The Telegraph can now reveal the data that is currently being gathered by the Valuation Office, where officials are building an “automated valuation model” to prepare up-to-date values for all of the 1.5 million homes in Wales.
As part of this model, they are using “aerial and street view photography” in order to verify the size of houses and gardens.
They are also looking at Energy Performance Certificates (EPCs), meaning the more energy efficient homes – for example, those with double glazing – could potentially be charged higher taxes.
They’re subsidising everyone to have greener homes. Then taxing them for having greener homes.
This is part of a comment from the most recent thread over at Samizdata.
“You go out your door in the morning, forgetting your key? If your door locks automatically, well… That’s a behavioral cue, punishing you for forgetting your key inside. You can accept the lesson and learn to remember your key, or you can modify your environment by changing your door lock over to one that has to be key-locked from the outside with a key.
Too many of our idjit-class “elites” think that the way forward would be to put a sign up on the exterior of your house, asking if you’ve remembered your keys…”
I think that this succinctly sums up the problem we are dealing with. The clueless imbeciles in charge have no clue how their hare brained schemes will pan out in the real world.
If we could find the special schools or hospitals where their behavior was modified, we could eliminate the problem in one fell swoop…
Ah yes. Par for the course. Must tax those bloody awful early adopters using their own money to improve things!
Its even more stupid that building regs and FENSA won’t let you retro fit and install new windows that aren’t k-glass or double glazed – massively putting up the cost of draught free windows and its the draughts that have the biggest impact not conduction by a massive factor. Big issue in poorer areas.
At the UK level they did finally realise the CRC actually penalised efficiency gains that led to growth (kind of a shame as i had a nice idea to run a business on the loopholes!) . In its original form the CRC actually cross subsidised less efficient companies that lost business as their absolute energy usage dropped – then HMT got involved and made it even worse by turning it into a tax on energy use.
One suspects we’re about to go through another cycle of this when they start taxing EVs to replace fuel tax.
No surprise to see it’s Wales.
‘They’re subsidising everyone to have greener homes. Then taxing them for having greener homes.’
Congratulations. Your bureaucracy is almost as good as ours!!
Chris, expect EVs to be at least triple taxed, got to get Dale Vince even more money so he can carry on “donating” to the Labour Party.
Ultimately, you get the politicians you weren’t prepared to kill with hungry African lions.
For a tax based on property values, then yes, a more valuable property will be liable for more taxes. Duh! And, yes, a bigger garden makes a property more valuable. Double glazing makes a property more valuable. A conservatory makes a property more valuable. These people really are cretins.
But what goes beyond cretinous is not revaluing since 1990!
Jgh – But what goes beyond cretinous is not revaluing since 1990!
Idk, obvs council taxes are now the highest they’ve ever been in British history, yet local and devolved authorities are bankrupt.
They think there’s a pot of money waiting to be seized from people who have the temerity to own a house, but there isn’t. We’re on the far end of Laffer’s curve, and no amount of “revaluing” people’s homes is going to magic up significant extra tax revenues.
British people already can’t afford heat pumps or electric cars or the second highest electricity bills in the entire world. If the State decides to make their homes unaffordable too, the State will be in deep shit.
Because people on streets (ee da dee da dey) have nothing else to lose, do they?
Eee da dee da dee da dee da.
“when they start taxing EVs to replace fuel tax”
Well, if EVs become actually popular they will have to tax them in some manner. How else will they find the money to repave roads etc.?
I suppose you could make every road a toll one, but I think that would not be popular.
Pay out of general revenue? I guess that’s always an answer, but there’s already many other calls for that money.
If there’s a pot of money to be seized, it’s perhaps by making council tax proportionate to the house value. It’s wild that a £120k three bedroom house in Sunderland pays the same £2,500/yr council tax as a three bedroom house in London.
But the Londoner already pays more through income tax, so it’s not clear how much more can realistically be squeezed.
Andrew – It’s wild that a £120k three bedroom house in Sunderland pays the same £2,500/yr council tax as a three bedroom house in London.
Why? Does not filling in potholes cost more in London, or something?
Why should local taxes be based on the purely hypothetical “value” of your house, a value which has been artificially inflated by decades of irresponsible money printing and infinity immigration by the British state?
We should have a flat rate of tax instead. If that doesn’t provide enough revenues for councils to employ LGBTQIA outreach coordinators and interpreters for foreign benefits parasites, abolish the local authorities and privatise the core services they’re supposed to provide.
– No surprise to see it’s Wales.
Are you going to hold your nose and vote Conservative, Julia? Because it should come as no surprise that a UK Labour government means all the stupid shit we’ve seen in Wales and Scotland will land everywhere – with extra stench and sticky.
Most of the mainstream media are being very quiet in the rather dodgy guy who backed the new Welsh first minister’s campaign including donating £100k just around the time he submitted an application for a solar farm in a ‘place of special scientific interest’, where he already runs a ‘recycling’ business (more like a rubbish tip)
The designation for that area has been one of the reasons used against a M4 relief road as it would go through the same area.
Steve: we tried a flat rate tax in the late 1980s. It crashed catestrophically because of people living in a million pound house paying the same as somebody living in an £8,000 house.
Do millionaires consume more council services then?
Me, I’d abolish all the council tax/community charge nonsense and just charge for individual services at the point of use. Use more, pay more. Doesn’t get fairer than that. And hopefully, some entrepreneurial types will offer better services for less money and we can outcompete all the local council shite into oblivion.
Jgh – I think the “Poll Tax” was a good idea, poorly implemented.
Why should the guy whose house is worth a million quid pay more for council services he’s extremely unlikely to use than the guy whose house is worth £250K?
Do we reckon millionaires should also be forced to pay more for bread and milk when they’re at the corner shop? What’s “fair” about making people pay an extra financial penalty for being successful? We already have nationally levied income taxes, NI and VAT to soak the earners, the council has no business getting in on this action too.
Sorry – I wrote that before seeing BiW’s more succinct and well put argument.
@ Steve
Some people *do* want millionaires to pay more for bread and milk: some “right-wing” think tank proposed a “progressive” consumption tax as being more economically efficient than a tax on earnings, the tax rate being higher after one has spent the first £K per annum and going up again after one has spent £3K in that year.
John77, are they serious? If I were rich, what’s to stop me getting ( paying ) somebody else to buy for me? Or, if this impost were inconvenient, going to live somewhere else. If only those bastards spent as much time thinking how not to spend the money rather than how to squeeze out the last drop of tax..
@M – “Well, if EVs become actually popular they will have to tax them in some manner. How else will they find the money to repave roads etc.? I suppose you could make every road a toll one, but I think that would not be popular.”
Before EVs all roads were effectively toll roads as the more miles you drove the more tax you paid on your fuel – though with obvious variation for more efficient vehicles.
Unlike with petrol, diesel etc, which are sold for a specific purpose, it is very hard to charge for electricity which is used for EVs (even more so when people might have their own solar panels), so there is repeated talk of “road pricing” which achieves the same tax rasing power by tracking exactly where and when every journey is made. It would also allow for vastly more regulation, since the charge could be varied by traffic conditions (a super powered congestion charge), time of day, length of trip (you should have cycled, so you’re charged more), official advice (charged more because you went out when the met office had a weather warning of icy roads), etc.
That particular think tank got the wrong end of a very good idea. “Progressive consumption tax” really means “all savings, all earnings from savings (both income and capital) are untaxed, as long as they remain savings. But if you take money out of your Super-ISA to spend it then that gets added to your unsaved portion of income this year and progressive income tax rates apply to it”.
Income this year, £50k, savings 10k, earnings (income or capital in ISA) from savings 10k. Taxable income £40k at usual income tax rates and bands.
Income this year, £50k, savings 0k, earnings (income or capital in ISA) from savings 10k. Taxable income £50k at usual income tax rates and bands.
Income this year, £50k, spending from ISA 10k, earnings (income or capital in ISA) from savings 10k. Taxable income £60k at usual income tax rates and bands.
Etc.
@ Rhoda
Yes: the amount that the millionaire pays his servant to shop for his daily groceries is likely to be similar to the differential between base rate consumption tax and higher rate consumption tax. There was a discussion about the impact on the servant who did all the millionaire’s shopping and had to pay higher rate tax on his/her own shopping (conclusion – all the big money items from Harrods etc would be bought in millionaire’s own name, all the oddments at the corner shop by the servant).
With a nod to @Boganboy, Australia seems like a complicated country. When you look at tables of GDP per head, and only include countries with more than 7m people, then Australia comes out about 3rd. Recalculate this for people that would like to come to Australia if Australia would only let them, and it’s certainly top few again. It can’t be the weather, ‘cos it’s schittily oppressive compared to say Spain. Or Libya.
So what does Australia get right?
My guess is the centre has fewer powers, like in SUI and USA, but could be wrong.
– It can’t be the weather, ‘cos it’s schittily oppressive compared to say Spain. Or Libya.
Not where most of the people live. It’s the bloody nightmare spiders and snakes that would keep me away.
Well Bongo, you’d probably find today’s autumn weather pleasant. I’ve only got three sweaters on, but I’m a thin-blooded Aussie.
As to why people want to come here, damifino. Alas the colossal upsurge in migration (about 700 000 last year) means that we’re starting to have homeless squatting in parks. Unfortunately Tony Abbott, the bloke who really cracked down on illegals, lost his seat because of the Chinese vote.
Of course the drooling idiots on the High Court don’t help when they release the scum in detention to rape and assault the citizenry. (Have I ever mentioned before what I think of the High Court??) And no Tim, it’s not unfair to keep them in detention. Their very existence here is a crime and the only way they can stop being criminals is to go back to Shitholeistan. We’d even pay their airfare.
As for the snakes and the spiders PJF, they’ve never bothered me. Though I still remember murdering some poor red-bellied black snake that was sunning itself on a pathway. I thought someone might step on it.