I would say the risk of being a landlord is far less risk rhan the stock market. Property is a pretty safe investment.
If everyone paid their tax without trying to find dodgey loopholes, there would be much money available for infrastructure and public services. The tax gap in 2023 was an estimated £45 billion about £5.5 billion of which was tax evasion. Though some argue it was much higher.
So , why would I volunteer to pay more of my paltry pension in tax when some of the more wealthy in society pay next to nothing.
And of course for the 18 years of owning my flat I did pay more tax than I needed to as it would have been extremely easy to have paid corporate tax.
As my extremely wealthy friend keeps reminding me, " my dear, only the poor pay tax".
He incidentally has not been put off buying more and more property for his portfolio. " a safe bet, my dear". And he’s a hedge fund manager.
You can move to other areas of the country even as a social housing tenant.
Arcalia, just because you feel or say something doesn’t make it true, the evidence just doesn’t support it. Just run the numbers through AI over the last 10, 20, or 50 years…
It seems your argument is getting more and more spurious, and widening out to the “rich don’t pay enough tax”. What loopholes are private landlords exploiting?
And regarding the mobility via social housing that is just nonsense.
Example, somebody who lives with their parents in Hull, they have just left university and been offered a job in London, what chance have they got of getting social housing to take that opportunity? Absolutely zero!
Or somebody wants to take a job in another country, you are saying you cant as you are not allowed to rent. In your world, only the wealthy can have freedom of movement because they can afford to buy.
Either you don’t care about social and geographical mobility or I would suggest, more likely you just have not really thought it through. “Landlords are bad, end of story”
It is rather chicken and egg though as if vast amounts of social housing hadn’t been sold off and ended up in the hands of Landlords the chance would be considerably more than zero…
Not that I’m particularly interested in rehashing this debate that’s been done to death already on here, let alone in the wider world.
John,
Whether all CGT should be inline with income taxes is a different argument.
You were suggesting that the current CGT level on equity investments is ok but possibly should go up for landlords because that is easy money.
Or perhaps I misunderstood and you were talking about entrepreneurs relief or BADR as it’s now known. Where I do agree the risk is much greater.
ps, if somebody would be so kind as to explain how I quote from a previous message that would be great? 
On a phone, I highlight the section and then it offers to let me quote.
That’s quite a stretch and quite ignorant of the history of social housing.
Agreed, I am nowhere near old enough to appreciate the scale of social housing back in the 70s. A quick search genuinely surprised me at its availability. Always enjoy learning something. 
Alas, we can’t turn the clock back to then and pick the best bits, and even doing so would feel rather like a Reform sales pitch.
That was my original point
Not quite what I said.
In my reply to this from our oaty friend
I said
So, yes, if you’re actually investing in high risk equities that support innovation, such as start ups, then I can see an argument for a tax break. Investing in blue chips and trackers, not so much.
I only used landlords as a well known example of the rentier class, who accumulate and exploit assets to develop income.
Any suggestion that a landlord is carrying high capital risk is not born out by the history of property prices over the last few decades.
Another stretch, I’m afraid. I can’t imagine the Count of Dodgy Crypto ever supporting social housing in case immigrants get some.
I mean cherry picking the best bits of bygone eras
That’s quite a stretch and quite ignorant of the housing market crash in 2008, where 100s of thousands of investors lost money and their assets.
Well that’s totally true. Though property (maybe only commercial) should be part of a balanced portfolio.
Historically, over time trackers outperform buying and selling stuff. But buying and selling stuff generates fees for you broker so guess what they prefer 
Developing and managing your own portfolio isn’t for the faint hearted, I mean what the hell does the layman know of market trends. Unless you are on Trump or Kushner’s insider list 
or one of the Polymarket in-crowd.
We’d have to discuss that with Robert Tressell
However, lowering CGT can actually increase the tax take. People will sit on their assets otherwise. A short term reduction could create a windfall for the Treasury. As it did in Ireland in the early naughties.
And how much was your initial investment? If it was zero, well done you. Otherwise that’s what capitalism is all about 
Too true Tim. And the same is true about entering the market.
Dublin has had a housing crisis for at least the last ten years. We have two apartments there, for about the same amount of time. One in a the poshest part of town and one in a posh leafy, seaside suburb.
Together they’d generate, probably, 6K a month. But we are very fortunate and financially secure and don’t need the income, and certainly don’t need the hassle. We use the properties a couple of times a year, as do family and friends. They are appreciating nicely so either CGT or CAT will be paid on them in due course. Which we don’t begrudge at all.
If we rented them out we have to pay agents, because we are not there, we’d have shit from tenants, we’d have to redecorate very expensively on change over (which is not tax deductible) and the bleeding Government, who has done SFA gets 50% (and more of the profit) . We’d be ripped off left, right and centre and have toc cope with the grief. Life is too short.
Why would we give a Government which has created this housing crises over decades a break? They can sod off 
Meanwhile the big boys are building massive “build to let” complexes with tax breaks.
Bring back council housing.
Well, no, I was there and selling a house at the time. People only lost money if they really had to sell and had fairly recently bought (prices only briefly dipped under the 2006 level). Assuming landlords are in it for the long haul then they’re very, very unlikely to lose capital over that long term.
Wasn’t it Thatcher who ultimately started the housing crisis with right to buy?
The real cause was not right to buy - though it helped. It was preventing local authorities from borrowing in order to build more houses ('cause they would sap the profits of her mates in the construction industry).
Yep, now I remember.
Re. Right to Buy
Let’s first of all comment on the name given to this process. The intention was all along to displace citizens’ rights to public housing with a mechanism by which council houses would transfer from the public to the private sector. Conferring this as an individual’s right was the catalyst by which this process could occur. A populist stroke of genius by the neoliberal thinkers behind Thatcher.
Brett Christophers quotes from “Private Island” James Meek:
“Many people who bought their council houses sold them on to private landlords” writes James Meek. “Right to Buy thus created an astonishing leak of state money - taxpayer’s money if you want to think of it that way - into the hands of the rentier class”.
Christophers continues: “Research carried out in 2015 estimated that around 38% of all council flats sold under Right to Buy in England were now being rented out privately, with the figure rising to 60% in some areas. By late 2017 the national figure had surpassed 40% with the highest level (71%) being recorded in Milton Keynes- a deeply ironic finding, given the central historic role of state land acquisition in the very formation of that town”,
The New Enclosure Brett Christophers (2018) p.272
To be continued
Thatcher’s policy wouldn’t have had the same impact if councils had been allowed to use the proceeds to replenish their lost housing stock, unbelievably (to me anyway), Right To Buy still exists today despite social housing waiting lists being years long in many local authorities.
The question needs to be asked WHY houses bought under right to buy were then sold on to landlords for rental instead of being lived in by the purchaser. Were they just in grotty areas no-one wanted to live in?
Many, possibly all, were sold under market value prompting rapid resale for a quick buck.