At first glance, paying less council tax for a lower value property makes sense. When you look at places such as Stoke-on-Trent or Middlesbrough, where many houses sell for under £100,000, the council tax bill could fall dramatically. An annual bill of £500 could become the new norm for many in these areas.
But what does this mean for the local councils who are trying to provide services?
Given most councils are already buckling under financial pressure of trying to provide basic services, how does any of this amount to improvement?
Surely, with less money we’ll see more councils going bust, and areas with lower value housing stock will become poorer and more deprived, leading to an even more vicious cycle of poverty.
House values in such areas could further decrease, reducing the council tax take and resulting in an ever-decreasing amount of money for basic service provisions such as policing.
But it is not just the poor who could be victimised by such a policy. As progressive a tax as this seems on paper, it is regressive when it comes to ambitions.
We often talk of the property ladder and our dreams to climb further up, but from the outset, such a wealth tax penalises those who try harder.
Our homes are not just somewhere we live, they are a symbol of our hard work, a reflection of ourselves. As human beings, we naturally want to be better.
We want to upgrade ourselves and therefore our homes. We put in new kitchens, we install better boilers – heck, we may even spend thousands to install a heat pump, but such a policy of wealth tax on a home’s value deters such investment.
It is ultimately a tax on improvement. It is a Labour government punishment for trying to be better.
