New Property Tax? Reform UK must be Offord their heads - Sue Webber
I don’t know who wrote the Reform Party’s manifesto for this year’s Scottish Parliament elections, but maybe I should give them credit for having a sense of humour.
They certainly were having a laugh in thinking that introducing a brand new tax fitted in with their pledge to “cut our taxes.” But then again, maybe they just think voters are stupid, and as the new kids on the block without a record to defend they can just make up any nonsense and expect to get away with it.
But there it was in the manifesto unveiled last week by Nigel Farage and his puppet Malcolm “Don’t call me Lord” Offord; a new annual Property Tax which would be paid directly to local authorities. In the absence of any indication otherwise, it would be in addition to residential Council Tax.
Their plan is for the new levy to replace business rates and the SNP’s Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT) – which the Scottish Conservatives want to abolish without any strings – claiming it will be done on a “revenue neutral” basis.
They claimed it would eventually end unpredictable business rates revaluations, make buying property cheaper and boost economic growth. But those goals are more than possible without a crippling new tax.
And crippling it would be. To cover the lost revenue the Reform plan would mean taxing every Scottish household to the tune of £1600 a year, which for a Band D property in Edinburgh, currently attracting an annual Council Tax, water and sewerage bill totalling £2278, would mean a staggering 70 per cent increase in local taxation.
For someone living in a Band A house, the lowest, their local bill would double. Yes, you read that correctly − the party supposedly standing on a tax-cutting ticket would double the local taxes paid by the least well-off.
I’m not sure how Offord defines fair, but abolishing business rates and a property transaction tax and covering the cost by surprising already hard-pressed households with a new eye-watering tax is not how I understand the word. Stark, staring bonkers would be closer to the mark.
There is, of course, an easy way to avoid LBTT which is not to buy a new house, and that is a choice many people are taking. But here is Reform, apparently a right-wing party, promising to remove that choice and whack everyone whether they like it or not.
That’s not the policy of a true right-of-centre movement with economic freedom at the core of its beliefs, but a good old-fashioned, left-wing, one-size-fits-all socialist approach.
We agree that the exorbitant LBTT inhibits economic growth and keeps people off the housing ladder – it adds ten per cent onto the cost of an average Edinburgh home – but imagining that slapping a charge of £1600 on every household each year is the way to stimulate growth just shows that Reform isn’t a serious party at all.
But its not new. Not so long ago, Nigel Farage wanted to nationalise the steel industry – straight from the SNP playbook of wasting taxpayers’ money by buying up failing businesses – and was all for increasing benefit payments in a typically populist chase for votes.
The more we see of Reform the more it becomes obvious they have nothing to offer except causing division and giving the SNP an undeserved get-out-of jail card.