Mansion Tax plan is the profoundly unfair politics of envy - Iain Whyte
It is unusual for me to quote Aldous Huxley but he did observe that “men do not learn much from history”. In politics that goes for recent events too.
Buried away in a ‘Business Bulletin’ at a council committee this week was a short item with a supposedly neutral council response to a Scottish Government consultation on a ‘Mansion Tax’ for homes worth more than £1m.
From the Lib Dems leftwards, everyone seems happy with this proposal, even though it breaks the main principle of Council Tax that it’s not just a property tax but a charge for local services used. Hence the single person discount.
The SNP and other leftists now want these households to pay even more when, in truth, they probably use less. The genuinely wealthy often make private care arrangements and send their children to independent schools.
Council Tax is only a fifth of council income in Edinburgh with much more coming from other taxes through government grant. The top 1 per cent of earners pay about 30 per cent of Income Tax so already contribute.
Potentially raising only £16m across Scotland, 0.02 per cent of the £67.9bn Scottish Budget, this is the politics of envy rather than practicality and a further hike on the top of the increases in Bands E to H introduced in 2017.
Worse, about half will be raised in Edinburgh but only about 9 per cent will ever be spent here, with the rest redistributed to other parts of Scotland.
It seems the left-wing councillors limit empathy in one direction too. A cash-poor single pensioner living in a now expensive family home bought for a song 50 years ago is expected to pay up or shove off.
Yet those with spare rooms in scarce and heavily subsidised social housing should never have to move. The taxpayer should just keep paying their rent even if we don’t have enough accommodation for poorer homeless families.
Kemi Badenoch recently labelled Labour the party of welfare - she could have added some others too.
What have they failed to learn? The SNP’s additional higher Income Tax bands have in practice reduced tax receipts as people move away, work less or put it in pensions. The Laffer Curve at work.
With house price inflation already running at 8.3 per cent in Northumberland, but only 2.4 per cent in Edinburgh, I foresee even lower demand for expensive properties in Scotland in future. Economic growth in Scotland anyone?