Mansion Tax: what a ludicrous performance

Guido has a "full guide" to how one may challenge / delay / confound the new Mansion Tax, for owners of houses worth more than £2m who stand to be charged starting in April 2028.  It's a 32-bullet list of steps one might take, many of them just can-kicking wheezes of greater or lesser cunning, culminating in last-ditch engagement with HMRC's formal complaint procedures: 

Complain about conduct. The Valuation Office runs a two-tier complaints process aiming to answer each tier within 20 working days[1]. After that you can go to the Adjudicator’s Office. 

Ingenious?  Hmm.  Maybe if yours is a borderline case - but there must be a goodly proportion where none of this stands a snowball's chance in Hell of fending the taxman off.

HOWEVER: if everyone embarked on the Guido prevarication programme, the demands it would make on HMRC bandwidth would be phenomenal.  Why on earth have Healey and Reed gone down this tortuous route?  Do they not recall how Heseltine introduced Council Tax, replete with the need for tens of millions of valuations, into several categories (rather than just two, +/- £2m), in mere months?  Answer (for younger readers): he just commissioned local estate agents in each area, with an appeals process after the event.  Simples!  And wholly efficacious for getting the show on the road (pace, anyone that was genuinely hard done by and still nurses an unresolved grievance - but I don't believe there were many).  And that was before Zoopla / Google Maps etc.  

So, why have they done it?  Let me answer my own question.  They are stupid.  It's all to do with being confident (and intelligent) enough to say don't be so daft, Humphrey.  

ND 

PS - declaration of interest: no, Schloss Drew will not fall into the >£2m bracket.

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[1]  20 working days?  Yeah, right.  I speak as one who has tried that route, on a completely different matter.  It took 8 weeks to get any response whatsoever, and that was not at all definitive.  Nor was it  on an issue that impacted on remotely as many people (maybe 20-30) as mansion tax will (maybe 150,000, all at the same time).  It's simply that HMRC is (a) understaffed; (b) a law unto itself; (c) shameless.  The longest gap I have encountered between HMRC communications on a single issue has been 14 (fourteen) years (sic): and they didn't apologise for the egregious hiatus.

After COP's done ...

 ... do we not think the ZEV and Rosebank decisions will follow directly?  Just like Jackdaw, just as soon as the by-election was over.

The winsome Andy is not without a measure of cunning.

Maybe also Fahnbulleh: the insistence on Rosebank being hers, and hers alone to decide, probably stems from the literal reading of the law, in order to head off a subsequent judicial review.  But Re-industrialisation Andy will get his way; and the Chancellor will get his tax revenues and BoP boost.

ND

Miliband must really be spluttering on his burger now

Not content with the Budget's new policy of 

Prioritising a cheaper energy mix and procuring new generation only where it lowers bills, benefits the system, and can be accommodated by the grid

 ... the Burnham - Healey axis has now decided to shelve AR8, the next round of renewables subsidy allocations! 

the UK would “only procure clean power” through round eight “if we are confident it will lower bills”

Well that's that, and absolutely puts paid to Miliband's cherished programme.  "Clean Power 2030" - always infeasible anyway - is now as dead as a doornail.  Chew on that one, Ed.  

(found in Bucharest earlier in the year.)

ND 

Actually, there was something in the Budget ...

... 179 references to 'energy', and well over 5,000 words.

Having now read the full Budget doc, it turns out the seemingly footling stuff on energy prices that dominated the headlines was far from the end of the story.

It starts with the predictable "not our fault, guv" - in some statistical detail - and, yes, there are the sticking-plaster give-aways the headlines were all about, which seem to characterise Burnham's style.  But there is bigger stuff, too: "This Budget represents a shift in the government’s approach to energy".  Since there's no space here to summarise the whole lot, it seems to mean two main things, the first of which had already started under the last Tory government: a gradual switch away from dumping all "policy costs" onto electricity and (to a lesser extent) gas bills, in favour of charging it to general taxation.  There's to be more of that going on now.

Secondly, we have: 

... this Budget kickstarts the long-term action required to get energy costs down for good: 

• Controlling energy costs – no new policy costs will be put on bills until a comprehensive Cost Control Framework is in place at the spending review in 2027, which will set budgets for components of energy costs, including policy costs.
• Prioritising a cheaper energy mix and procuring new generation only where it lowers bills, benefits the system, and can be accommodated by the grid.

Now that could be really interesting.  Of course, "lowering bills" can get very theological when the playing-field is fundamentally tilted by not attributing the costs of intermittency etc to the causes of that intermittency - but it's a very interesting line for them to be taking, and provides a stick with which to beat them when, e.g., the next batch of CfDs is to be awarded.  No more floating offshore windfarms at £216.49/MWh: in fact, only solar farms could creep in under that definition, properly interpreted.

On top of this, it's becoming increasingly clear that the bloated DESNZ budget is being raided to fund all manner of things - small things this time round, of course, but when the Defence aspect of the putative 10-year Plan hoves into view, it is likely to hit DESNZ up for quite a few quid more, with correspondingly more bleating to come from the usual quarters.  Finally, there is a bit on the energy aspects of data centres, for anyone interested.

And the aim of all this?  "Cutting bills to reindustrialise the country."  Sic!  A laudable aim indeed.

Unfortunately, just when you think Miliband's fantasies have been consigned to where they belong, it's all spoiled by the assertion that "The focus now is to unleash cheap electricity".  WTF?  Where have you been hiding it all this while?!

ND  

Budget: what was that all about?

In days of yore, our founder CU would have had a lot to say about the Budget.  Any Budget, in fact.

But with this one - has anyone got much to say?  Except, as Krishnan Guru-Murthy put it (and I don't ever recall quoting him before) - so where's that "putting an end to 40 years of neo-liberalism", eh?

Shan't be surprised if the BTL comments are thin on the ground this time ...

ND

PS: much more entertaining is the briefing war being waged over Rosebank.  Harriet Harman a drill-baby-driller!  Who knew?  I'm taking names.  In circumstances of not much else to talk about in politics this week, it's a lot of fun.