In article , Huge wrote:
I imagine the midnight oil is being burned to work out how to
confiscate the proceeds of house price inflation without being
booted so far out of office that he'll be standing for the job
of Mayor of Tblisi.

But arguably there is a problem here. When there were rumours of CGT
on houses the economics editor of 'The Business' wrote a piece about
how hundreds of thousands of homeowners would risk being left
destitute by such a tax. I wrote to him berating him for his Daily
Mail shock-horror style and pointing out that if your property
hadn't gained in value you wouldn't have any tax to pay, and if it
had you still kept most of the gain, and got the very reasoned reply
back that the real problem was that loads of people had taken out
further borrowings against the perceived equity in their properties
which they would not be able to repay if their gains were taxed.

Most commentators seem to agree that it is all this borrowing
against house price increases that has kept the economy buoyant, but
one cannot but help feel that at some point we will have to pay the
price. And of course all those who borrowed to the hilt rather than
taking advantage of low interest rates to clear their debts will be
demanding that the government does something whilst arguably it
should have acted while we were all having a good time - but who
wants to spoil a party with warnings about hangovers?

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Tony Bryer SDA UK 'Software to build on' http://www.sda.co.uk
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