Institute of Fiscal Studies on top form

Apart from the irritiating use of the word "property" when they mean "residential land and buildings", of course.

From their Green Budget 2013, Chapter 9:

Far from looking to raise more money from SDLT, the government should be looking to reduce SDLT or preferably abolish it altogether and make up the revenue elsewhere – perhaps from a reformed council tax in order to avoid giving out windfall gains to owners of high-value properties... A sensibly reformed council tax, increased to make up the revenue from abolishing SDLT, would make for a much more coherent system for taxing property...

The taxation of housing is a mess. There is no good argument for taxing housing transactions, as stamp duty land tax does. There are good arguments for levying a tax on property values – but not for charging a lower percentage tax rate on high-value properties and basing it on valuations that are 22 years out of date, as council tax does.

Increasing council tax rates for high-band properties would go some way towards making council tax more proportional to property values, but it would be better to conduct a full revaluation and make a reformed tax fully proportional to those up-to-date valuations, preferably replacing the revenue from an abolished SDLT in the process.