Will George Osborne’s tax hikes do to house prices what Gordon Brown’s stealth tax did to pensions? – Telegraph Blogs

Will George Osborne’s tax hikes do to house prices what Gordon Brown’s stealth tax did to pensions? – Telegraph Blogs

Will Chancellor George Osborne’s stamp duty tax hikes do to house prices what Gordon Brown’s stealth tax did to pensions? Some observers predict a trickle-down effect of higher taxes and tough new anti-avoidance measures could hit homebuyers who will never be millionaires.
When Mr Brown used his first budget in 1997 to impose tax on pension funds’ income from shares, Britain’s savers had more money in private sector retirement schemes than the rest of Europe put together. Back then, Mr Brown argued that pension fund surpluses meant they could afford to pay more tax. On that budget day, few people understood what he described as “the reform of advanced corporation tax” and nobody predicted its long term effects. Since then, deficits have replaced surpluses, pension funds have closed and the rest – as they say – is hysteria.