Mini-Budget: Chancellor raises stamp duty land tax thresholds
To reduce the burden of buying a home, the Chancellor has increased the thresholds at which stamp duty land tax applies for both first-time buyers and other purchasers.
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Example 1 of why I'm not an economist ...
* Why is it thought a 'good thing' (other than by an individual house owner) for property prices to keep increasing (and at a far faster rate than inflation)?
Doesn't it distort all sorts of aspects of the national economy (from savings & pensions habits, to a general perception that risk is bad and that short-term gains trump planned investment growth)?
Example 2 ...
* Why is it thought that reducing SDLT (a truly unpopular but 'profitable' tax) will enable more people to join the housing market (given all the earlier evidence that it just leads to higher prices)?
Doesn't it depend on the (unstated) policy objectives - e.g. it may well assist 'mobility' (frequency of people buying/selling) but that really requires a much lower tax take; whereas it's unlikely to do anything noticeable for first-time buyers (who need supply to be tackled not taxation)?
Basically I'm sure this tinkering is of great interest to those making a business in some related area of construction/agency/lettings/etc ... but it does nothing for most people, who (although they may not all realise it) would be better off if property prices stagnated (or even slowly drifted down).
Can't really comment on this - waiting for the Senedd response, since that will have more relevance for me.