaction by the Land Registry.
Like other surveyors, Valuation Office employees search on Rightmove as well as other property portals and estate agents’ own sites. The Valuation Office approached Rightmove some time ago to license our Market Comparable Tool. This helps the Valuation Office achieve high standards of accuracy and saves them time and money otherwise spent searching properties advertised on line and on agents own websites.
I can reassure you that the Valuation Office have no access to personal client data. All the information which the Valuation Office has access to has been freely available in the public domain whether on Rightmove, other property portals or agents’ own websites.
I hope that this provides the assurance that you are seeking, but please do not hesitate to contact me again if I can be of any further help.
Yours sincerely
Alan J Gearing
Alan Gearing
Property Related Services Director
T 020 7087 0700 F 0845 330 2311
M 07980 938968 E alan.gearing@rightmove.co.uk