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Bedroom Tax Doomed?

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Hypognosis | 07:49 Mon 10th Feb 2014 | Home & Garden
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According to this blogger an appeal case has been upheld because the claimant's two spare bedrooms (in a 4 bedroom house, facing a 25% cut) were deemed to be only box rooms - suitable for someone no older than 10 and not rentable without creating an overcrowding condition within the property.

http://speye.wordpress.com/2014/02/08/the-bedroom-tax-is-dead-heres-why/

(Page contains a photo of the case ruling)

Obviously, 'bedroom tax' is a colloquial (and derogatory) name for it. Is it just a canard to say these rooms are unfit for habitation?

Why shouldn't lower income families also be able to have a study and a room to store the possessions accumulated by the time their children have left the nest?

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"Why shouldn't lower income families also be able to have a study and a room to store the possessions accumulated by the time their children have left the nest? "

Because they're expecting the tax payer to pay them to maintain their house. I'm a home owner and if it comes to a stage where I an no longer afford to maintain my home because of it's size, i'd have to downgrade. Why is it any difference for anyone else?
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You own your own home and it has undoubtedly risen in value since you bought it. When you 'downsize' you will 'magically' have a wedge of instant cash with which to do up your new home. And gain again.

Council home owners go where they're put and don't make a capital gain when they're shunted from place to place.

The fact that there is insufficient housing stock to move them to a 3, or a 2-bed property (nationawide) is a result of 80s/90s political ideology, not something they should be punished for.

If you don't like paying taxes to support people less well off than yourself then why not campaign, strenuously, for higher wages in the job sectors that council tenants tend to occupy?

Pay taxes or have more expensive goods and services across the board?

Exactly so, hypo. We have to assume that the Council allocated the housing according to the, then, needs of the occupants. If the housing stock permits of it, yes, let's chuck the tenants out when the extra bedroom is not needed, and put them in smaller accommodation. But that is not how the world is, because previous planning did not allow for it.

Boo, I am interested in the idea that, as a private householder who has a spare bedroom, I should be saving council tax by having one bedroom less or be taxed in some other way for having the extra. I wouldn't be saving any council tax at all. Oddly, I get a discount for living alone, however palatial (or not) Puli Towers is. And why would I 'downsize' just because I have an extra bedroom or two ?
I agree with Boo. Yes, our house has risen in value since we bought it, but over the years we have spent thousands and thousands on maintenance (it's quite an old house).

It was our choice to buy the house rather than rent in the first place, many of our friends at the time chose to go into social housing and told us we were mad for taking on a mortgage. It wasn't the easy option by any means - just as is the case now, we had to save a 10% deposit (we were earning about £50 per week between us) but we thought it was worth the hard work.

The answer to the question in your last paragraph is: because we have to pay for it. You can have as big a house as you want, but don't expect the taxpayer to borrow more money from China to subsidise you.
Why do people keep calling this a "tax" - a tax is what you pay on income. The correct name for this is "curtailment of unecessary scrounging".

"Why shouldn't lower income families also be able to have a study and a room to store the possessions accumulated by the time their children have left the nest?"

Yes and why shouldn't I have my own Polo stable and pitch? I really should also have a 100m yacht too, I mean Eddie Jordan's got one!

You seem quite happy to award tax payers money to all and sundry.

Do you have a job per chance?

can anyone tell me, does this 'tax' apply to OAPs too?
it applies to anyone on housing benefit.
It applies to people of working age.
a tax is what you pay on income

fiddle-de-dee. A tax on income is an income tax. A tax on (for instance) petrol, or windows, is still a tax.

But since the "bedroom" tax isn't about bedrooms at all, but about surplus space, why should there be any requirement to have a bed in it? I'm not sure I understand this ruling.

Personally, I'm okay with tenants having a spare room - they're entitled to have house guests as part of the normal run of life. I don't know about having an infinite number of box rooms. though.
yes jno, I focused on income tax because it is paid by those with income. Anyway the main point is that this is not a tax it is a curtailment of free money given by the state to the detriment of real tax payers.
sorry hypo, you didn't seem to answer my question at 11:03.

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