6. Welsh Conservatives Debate: Land transaction tax on commercial land

Part of the debate – in the Senedd at 5:33 pm on 9 May 2018.

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Photo of Mike Hedges Mike Hedges Labour 5:33, 9 May 2018

I wish you'd waited for the next page. What I'll say is this: taxation is our membership fee for belonging to a civilised society. I think perhaps you need to remember that.

For multinational corporations, corporation tax is an optional payment whose value can be reduced by things such as intra-company charges, paying for intellectual property rights, transferring charges for goods and services, or making the point of sale outside Britain. 

What people don't like about land transaction tax and what people don't like about property taxes is that you've got to pay them. You cannot avoid it. These are the difficult-to-avoid taxes. The difficult-to-avoid taxes are the ones that are always under attack and criticism because you can't get out of them. 

Taxation can be either progressive or regressive. You either get those with the most money to pay a higher amount, or you get those with the least money to pay proportionally the most.

Turning to land transaction tax, making land transaction tax more progressive is something I very much welcome. Can I give a worked example on a different value? If a parcel of land is worth a £1 million with zero tax then a tax rate of 100 per cent, its cost will not be £2 million; its cost will still be £1 million, but 50 per cent will be tax and 50 per cent will go to the owner. So, the owner of the land is the only person to lose out, not the purchaser. One of the problems we have is the belief that there is an absolute value of land. So, taxation will be on top of that value—[Interruption.] Can I just finish this bit, Andrew? I'm going to call you in because I've mentioned you.

So, taxation will be on top of that value, rather than part of it. Just see how the price of agricultural land increases when it has planning permission for housing. There is no absolute value. What are you paying in the Vale of Glamorgan for agricultural land? Is it £20,000 or £30,000—