You can make one law . . . what would it be?

[Ben88]

house prices have hardly moved overall for 10 years now

Sorry, but certainly in my area this is totally incorrect. I have been in the property industry almost 10 years and in that time prices have changed rather alot!

In 2008 a 2 bedroom semi detached house could be had in the town I live in for 135/140k. Four weeks ago the exact same design house sold round the corner from me for 184k....that's a 30% rise in six years.

Property prices in this area are higher than ever. BTL landlords are making a good income at the moment for sure. Interest rates are lower than most will ever see in our lifetime again and rents are high. Add this to capital appreciation (again, in our area) and residential property is a good investment at the moment.

I do not argue the fact that buying a house isn't easy however. The average age of a first time buyer is 31 according to the last survey I read!

 

[riskybadger]

Make large corporates like Amazon, Google, Vodafone etc. pay tax on the money where it is earned not where they can funnel it away to be taxed at lower rates.

wouldn't work because that isnt the main method of being tax efficient.

The legislation already exists - what is required is a determination by the revenue to get tough and impose the legislation. You can't just transfer profits - it has to be done by the imposition of unfair pricing or non-existent management fees - if the revenue take a hard stance and adjust some of these as add backs - then tax on the adjusted profit - there should be no problem.

I agree if current legislation was acted upon more firmly then yes it would go someway to helping.

However, back to my original statement, it wont affect the large corporations, such as starbucks, amazon, google, and many others whos names aren't as well known to the public. the reason being they use a much simpler method to avoid paying their tax.

 

[UKRob]

I agree if current legislation was acted upon more firmly then yes it would go someway to helping.

However, back to my original statement, it wont affect the large corporations, such as starbucks, amazon, google, and many others whos names aren't as well known to the public. the reason being they use a much simpler method to avoid paying their tax.

What method is that and why would applying the current legislation not affect the names you mention?

 

[riskybadger]

I agree if current legislation was acted upon more firmly then yes it would go someway to helping.

However, back to my original statement, it wont affect the large corporations, such as starbucks, amazon, google, and many others whos names aren't as well known to the public. the reason being they use a much simpler method to avoid paying their tax.

What method is that and why would applying the current legislation not affect the names you mention?

Lets take starbucks as an example.
Starbucks UK, took a 'loan' out from starbucks USA to fund the expansion of its business in the UK, a very large loan, so at the end of the fiscal year, when they sort out the account and how much tax they have to pay, so any profits they make, goes towards 'paying back' their loan to starbucks USA. Even though technically they are the same company, debt is not tax deductible. So thats how they get away with paying a tiny amount of tax.

A lot of the larger company's employ this tactic, a parent company or investment company, will give a loan to fund expansion of another business, when making profits, a majority chunk of it goes to pay back these loans whereby they don't pay as much tax and pocket the profits when they are directed back to the parent company.

There are various of way of pulling this trick, but as long as debt is tax detectable current legislation wont help with that. it will help in other areas but not for this.