The “corresponding” tax cuts would not happen. And the media might well report the whole thing as tax CUTS on the rich.

After the last British government budget (all things considered) put taxation on wealthy people – UP.

However, the media presented the budget as doing exactly the opposite.

It is not just the American media that is hopeless – or worse….

The other thing is why should your concept not be also introduced for other assets? After all some people own their cars, some hire them via leases, some buy via hire purchase, some buy via loans. Why not a car ownership tax, on the notional benefit to car owners?

However, there is one small element implicit in his comment which has some merit. The ability to deduct mortgage interest expense from gross income for tax purposes does artificially distort markets in favor of home ownership (since there is no corresponding deduction for rental payments). Personally, I take advantage of that deduction, but would not have much philosophic objection to its elimination (although a better solution would be to permit a deduction for rent, since it’s already taxed to the landlord as income so deductibility would restore parity).

I’m really pointing out unequal tax treatment between renters and owners. This can be done in language of imposition rather than privilege if it makes it more digestible:

Given that the confiscatory state actually is laying these various impositions on its subjects/victims, shouldn’t we prefer that it does so in a way that is more equal and less distorting of economic incentives?

So it has gone “mainstream” has it?

And just as I thought things could not get any more stupid and economically suicidal.

A very fascistic (right-socialist) world view, to be sure, in which one may own things privately just as long as it is in convenient for the state’s objectives.

Absence of a tax is not a ‘privilege’, the existence of one is an imposition, because ownership is not a privilege whose legitimacy depends of a King or State granting it, however much they would like you to think that way.

Having the use of a house is equivalent to enjoying an income of the amount at which the house could be rented. This income is enjoyed without being subject to Income Tax: there is no corresponding provision for those who do rent to deduct this expense from their income before tax is computed on it. This is inequitable and unfairly favours those who can own their homes.

This tax privileging of home ownership distorts the allocation of capital within the economy. (And never mind the reinforcement of this distortion arising from the exemption from Capital Gains Tax.)

Making pensioners conscious of the value of the housing that they are “consuming” each year, by taxing it as income in this way, would discourage them from staying in houses that are beyond their needs (even if the tax is rolled up and only becomes payable when the house is sold). As they downsized, the return of the excess to the market would increase the supply and reduce housing costs for the upcoming generation which is so much downtrodden by this unfairness.

I’m not taking a view on whether or not widows should be staying on in their family homes, just suggesting that they can only afford to do so because of these unseen and unfair tax privileges.

Focus on what’s important, not on pettifogging trivialities.

That is not true, and the Laffer Curve suggests nothing of the kind. Laffer’s argument was that increasing taxation of an activity above a certain level will reduce the volume of that activity by more than the increase in tax rate, leading to net loss of revenue, and that conversely, when an activity is taxed at levels that reduce volume of it, reducing tax increases activity by a higher proportion than the decrease in tax rate, leading to net increase in revenue.

If the tax on an activity is modest, an increase is unlikely to depress volume, and so will generate more revenue. A decrease won’t increase volume and so will generate less revenue. That’s the left side of the Laffer Curve.

For instance, if HMG imposed a 2p tax on football tickets, which sell for 30-50 pounds, would it affect sales? If the tax was later cut to 1p, would it cause sales to double?

But tax rates rarely stay on the left side of the Laffer Curve. Revenue-hungry governments inevitably push them up to and past the Laffer optimum.

These proposals are about power not revenue.

This is the colectivists’ goal.

Now that the idea has become entrenched that the individual is simply the vehicle through which society produces income (goods and services), we move now to the stage that property (assets held) belong to society and the individual must pay for the “privilege” of holding and using that which is his or her wealth.