Taxing questions for the housing strategy

Originally written as a column for Inside Housing.

Sooner or later a government will have to grasp the nettle of reforming the way that housing is taxed.

Sooner is the implication of Andy Burnham’s still semi-declared campaign to be Labour leader and prime minister, with the would-be MP for Makerfield keen to reform ‘regressive council tax’ and saying that he believes that land is ‘under-taxed’. 

Soon, says the all-party Housing, Communities and Local Government (HCLG) Committee, in a report this week calling for reform of stamp duty land tax to improve affordability and a review of other property taxes. 

Later has been the answer from all previous governments as they look at the implications of reforming stamp duty, council tax and inheritance tax and see a political minefield ahead of them.

But it’s had to imagine a long-term housing strategy that does not include reform of property taxes, which may be one big reason why the timetable for the one expected from this government has slipped so much.

First promised ‘in the coming months’ in July 2024, the strategy has been scheduled for ‘the new year’, ‘the spring’ and then ‘later this year’ in 2025, then ‘in the spring of 2026’. The current position, almost two years into the Labour government, is that it will be published ‘in due course’.