Home *ownership* shouldn't / need not attract taxation: speculative
property buying/selling should, given the overall benefits of taking
some of the heat out of the property market.

I disagree entirely. House price inflation is caused by having too few
houses for too many people. Hitting property developers just prevents houses
being built or renovated and is a simple populist and utterly erroneous
course of action that will make things worse.

It's a bit like hundreds of years ago when speculators would stockpile food
before harvest and make a bomb if the harvest was bad (but usually made some
losses in most years). People tried to tax them to extinction too. The
result was that no-one risked stockpiling, so if the harvest really was bad,
then there was no food at all and everyone died.

Christian.