If You Can’t Afford the Rent, It’s My Problem, Too

Re:If You Can’t Afford the Rent, It’s My Problem, Too by Khol on Wednesday March 27, 2019 @10:25AM (#19501047)

Council tax on the most expensive property (band H) in kensington and chelsea is £2,246.14 in 2018/2019. Westminster would be £1421.00.

Council tax for my band C property in south gloucester was around £1700, with the highest (band H) in the area being around £3800.

All numbers yearly.

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Re:If You Can’t Afford the Rent, It’s My Problem, Too by gambiting on Wednesday March 27, 2019 @10:50AM (#19501327)

I never saw an issue with this. Council tax pays for things like garbage collection, local services and street cleaning. Unless those things are disproportionately more expensive for expensive houses(and I strongly suspect they aren't), why would they pay more?

Like someone else already noticed - when you buy a house for say £20m, you will pay about £3 million in stamp duty, which is insane already. Owners of expensive housing already pay a tonne in that tax for the privilege of owning it.

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Re:If You Can’t Afford the Rent, It’s My Problem, Too by lmm on Wednesday March 27, 2019 @12:14PM (#19502448)

> I never saw an issue with this. Council tax pays for things like garbage collection, local services and street cleaning. Unless those things are disproportionately more expensive for expensive houses(and I strongly suspect they aren't), why would they pay more?

Because we live in a society and those with the most expensive houses have likely derived the most benefit from that. Just like anything else, the price of civilization is about the value it provides, not about what it cost to produce.

> Like someone else already noticed - when you buy a house for say £20m, you will pay about £3 million in stamp duty, which is insane already. Owners of expensive housing already pay a tonne in that tax for the privilege of owning it.

Stamp duty is a terrible mechanism: it mainly just discourages people from moving, which then means it doesn't even raise that much revenue.

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Re:If You Can’t Afford the Rent, It’s My Problem, Too by gambiting on Wednesday March 27, 2019 @12:21PM (#19502527)

>>Because we live in a society and those with the most expensive houses have likely derived the most benefit from that.

How so? The same limits on garbage collection still apply regardless of how expensive your house is. Even if you have a £20m mansion the council will only collect one bin per week. I'd risk a guess that expensive mansions also require fewer police and fire department visits, and as for street cleaning I have no opinion really.

>>Stamp duty is a terrible mechanism: it mainly just discourages people from moving, which then means it doesn't even raise that much revenue.

I agree with you. I'm looking to buy a house right now and stamp duty feels like money thrown into a fire - basically paying few grand for the luxury of purchasing a place to live.

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Re:If You Can’t Afford the Rent, It’s My Problem, Too by C1sc0cat on Thursday March 28, 2019 @10:04AM (#19512260)

Most of the council budget goes on other things - source some one I know who was lead for social services for a uk county

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Re:If You Can’t Afford the Rent, It’s My Problem, Too by C1sc0cat on Wednesday March 27, 2019 @01:02PM (#19503021)

Actually the council tax pays for a large proportion of local government spending its not a hypothecated tax.

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Re:If You Can’t Afford the Rent, It’s My Problem, Too by jen20 on Wednesday March 27, 2019 @10:43AM (#19501253)

The difference is what that funds. In the UK, council tax is intended to fund things like rubbish removal. In the US, property tax funds schools. Other taxes make up for the low “property” tax in the UK (property in quotes because renters pay it directly too - it is an occupancy tax not an ownership tax)

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Re:If You Can’t Afford the Rent, It’s My Problem, Too by sampo on Wednesday March 27, 2019 @10:49AM (#19501316)

Property taxes should be relative high, so the city gets their part of the increasing land value when the city grows. So that land owners get to collect only a small-ish part of the windfall of the increased value.

It is, after all, the city that made the land more valuable by building more city around it.

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Re:If You Can’t Afford the Rent, It’s My Problem, Too by C1sc0cat on Wednesday March 27, 2019 @11:07AM (#19501553)

Funds the council in general

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Re:If You Can’t Afford the Rent, It’s My Problem, Too by jen20 on Friday March 29, 2019 @06:20PM (#19526155)

Which deal with things like rubbish removal - UK councils are MUCH more limited in scope than US cities.

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