Date published: 2005/03/16
The BBC says:
Gordon Brown has doubled the level at which house buyers pay stamp duty to £120,000 as he put the economy at the heart of Labour's election campaign.
The chancellor also unveiled a one-off £200 council tax refund and free local bus travel for pensioners.
Mr Brown froze petrol duty but slapped 1p a pint on beer, 4p on a bottle of wine and 7p on 20 cigarettes.
The stamp duty threshold change will help nobody, it just means that all buyers under that threshold have more money to spend on the house they want to buy, and so will, and so the price will increase to compensate. And at £120000 the stamp duty increases from £0 to £1200. Hardly rational.
The one-off council tax rebate is a blatant election bribe.
All-in-all a typical package from Gordon Brown. In the next few days the usual hidden gotchas he hasn't mentioned will become clearer.
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