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"Who owns land is one of England's most closely-guarded secrets." This seems really strange to me. Why should this be the case? Some interesting information a
by panglott 9y ago
"Who owns land is one of England's most closely-guarded secrets."
This seems really strange to me. Why should this be the case?
Some interesting information at their blog
https://whoownsengland.org/2017/01/01/who-owns-england-what-we-know-so-far-where-next/ https://whoownsengland.org/2017/01/01/who-owns-england-what-...
https://whoownsengland.org/2016/11/10/why-we-must-open-up-the-land-registry/ https://whoownsengland.org/2016/11/10/why-we-must-open-up-th...
- branchless 9y agoBecause land is where the real power is and the establishment don't want you to know that. They tax income instead of land. They don't want the tide turning on rentiers.
- pm90 9y agoThis is wayy too close to the truth. Historically, the wealthy and elite have dis-proportionally been landowners. And unlike money or precious metals, land actually holds value pretty well and, most importantly, can easily be handed down generations.
- mattgibson 9y ago> the wealthy and elite have dis-proportionally been landowners I'd put that the other way around, saying the land owners have disproportionately ended up as the wealthy and powerful. The ownership of land and the huge unearned income derived from renting it to the masses looks more like cause than effect to me.
- chrisseaton 9y agoIf you think people are wealthy and elite because they have got land, how do you explain how they got the land? I think either they bought it from the Crown, because they were wealthy, or they were granted it from the Crown, because they were part of the elite and did something for the Crown. Since you think it was the other way around, how do you explain how they got the land?
- gknoy 9y agoSwords.
- chrisseaton 9y agoI think you're still making this argument in circles. Where do you get the men and weapons to take land by force if you aren't wealthy or part of the elite?
- falsedan 9y agoI'll take transitional government techniques for 1000 karma thanks Paul. What is an armed revolt?
- chrisseaton 9y agoWhich major English land owner do you think got their land this way? If you look at how major English land owners got started it all goes back to elites being granted land by the Crown for service.
- falsedan 9y ago> Which major English land owner do you think got their land this way? Is this a trick? The Crown got all their land by conquest: the Roundheads, Normans, the Danes, the Romans, &c.
- chrisseaton 9y agoYou said revolt and now you're saying conquest which aren't the same thing. Of course the Crown got it by conquest. But nobody got land by armed revolt did they? Can you name any major land owning families in England that didn't start off by patronage? I can't think of any.
- 9y ago
- nugget 9y ago> and, most importantly, can easily be handed down generations Only if your ancestors win the battles and can stick around to defend it. Land was won and kept with blood, sweat, and tears (in that order).
- DKnoll 9y agoI doubt tears did much to win and hold land... I think it would be more of a byproduct.
- boomboomsubban 9y agoYeah, one generation likely won a war for it, a few more probably had to pick the right sides during the various civil wars, but beyond that keeping land in your family doesn't take blood sweat and tears. It takes a little political bickering and lot of family infighting.
- branchless 9y agoNonsense. The state protects land for the wealthy using taxes from labourers. https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COQgS0MUcAA7-RK.png https://pbs.twimg.com/media/COQgS0MUcAA7-RK.png
- stass 9y agoThis is just a Marxist propaganda. How did wealthy become wealthy?
- andybak 9y agoThe trivially true answer is "by a variety of means" but obviously it's trends and patterns that are of real interest. And this brings us close to studies of "social mobility" (glossing over the difference between class and wealth - which - taking a long perspective - can be assumed to be roughly synonymous). And with social mobility between generations usually fairly low in general - the next most trivially true answer is "because their ancestors were". Attempts to trace this back to some origin myth is slightly silly but on the whole your answer to the "where did it all begin" question indicates your political colour. If you tend to answer "Because they stole it by force" then you're probably on the left. And if you tend to answer "Because they created a strong leadership that protected a group from other groups" that places you on the right. Of course - pure examples of bandits vs noble warrior kings are rare but I suspect there's more of the former in history than the latter. ;-)
- simonh 9y agoProperty is included in inheritance tax, which is 40% of the total estate value over £325k (or £425k if you're smart about it). So big land owners do get hammered trying to pass it on down generations. You can try and mitigate that by gifting to your children, but the tax free limit for that is only £3k per year and is still taxed if it's given less than 7 years before you die. Not really enough to do extensive property owners much good.
- unculture 9y agoIf this were the case, then we wouldn't still have aristocrats. Inheritance tax doesn't apply at this scale. They just put it in trust, even though no one seriously pretends that they don't control the money. E.g., the Grosvenors, who own 3% of London. https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/11/inheritance-tax-why-the-new-duke-of-westminster-will-not-pay-billions https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/11/inheritance-ta...
- Steve44 9y agoBy using trusts does help highlight another aspect. The 'owners' are more like custodians of the estate, a historical institution to be kept running. Yes they do control it and clearly benefit from it but if you have a look at their spending and lifestyles compared to the new rich they are very different.
- crdoconnor 9y agoTell that to the Duke of Westminster: https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/11/inheritance-tax-why-the-new-duke-of-westminster-will-not-pay-billions https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/aug/11/inheritance-ta...
- noja 9y agoNo rich people pay inheritance tax on property, you are leaving in a fairytale if you believe that. They have estate planners, and estate planners use trusts.
- ascorbic 9y agoAll properly rich people avoid this by using trusts. Inheritance tax is just for the normal well off.
- blackguardx 9y agoI'm shocked that there is no property tax in the UK. It seems like the only way to ensure land is maximally utilized.
- mattgibson 9y agoThere is stamp duty land tax, but it's only charged on sales over a certain threshold: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamp_duty_in_the_United_Kingdom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamp_duty_in_the_United_Kingd...
- waqf 9y agoLack of property tax doesn't prevent a free market from operating, and ideal free markets cause optimal utilization (which admittedly is not the same as maximal utilization, but then, why would you want the latter?) Now stamp duty, that is something which prevents land in the UK from being optimally utilized.
- soVeryTired 9y agoIdeal markets cause pareto-efficient utilisation, not optimal utilisation. But those markets have very little to do with markets in the real world.
- waqf 9y agoRight, but I still don't understand what underutilization problem is solved by property tax that isn't already solved by the fact that you could sell your underutilized land and receive money — unless your goal is to increase utilization beyond what's efficient.
- blackguardx 9y agoPeople aren't rational actors. This has been demonstrated in many econ experiments. Tax is a pain that is reoccurring. The government even reassess the value of your land periodically. Many people don't do this and may not know their land is underutilized. It is essentially a little nudge every year. In this case, maximum utilization means maximum economic output, which is good for GDP and good for the country. It may not be the best for the local society, though. That part is hard to quantify and controversial.
- gozur88 9y agoDon't you pay more council tax if you have land?
- falsedan 9y agoNo, properties are allocated to 'bands' (A-H, +I in Wales), and the rates set as a percentage of the 'D' band. Generally, properties are assigned bands according to density/cost of providing services to an area: an area with a difficult garbage pickup route may get a higher band, or a place with more schools. More typically, bands are allocated based on the ability of the occupiers to pay, and the funds are combined (reallocated) at the local authority level so that deprived areas can be subsidised by wealthy areas.
- laurencerowe 9y agoCouncil tax bands are based on the property's value on 1 April 1991 (a couple of years before it was introduced.) Within a local authority, the cost of providing services to a property does not effect the band. https://www.gov.uk/guidance/understand-how-council-tax-bands-are-assessed https://www.gov.uk/guidance/understand-how-council-tax-bands...
- falsedan 9y agoGreat correction to my post.
- branchless 9y agoYou pay less on a second home than the person next door. The "logic" is you are using less "services" but then that's not land value tax. You are occupying the land, there is an opportunity cost, you should pay full whack. The UK is a total nightmare for this and the education level is very low especially in economics so any mention of it is met with "it's me house".
- to3m 9y agoI paid more on my second home (for the 2 months I had one...) as the council only offered a single person discount on one's primary residence.
- digi_owl 9y agoEngland is old, very old. For example the City of London existed before the crown of England, never mind the union we know as UK... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LrObZ_HZZUc
- jwdunne 9y agoHere's a few more interesting facts: - before the Crown, there were several crowns. England was composed of a handful of Anglo-Saxon petty kingdoms - before that, it had an emperor. The Roman emperor. - parts were ruled by the Danish (the Danelaw) and parts were ruled by the Saxons - with regards to the UK, the political union is much younger than the union of crowns. The personal union was a Scottish king inheriting the English throne. The political union was the English parliament strong arming the Scottish. - there was once a kingdom of Ireland until England had its way.
- ptaipale 9y agoAnd there was also a Kingdom of Dublin, ruled by the Danes. It lasted from 853 AD to 1171 when the Norman conquest finished it off -- in fact, this is a longer time than what the Acts of Union of England and Scotland have lasted so far.
- dreen 9y agoThe Saxons also came from area of modern Denmark, to fill the void left by collapsed Roman Britain, which was occupied by Celtic Britons (and Romans from other parts of the Empire)
- jacobush 9y agoAnd I'd dare say, even some "Roman Celts"! The roman influence was long and strong.
- dghf 9y agoThere is a sixth century memorial stone in North Wales that uses consular dating: "The stone of ... son of Avitorius. In the time of Justinus the Consul." (Justinus was consul in Constantinople in 540 AD.) Source: http://www.walesher1974.org/her/groups/GAT/media/GAT_Reports/GATreport_350_compressed.pdf http://www.walesher1974.org/her/groups/GAT/media/GAT_Reports..., p. 121.
- gbuk2013 9y agoTechnically, the Crown owns the land. Everyone else owns an estate in this land. This distinction only really becomes important if you do something silly like die intestate (without a will) and without any heirs, in which case title reverts back to the Crown. Or if you find oil, gas or coal under your house in which case you don't get any of it. ;)
- throwaway9980 9y agoThe term for absolute ownership of land is called Allodial title. It exists practically nowhere. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial_title https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial_title
- jacoblambda 9y agoNon mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial_title https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allodial_title
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- justinmk 9y agoIt exists everywhere, but usually the State claims it. In Texas an individual may be able to claim it. "Corporations are people" if the corporation is the State, it seems. Michael Badnarik gave a good presentation on the subject: https://archive.org/details/Michael_Badnarik https://archive.org/details/Michael_Badnarik
- dghf 9y agoIt still exists in Orkney and Shetland (which until the 15th century were part of Norway rather than Scotland) under the name of Udal tenure. https://rosdev.atlassian.net/wiki/display/2ARM/Udal+Tenure https://rosdev.atlassian.net/wiki/display/2ARM/Udal+Tenure
- mirimir 9y agoSo individuals can't own mineral rights in the UK?
- mistermann 9y agoThis is the case in Canada as well, if the buyer so chooses, just wrap it in a corporation. This way the government can pretend foreign buyers are 5% of the market and challenge anyone to prove them wrong, while more and more people who actually pay taxes but cannot afford to buy a home fall further behind.
- thinkling 9y agoI'm imagining online home buying with a checkbox "[ ] Create a shell corporation to hold the asset acquired in this transaction (+$3,000)".
- arethuza 9y agoThe trick seems to be to have a shell company that owns the property and then buy and sell the company rather than the property - the Panama Papers are full of these kinds of shenanigans.
- teh_klev 9y agoHere's an example of that kind of shell company trickery: http://www.andywightman.com/archives/4492 http://www.andywightman.com/archives/4492
- w_t_payne 9y ago... or buy and sell options on that stock, so no actual change in ownership at all, (company or property) but rather just an exchange of contracts and obligations with a somewhat remote (and hard-to-prove) relationship with anything even remotely taxable.
- mistermann 9y agoYes, and I believe this avoids a large tax as well. Our politicians have completely failed us, but so many people are getting so rich they don't care.
- fiftyacorn 9y agoI seen similar for the number of foreign buyers in london - they wont really be foreign buyers just shadow firms offshore avoiding stamp duty
- halloij 9y ago> "Who owns land is one of England's most closely-guarded secrets." > This seems really strange to me. Why should this be the case? It's not. It's a clickbait title. There is a land registry, and you can look at it to find out who owns land.
- ascorbic 9y agoThe point made by the site is that because it costs £3 to look at each title document, it's not practical to see it at any scale. Sure you can find an individual property's ownership, but you can't search this in any way except by location, and you can't answer questions such as "who is the largest landowner in this area" or "what are the holdings of landowner x" without spending thousands on laboriously finding and buying each title. You can't even see the boundaries of each title unless you have bought the individual maps. You can just see a list of titles within a radius of a point, and then buy those titles to find out their extent. A secret doesn't need to be impossible to find to be closely-guarded, it can just be impractical.
- jonathantm 9y agoThat's not "closely-guarded". What you describe is not active guarding so much a characteristic of the antiquited data-retrieval system and the cost associated with manually serving information from that system. Cite opposition to attempts to reform that system for a better one (that can be polled programatically for example), and then we can say that calling it "closely guarded" is accurate. It's similar to calling the data contained in microfilm at your local library "closely-guarded". It's cumbersome to parse, yes. It's kept behind lock and guarded doors (when the library is closed), yes. But access is not reserved for those who meet security and/or idological criteral and vetting. There is no attempt to prevent the decemination of the information to others outside a vetted pool of privilaged users. What makes microfilm difficult to access is not it being closely guarded, but rather just that nobody's gone and digitized it — yet (If this is not true, then just image we're in the year 2007, or 1997). If people trying to digitize such material were hampered by active effort of the keepers of the microfilm because the said "keepers" didn't want the information available more broadly... then that would be "close-guarded". But that is not what's happening. So yes, it's term is click bait. Or just bad, imprecise writing.
- ascorbic 9y agoThere's a good precedent here for removing the charges. Until last year it cost £1-£2 for each company document that you wanted to download, but Companies House recently opened up the whole registry for free. They do just fine with the income that companies pay for registration, without needing the income from selling documents. I'm sure the Land Registry could do fine with the income from land registration (which are much higher than company registration fees) without needing to sell access to the documents.
- IshKebab 9y agoInterestingly there was a line in the Tory manifesto about merging the relevant parts of Ordnance Survey, the Land Registry and so on to make a decent digital map of Britain that contains information about companies, land ownership, underground infrastructure etc. I'm glad someone is finally doing it. The Tories have a pretty good track record on digital government (the gov.uk website is also great). Unfortunately that was the only clearly good thing I found in the manifesto.
- TheOtherHobbes 9y agoIt would be good if someone did that, but I'm finding it hard to imagine the Tories would be unusually motivated to make it happen - except possibly as another privatisable resource. The current legislation is already supposed to make it impossible to own a company without being listed as a beneficial owner. It seems that in reality Companies House can sometimes be unexpectedly lax about forcing foreign-owned companies to comply with the law.
- pjc50 9y agoThe current frontrunner for opacity is Scottish Limited Partnerships. Unfortunately fixing these is not within the capabilities of the Scottish Government.