I mentioned to a typical Londoner (youngish, renting a flat with boyf) that I would probably stand at the next local elections.
She asked me what my policies were , to which the simple answer is "High wages and low house prices instead of low wages and high house prices". She liked the sound of that.
I then gave her the two-minute crash course in how this can be achieved and asked her whether she liked the sound of being about £10,000 a year better off. And that's taking the highly pessimistic view that their landlord would "pass on" every single penny of the LVT he has to pay, spreadsheet from para d) here:
Hmm, sounds good she said, but that means that there will have to be regular revaluations and the LVT might keep going up.
Amazing. I've heard this one many a time from older Homeys, trying to justify their rent and tax collection, but not from somebody who's paying the rent and taxes.
She liked the sound of paying less overall in tax/rent/mortgage interest, but would only vote for it if the saving were a fixed and known amount rather than being a moving target, despite the fact that whatever happens in the revaluations, she will always be hugely better off under a 50/50 LVT/flat income tax system than under current rules, and by and large, each future shift of £1 from income tax to LVT will save her around 50p.
That's like being offered a free ticket in a lottery and turning it down because the first prize isn't a fixed annual tax-free income of £10,000, it's only £10,000 in the first year, which will go up or down a bit in future years, but which will always be a large positive figure.
All very depressing.
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