[graemep]

I largely agree, expect I think my expectations were lower than yours to start with. The ruling class all think alike regardless of party.

They have pushed ahead with the Tories Online Safety Act. Legislation I have looked at or that affect things I know about such as the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Act is terrible.

There is a lot of smoke and mirrors. For example, if you assume the justification for the "mansion tax" is that people who own higher value properties should be taxed more, why does someone with a £50m house not pay more than someone with a £5m house? Its designed to hit the moderately wealthy but not the really rich.

[teamonkey]

Although I agree it should be proportional to value, a £5M property puts you in the top 1% of property prices in the country. Even within London, it’s also within the top 1% of all but the most expensive boroughs. The average home property sale in the UK is less than £275,000.

A tax on a £5M home is not a tax on the moderately wealthy, it’s a tax on the wealthy.

[toyg]

No, it's designed to maximize what they can raise without pissing off too many voters. Even as it is, it's going to raise barely half a billion pounds, which is relatively insignificant in a budget worth hundreds of billions; but it's something, and something they (think they) can sell to their core electorate as a bit of token redistribution, when in reality it's just a cash-raising exercise.

If they'd targeted the really rich harder, it would have looked more consistent but would have probably raised even less (because, when a tax starts being significant, the really rich have the means to find ways to avoid it). As it is, it looks insignificant enough that the really wealthy will just pay it and move on.

[graemep]

> because, when a tax starts being significant, the really rich have the means to find ways to avoid it

Taxes on property are something they cannot avoid though.

One of the reasons the rich are able to find means to avoid taxes has always been government reluctance to stop them. There are many deliberate tax breaks for the rich - think of how long it took to get rid of non-dom status, so I really do not think the government has ever tried very hard to stop avoidance by the rich.

[toyg]

> Taxes on property are something they cannot avoid though.

Yeah, definitely nobody ever "avoided" stamp duty... /s

There are plenty of loopholes and corner cases, you just need skilled accountants and lawyers (companies registered abroad, etc etc). That's why there is legislation about "ultimate ownership" and such: authorities are increasingly desperate about being able to prove who owns what.

[mytailorisrich]

Starmer does not really care about not pissing off too many voters. He already has but he is also safe from them as the next election is far away. On the other hand, he is at risk, high risk, from his own party so he does what placates them. We've seen it before with private schools, now again with the 2-child cap, for instance.

[hdgvhicv]

Farage evaded stamp duty by abusing loopholes in it.

I was going to see it replaced by a 1% annual tax, but that would seemingly be too hard.