Date published: 2005/08/25
The BBC says:
Plans to give tax breaks on second homes could exacerbate the shortage of affordable housing in the countryside, a government watchdog has warned.
Investment in residential properties will count as part of a pension and qualify for tax rebates from April.
Financial advisers say investors are queuing up to buy second homes and the Affordable Rural Housing Commission fears this could raise prices further.
But the Treasury says this measure will only appeal to a few people.
People will be allowed to include buy-to-let investment property in their pension pot, under the self-invested personal pension scheme.
It means that higher income earners could get 40% back from the government on the cost of a holiday home.
In an interview for BBC Radio 4's Costing the Earth programme, ARHC chairman Elinor Goodman said that the chancellor's plans "on the face of it" seemed contrary to trying to keep prices down in the countryside.
BBC rural affairs correspondent Tom Heap said the spiralling cost of housing in the countryside was fast becoming the biggest source of concern in rural areas, which many rural already dwellers priced out of the market.
A housing shortage along with the number of properties bought as holiday homes by wealthy city dwellers were thought to be factors, he said.
More ridiculous complaints from yet another special interest pressure group. Decent affordable housing is a problem everywhere in the UK, not just in rural areas, and the reason it is a problem is that the ruling elite, including those who run the rural special interest pressure groups, are refusing to allow enough housing to be built, especially in rural areas. And for once the Treasury is correct, hardly anyone will use this tax break because it has too many strings attached to allow any but the most wealthy to take advantage of it (which makes you wonder why Gordon Brown bothered to introduce it in the first place).
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