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Post by mercian on Aug 5, 2022 13:25:07 GMT
There would be less pressure on the housing market if illegal immigrants and foreign criminals were deported, and stricter immigration controls were in place - restricting extended family members for instance. Evidence? Or is this just "common sense" (which is not that common according to Voltaire) Mathematics if you prefer. If you've got 20 million people needing a home, the pressure on prices will be lower than if 21 million do.
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steve
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Post by steve on Aug 5, 2022 13:29:08 GMT
colin He's not Spaffer or Truss will probably be sufficient.
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steve
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Post by steve on Aug 5, 2022 13:33:51 GMT
mercian Is this another example of your " humour" Precisely how do you think " illegal " immigrants or " foreign criminals" would qualify for housing or obtain a mortgage. Other than money laundering by the Tories mates from such areas as the middle East and Russia there's no impact at all on the availability of housing.
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Post by mercian on Aug 5, 2022 13:35:34 GMT
@crofty and various others The point that Graham made is that doctors have already pronounced him brain-dead so what difference does it make? If he's effectively dead already how can anything be deemed to be in his best interests?
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Post by mercian on Aug 5, 2022 13:39:39 GMT
mercian Is this another example of your " humour" Precisely how do you think " illegal " immigrants or " foreign criminals" would qualify for housing or obtain a mortgage. Other than money laundering by the Tories mates from such areas as the middle East and Russia there's no impact at all on the availability of housing. Where do they live then?
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Post by wb61 on Aug 5, 2022 13:43:53 GMT
Evidence? Or is this just "common sense" (which is not that common according to Voltaire) Mathematics if you prefer. If you've got 20 million people needing a home, the pressure on prices will be lower than if 21 million do. The England figures for Homelessness January to March 2022 is 76,880, these are the figures for which there is a statutory requirement for LA support, this figure, as I understand also includes those who are likely to be evicted from shorthold tenancies without fault. The problem is awful and acute for those who suffer from it but as you can see does not equate to 20 million. In November 2021 the Times reported that there are approximately 10,000 criminals subject to deportation. In terms of illegal immigration the figures are almost impossible to properly ascertain, save to say that no-one is an illegal immigrant until a decision has been made by the home office and the track record of time taken for dealing with applications has been considered to be woeful. As to deportations, as I understand it counting voluntary and enforced deportations by June 2021 (latest figures I can find) approaching 8,000. In terms of border refusal for the same year approaching 13.5 thousand were turned back! Your Million seems a trifle too large!
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Post by leftieliberal on Aug 5, 2022 13:44:43 GMT
leftieliberal - "I cannot see the moral grounds for telling people who are on minimum wage that they should be paying income tax." I think if we tighten up what we are meaning we would be in agreement. Poor earners already pay an income tax, in the form of NI, as you allude to in your post, so the morality issue is already there. The point would be that on minimum wages, you might pay a 10% rate of tax, with NI and IT combined, with this starting rate applying to all, avoiding the daft idea that wealthy pensioners pay a lot less tax than poor earners etc. This is really what I'm talking about. The primary threshold at which employees pay NI is £242 per week (as of 6th July this year), this corresponds to £12,584 per annum, which is now (just) above the income tax personal allowance of £12,570. You really need to keep up with tax changes. The lower earning limit (at which one gets the benefits of NI) is much lower but it is decades since these were aligned. [added later] You can still pay NI but not income tax, if your week-to-week income is very variable, but for most people they are now closely aligned.
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Post by leftieliberal on Aug 5, 2022 14:09:29 GMT
robbiealive Playing moral scruples with the subject is interesting. How would we react if somebody dropped a million or so into our bank accounts? Legitimately too because they left it to us in a will. Would it change the way we viewed inherited and unearned wealth? My father was a very wealthy man for the first fifty years of his life then after one risky property deal too far, lost it all and was declared bankrupt. He ended up living in a council house dependent on his state pension. His estate covered his funeral costs but nothing else. There was no inheritance but, potentially, I could one day have inherited a fortune from him. I sometimes wonder what course my life would have taken, how even my views might have changed, had that been the case. You will remember that for almost the last three decades there has been Emily's list in the Labour Party (Emily being an acronym for 'Early Money Is Like Yeast' - it makes the dough rise) emilyslist.org.uk/ where financial assistance was given to a number of women to help them get on the political ladder. I think that having spare assets early in life can make a big difference. In my case, when my mother died four years ago having refused to change her will so that I did not inherit a share of her estate, I used a deed of variation to pass my inheritance directly to my sister's daughter and she was able to use it to pay off the mortgage on her house with it.
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Post by alec on Aug 5, 2022 14:10:36 GMT
leftieliberal - indeed, I was aware of that, but you were talking about minimum wage earners, and on a 35hr week that puts you on around £16,000. That's what I am basing my ideas on. Full time,minimum wage earners would probably see reduced tax in my scenario.
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steve
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Post by steve on Aug 5, 2022 14:11:54 GMT
mercian The thing is if people are illegally in the country and that status is confirmed, they aren't entitled to enter into a tenancy and can't buy a property and are subject to deportation. If their status doesn't comply with the above them they either haven't been detected yet but would still be unable to rent or buy as they couldn't meet the vetting criteria or they aren't here illegally. Regarding " foreign criminals" are you seriously suggesting that people commit crimes overseas are determined as criminals there and then just pop on a plane to the UK to buy a three bed semi in Surrey. Or do you mean people born outside the UK who commit crimes while already residing in the UK , like for example Alexander Johnson? Either way your assumption about the impact on the housing market is frankly ludicrous.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 5, 2022 14:12:11 GMT
Do you have data to support that contention. ? Take my case-working class parents who never owned a property and had no savings. I own my house and have some savings . I have gifted to my children and grandchildren ,over the last 20 years, more than our current savings. All of this was earned and invested in my working lifetime. I would be interested to see evidence that my case is -as you believe-a minority one. People's particular circumstances differ in these cases, and behaviours too, but surely the generality is that if you buy a house that then doubles, triples or quadruples in value in your lifetime, that derived wealth is largely unearned, despite you maybe scrimping and saving to buy the house in the first place? You may have improved the house too but you are essentially the beneficiary of an overheated and malfunctioning market. Similarly with other investments that balloon in value. If you inherit a large estate too that must be unearned wealth in the true sense of that word, despite it being legitimately acquired and maybe hard earned by the person passing it on. Investments increase and decrease. They do so on the fundamentals of the company and its prospects. To speak of "ballooning" treats this growth as though it is unrelated to those factors. There is , of course,a degree of speculation-betting-involved in the investment decision and we have a Capital Gains Tax which removes some of such gains for the State's benefit. House prices only keep pace with the price of similar houses in similar areas. Prior to retirement I was paying handsomely for that privilege , in the shape of mortgage rates which today's youngsters are about to experience for the first time. I paid them out of earned income. After retirement , I have been able to use house sale proceeds from a city location to buy a larger house , for the same money, in a rural local. I then trod the reverse path , buying a smaller property with those sale proceeds in the SE. So house prices vary with area and location. They are very subjective . There is no Capital Gains Tax in UK on your home. Quite right too. As for Inheritance taxes, I wonder what they are for really. On the political left there is a real resentment, it always seems to me, of wealth inequality. I can accept the idea that there is extreme wealth , derived from a historic ownership or acquisition which might be questionable today , handed down over many generations. But that apart , I believe that inequality of wealth is no more unusual than inequality of intellect, physique,character, and so on. The left's resentment of "middle class wealth " ( mentioned by someone earlier ) is pure class envy. A class which India and China are busy building as rapidly as they can to create a growing economy and reduction in poverty. Concepts of Equality and Inequality are what put me firmly on the ROC. I would accept an honest policy which imposed a graded annual wealth tax , calibrated to be affordable from annual income ( rather than asset sales), with the objective of raising sums significant enough to alleviate real poverty . But taxing my children and grandchildren out of envy, should I be lucky enough to hand my earned house and savings on to them ,unravished by old age care costs ?-No thanks.
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Post by leftieliberal on Aug 5, 2022 14:18:01 GMT
leftieliberal - indeed, I was aware of that, but you were talking about minimum wage earners, and on a 35hr week that puts you on around £16,000. That's what I am basing my ideas on. Full time,minimum wage earners would probably see reduced tax in my scenario. If we were taxing unearned income and capital gains at the same level as earned income, we could probably raise the personal allowance to £16k (that's only a 27% increase). Don't forget that there are additional annual allowances on unearned income and capital gains, all of which would be rolled into personal allowance.
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Post by leftieliberal on Aug 5, 2022 14:22:22 GMT
For the Brummies on here: www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/uk-62436026I'm glad to see that the Bull from the Commonwealth Games opening ceremony is to be saved. It will make a good piece of public art that shows people what Birmingham is all about. The City of a Thousand Trades as I always remember it.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 5, 2022 14:39:42 GMT
@crofty and various others The point that Graham made is that doctors have already pronounced him brain-dead so what difference does it make? If he's effectively dead already how can anything be deemed to be in his best interests? You could ask the parents that couldn’t you? They want a “dignified” end and I’ve no idea what difference the building would make as it is the people concerned who can make it so. Certainly in the instances I was directly involved in we all felt is was absolutely fine. As far as I understand it medical and legal opinion is that the disruption and the journey itself could cause other issues to arise. I fail to see how the parents would call that “dignified”. Anyway, it’s a bloody good job that it is the people who best understand everything who make these decisions - in any patient’s best interest.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 5, 2022 14:39:57 GMT
I see Sunak in the dumb and dumberer contest has polished up his attempt to win the award for biggest wingnut with his interesting take on Robin Hood. The 271st richest man in the UK admits he thinks it's a great achievement to take from the poor and give to the rich, oddly enough the Tories seemed to object to him saying this despite it being party policy for at least the last forty years. On the inheritance tax debate I managed to just avoid any on my dad's estate probably because it consisted of a bag full of old taps and a funeral bill. I just love it when those discussing middle class family inheritance bandy around amounts which 95%+ of the population won't ever see other than by a win on the lottery. That's not " middle class" it's the rich whinging about paying anything on freebies provided by dead relatives.
This kind of thing would have ended a career a few years ago. It's absolute cringe. Even Johnson would never have said such a stupid thing. Sunak really doesn't have a political clue and the party with him as leader would be thrashed in a GE.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 5, 2022 14:49:15 GMT
My wife was a dedicated Social Worker and, like me, is very much loc. But neither of us get the logic that, having earned and saved money - whether by hard work or luck - you should then be told that you can’t give it away if you want to without part of it being taxed. Unless, I believe, it’s donated to a charity.
So long as it is first used to pay for any care home costs etc, in your own lifetime, I find the the whole concept of having it taxed a bit odd. Not that is an issue for either of us financially.
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steve
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Post by steve on Aug 5, 2022 14:52:49 GMT
@crofty Inheritance tax is never an issue for the person giving the inheritance.
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Post by Mark on Aug 5, 2022 15:03:04 GMT
Investments increase and decrease. They do so on the fundamentals of the company and its prospects. To speak of "ballooning" treats this growth as though it is unrelated to those factors. There is , of course,a degree of speculation-betting-involved in the investment decision and we have a Capital Gains Tax which removes some of such gains for the State's benefit. House prices only keep pace with the price of similar houses in similar areas. I speak as someone who has never earned more than minimum wage (and indeed spent several years unemployed, being unlucky enough to finish higher education right in the middle of a recession). I do not own a house and have little in savings. Purely by luck, I do have one asset, though - my record collection. The most valuable from which is a 7" single, "Pristine Christine" by The Sea Urchins, which on a good day, will fetch around £400. Had my taste in music been different, it's likely that my collection would be worth little more than car boot sale value. I bought a fair chunk of the records I own on the day of release, again, it is pure luck that I have an asset. While they are not for sale, I could, if I so wish, gift some of my collection to younger relatives. Nobody would know. By the same token, someone with savings substantial enough to be liable for inheritance tax could just as easily go to the bank draw out a nice lump sum and give it to relatives. Again, nobody would know. There are not spy cameras on banknotes. For me, it only gets complcated when it comes to housing. Literally, a bricks and mortar asset - and one that, due to lack of house building by sucessive governments - both tory and labour, has shot up in value. For the most part, just like my records, which were bought to play and enjoy, houses were bought to live in. A young couple buying a house n the 1970's would have had no idea that they had something that would increase in value so much. Should someone gaining a house wish to then sell it, if subject to inheritance tax, I really don't see a problem. They would still gain much of the value. If they wish to live in it, or already doing to and wish to continue, then it could become problematic....but, surely only then.
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Post by crossbat11 on Aug 5, 2022 15:03:12 GMT
Sometimes you come across little bits and pieces in comments threads or Twitter feeds that make you think; "Hey, that's just what I think."
Only this geezer is articulating it better than me:-
The Camberwick Charlatan cum Terry Thomas?
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Post by crossbat11 on Aug 5, 2022 15:09:22 GMT
I've just thought of a genius campaign strap line for Labour and Starmer at the next election:-
"Good Enough For Now."
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Post by shevii on Aug 5, 2022 15:13:01 GMT
My wife was a dedicated Social Worker and, like me, is very much loc. But neither of us get the logic that, having earned and saved money - whether by hard work or luck - you should then be told that you can’t give it away if you want to without part of it being taxed. Unless, I believe, it’s donated to a charity. So long as it is first used to pay for any care home costs etc, in your own lifetime, I find the the whole concept of having it taxed a bit odd. Not that is an issue for either of us financially. We have to raise taxes from somewhere. What fairer tax for the recipient than a tax on inheritance which they have mostly done nothing to earn? Should that tax revenue from IHT be transferred to Income tax where someone has done something to earn it? Plus IHT is a wealth tax so progressive in that it hits wealthier people and is nowhere near hitting poorer people. It needs to be proportionate of course otherwise the person passing on their inheritance might wonder why they bothered and in many cases involving house ownership this might be the one chance for their children to get on the housing ladder, but even so the wealth at which you start paying it seems excessive to me.
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Post by wb61 on Aug 5, 2022 15:17:35 GMT
My wife was a dedicated Social Worker and, like me, is very much loc. But neither of us get the logic that, having earned and saved money - whether by hard work or luck - you should then be told that you can’t give it away if you want to without part of it being taxed. Unless, I believe, it’s donated to a charity. So long as it is first used to pay for any care home costs etc, in your own lifetime, I find the the whole concept of having it taxed a bit odd. Not that is an issue for either of us financially. We have to raise taxes from somewhere. What fairer tax for the recipient than a tax on inheritance which they have mostly done nothing to earn? Should that tax revenue from IHT be transferred to Income tax where someone has done something to earn it? Plus IHT is a wealth tax so progressive in that it hits wealthier people and is nowhere near hitting poorer people. It needs to be proportionate of course otherwise the person passing on their inheritance might wonder why they bothered and in many cases involving house ownership this might be the one chance for their children to get on the housing ladder, but even so the wealth at which you start paying it seems excessive to me. I always thought that the native Americans had the right idea: land and resources are not owned but humanity has them on loan with the obligation to care for them and maintain the balance of nature as they take advantage of its bounty!
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Post by thylacine on Aug 5, 2022 15:42:12 GMT
There's this thing that needs to be understood about most parents. They might quite happily share what they have for themselves but you come after something they've ear marked for their children and it starts to get ugly. Personally it might be fairer but it's also electoral suicide.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 5, 2022 15:47:40 GMT
We have to raise taxes from somewhere. What fairer tax for the recipient than a tax on inheritance which they have mostly done nothing to earn? Should that tax revenue from IHT be transferred to Income tax where someone has done something to earn it? Plus IHT is a wealth tax so progressive in that it hits wealthier people and is nowhere near hitting poorer people. It needs to be proportionate of course otherwise the person passing on their inheritance might wonder why they bothered and in many cases involving house ownership this might be the one chance for their children to get on the housing ladder, but even so the wealth at which you start paying it seems excessive to me. I always thought that the native Americans had the right idea: land and resources are not owned but humanity has them on loan with the obligation to care for them and maintain the balance of nature as they take advantage of its bounty! What about the wigwam and the bow and arrows?
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Post by ladyvalerie on Aug 5, 2022 15:52:35 GMT
@crofty and various others The point that Graham made is that doctors have already pronounced him brain-dead so what difference does it make? If he's effectively dead already how can anything be deemed to be in his best interests? How can one be “effectively dead”? You’re either dead or you’re not. although I do wonder about you sometimes JOKE
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Post by bardin1 on Aug 5, 2022 15:52:57 GMT
I've just thought of a genius campaign strap line for Labour and Starmer at the next election:- "Good Enough For Now." Maybe a variant on the tried and not trusted previous one "Things can't get any worse"
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Post by alec on Aug 5, 2022 16:02:46 GMT
A more optimistic view of the long term economic outlook -
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Post by Deleted on Aug 5, 2022 16:25:08 GMT
@crofty and various others The point that Graham made is that doctors have already pronounced him brain-dead so what difference does it make? If he's effectively dead already how can anything be deemed to be in his best interests? How can one be “effectively dead”? You’re either dead or you’re not. although I do wonder about you sometimes JOKE I think Pete means “just a bit dead”. Anyway, that’s the medical term as far as I know.
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steve
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Post by steve on Aug 5, 2022 16:26:38 GMT
Cosplay Thatcher announces " no skeletons in my closet" Time to check the basement.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 5, 2022 16:28:16 GMT
I've just thought of a genius campaign strap line for Labour and Starmer at the next election:- "Good Enough For Now." Maybe a variant on the tried and not trusted previous one "Things can't get any worse" “Things can only get a little bit worse.” A winner.
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