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Around 120,000 home owners will have to spend around £110m to revalue their homes if Labour's mansion tax policies come into effect, a high end estate agency is claiming.

Savills says that without spending an estimated cost of £4,800 per valuation, each house owner will face the prospect of thousands of pounds in fines.

The agency has told the Daily Telegraph that taxpayers will have to fund the cost - possibly running into tens of millions of pounds - of resolving disputes over the valuation figures and therefore the liability of the owners to pay mansion tax, which will be levied on homes valued at £2m and above.

The research by Savills for the Telegraph shows that over one third of the 97,000 properties subject to the tax - should Labour win the general election on May 7 - have been owned for over 10 years.

They include 18,700 that have been owned by the same person for more than 20 years and 10,400 that have been owned by the same person for over 30 years.

In recent months Savills' research team has made a series of outspoken criticisms of the mansion tax.

Comments

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    Yeah, because those who are paying for these types of houses definitely don't include non-doms, who don't pay their fair share, or tax exiles, who definitely don't pay their fair share. Or oligarchs, who have accrued their wealth through nefarious means. They've all played by the system in a thorough and fair way, haven't they Pull the other one!

    What's being anti the mansion tax got to do with OTM Other than Savills being part of Agents' Mutual, there is no link between my opposition to mansion tax and my uncertainty (not hatred) over OTM.

    I'm sure you're one of these people who agreed with what Boris said yesterday, that people on low and middle incomes will be hit by the mansion tax. Absolute nonsense. People living in a 2m plus house couldn't possibly be on low or middle incomes, they wouldn't be able to afford the running costs for one. Have you seen what you can get for 2m in London You can still get a heck of a lot, and mostly in very desirable, well-to-do areas. If you live in a 2m house, you can afford to pay a relatively small annual charge.

    If people can point me to evidence of this not being the case, then fine. But most critics have simply said it will frighten away foreign investment (no bad thing for our housing crisis, with all those empty homes) or hit poor old grannies who bought their home 50 years ago (no actual evidence of this).

    78,000 homes will be hit by this. I can't stand the entitlement of these people and high-end agents like Savills. Why shouldn't you pay more if you've got more money than you know what to do with If you don't like it, go and become a tax exile in Monaco or the Cayman Islands. Don't moan about it.

    I notice you haven't put forward any actual arguments against the mansion tax. Please, enlighten me.

    Do you agree with non-doms as well

    • 22 April 2015 08:57 AM
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    I'm normally quite happy to watch you lord over this site with your comments but with this what utter rubbish you do speak Rob. " when the average house price in London is over 500,000 you know something is rotten with the system" What is the average price in New York, what's the average price in Shanghai Its called a capital city and when a lot of people want to live there then property prices go up thats what living in a free society and market is all about. I don't even know where to begin with the Robin Hood comment: high earners do pay their share its called taxation is is worked out as a percentage of what someone earns. If someone in the city ears 150,000 a year they are paying 60,000 a year in tax as opposed to someone earning the national average wage who pays 5800 in tax a year. Do they use doctors more, more hospitals perhaps, they often pay for their children education and yet they also pay for other peoples children education in their taxes.

    You find it hard to have sympathy with high end agents like Savills They are not paying it they are merely outlining the pitfalls of such a system in addition to the cost of administering and introducing it and thank goodness firms like they are.

    Quite honestly Rob your clouded hatred of anything OTM is what motivates most of your viewpoints including this one and you know what we all get it, you're anti OTM and now more than a little boring.

    • 21 April 2015 15:57 PM
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    In all seriousness, it's not a question of being anti wealth/rich people/high earners, it's a question of fairness. Those at the top, those with the broadest shoulders, should take their fair share of the burden. That's the way redistribution of wealth, which all the most civilised societies employ, works. In it's crudest form, it's like Robin Hood - taking from the rich to feed the poor.

    I'm sorry, but people in 2m plus houses must have a fair amount of money. Only a relatively small percentage of houses come under this bracket, which says it all really, and most of them are in some of London and the South East's most affluent locations. House prices might have risen at an insane rate in the last 10-20 years, but I can't think many houses would have gone from 200,000 to over 2 million unless they were already in a very desirable area.

    The reasons people like me are pro-mansion tax have been done to death below these articles, so I won't bore you all again. But I find it very hard to feel sympathy for high-end agencies like Savills - who deal only in selling property to the very richest in our society - coming out and whingeing about a small annual charge on 2m plus houses. As a poster below says, cry me a river.

    If London hadn't been so willing to roll out the red carpet for the super-rich in recent years then we wouldn't be having this discussion at all, because prices wouldn't have gone up to completely unaffordable for the many. When the average house price in London is over 500,000, you know something is rotten with the system.

    • 21 April 2015 14:36 PM
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    Rich people shouldn't be rich and high end agents shouldn't exist.

    :)

    • 21 April 2015 12:11 PM
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    Mansions tax if it can be enforced would be a good idea for general public.

    Using public funds to deal with disputes is what is worrying because potentially you could end up spending much of it on legal fees. We will wait and see if Labour win first, they will probably form coalition with SNP.

    • 21 April 2015 11:09 AM
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    Guest (Jon)

    Well seeing as these millionaire's tax monies are paying a lot more towards the same services you use . . .

    The anti-wealth/anti-earning brigade on this site are starting to get on my nerves. Sooooo many comments about how rich people shouldn't be rich and high end agents shouldn't exist. Boring.

    And Rob, many of us get sick of hearing the onlinies and Russel Quirk pushing their own agenda by commenting on every housing related issue that crops up and somehow trying to assign blame to high street agents.

    I'm beginning to severely dislike this website.

    • 21 April 2015 11:07 AM
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    Tax should only ever be levied on actual INCOME, from whatever source.
    If the government wants more from property it could possibly be levied upon those who receive the benefit of the cash value of a property asset when it is transferred to them - by whatever means. Fairer all round

    • 21 April 2015 08:55 AM
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    Neil Wrath will be along in 3,2,1...

    • 21 April 2015 08:41 AM
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    I'm getting fed-up of these high-end agencies wading in with their own agendas. Seriously, Savills, we get the picture - you don't like the mansion tax, you've only told us a million times already. Leave us to make our own mind up rather than coming out with a load of biased stats.

    • 21 April 2015 08:40 AM
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    Go away, Savills! We've had more than enough of your scaremongering already.

    Pure self-interest from a high-end agency working in a ridiculously over-inflated market. I have no sympathy for them whatsoever.

    Boohoo, a few more millionaires will pay a little more each year. Cry me a river.

    • 21 April 2015 08:33 AM
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