Deborah Orr in the Guardian rightly attacks the issue of council tax on mansions - or the lack of a fair distribution of tax burden yet again. The argument is simple - whcy should someone who buys a £1m or more proprty still only pay a paltry £1500 or so like the family not far away in a perfectly ordinary semi or even terraced house they have extended to fit their family
Cannot be right can it? But of course the vested interests all love the system - even Joan Bakewell claims (in the Torygraph) it would be unfair to tax her on the current value of her home - £4m - when she only paid £12,000 for it 48 years ago. I can tell her why it is not unfair - because everything else, all costs including her earnings, have soared so it IS the current value of her property that is relevant, not its happenstance historic value. So shut up, put up or let a bit for rent to pay the bill Joannie!
But the chance of a proper revaluation is nil - far too risky for dodgy Dave. Even so it is easy to fix (as if!) - scrap current council tax and replace with a 1 per cent of last registered valuation tax using Land Registry data. Thus a 100k house pays 1k (rate rebate as now for less well off); 500k house pays 5k - up fair bit; 1m mansion pays 10k and so on until the unlucky pauper struggling to get by in a 10M palace has to pay 100k per annum. It would make Buck house a bit steep but heigh ho - HMQ could always offshore the entire family business and pay sweet FA like so many of her chums.
And even unlucky sad long term residents like poor Joan Bakewell would only pay 120 quid which would get her off our backs! It could even be used to control maximum rents - government could set this at five times the property tax. Work it out - it fits current pricing which tells us something!
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