Speeches by Yang.

“Is the mechanism for collection part of the consultation discussion? Many councils could come back and say, “This is really not worth it for us”.”

“You said that you would check whether your current valuation of 28 million properties is up to date. Most people who see their own valuations see an early 1990s valuation. Could you just clarify what you mean by “up to date”?”

“Are there ones you are concerned about, seeing their growth over the last few years, say, in that they have ballooned beyond what was originally intended?”

“Could you write to us?”

“How many is that, roughly? What is in that basket?”

“Is that the right process?”

“Do you currently monitor and evaluate all non-structural reliefs, in terms of their impact, or a subset? If so, what is in that subset that you are monitoring?”

“I have some questions—I will start with Mr Russell—on the so-called mansion tax and the high-value council tax surcharge. Could you first explain how properties are going to be valued? How will you handle the appeals process, if any owners appeal?”

“Are you concerned about the growth in the advisory industry helping companies claim and, in some ways, game the relief system, or do you feel relaxed about that?”

“Mr Marks, the collection will be done by local authorities. Will this lead to a number of local authorities that have, say, only 10 such high-value properties in their patch having to put in place more processes in order to handle a small number of properties? Do you have a number or an estimate for how many local auth…”

“Mr Marks, what has recently been dwarfed by the total size of child benefit is the total size of non-structural corporation tax reliefs being paid. These have grown by about 40% in nominal terms since the pandemic. I am not sure that productive behaviour by the companies receiving these reliefs has grown by 40% in the …”

“So there is no distinction between sharing something with academic and commercial researchers.”

“Mr Russell, can I clarify whether it is the legal owner or the beneficial owner who is being taxed?”

“I have one last thing on that process. You described the process of valuation for the £1.5 million to £5 million range. Is that essentially the same process that you would use to value properties outside of that range as well? It is not different in kind.”

“Yes, I am familiar with that.”

“I have heard from some academic economists working on tax research that, in general, the kind of data that you share with Ipsos to do that survey is not shared with researchers. I was wondering whether there is a general rule about what you share with commercial researchers and what you share with academic researchers.”

“I was glad to get involved in the Government’s recent consultation on property service fees. More than 700 of my constituents living in new builds in and around Reading have written to me about high fees and unfair behaviour from property management agents. One constituent, called Sunil, said to me: “We are throwing ou…”

“7. What steps he plans to take to reform the property management system.”

“Mr Rathi, you mentioned that you were considering updating the FCA’s guidance to public bodies in light of the events of the last few weeks. Are there particular sections of that guidance that you think need reinforcement? Secondly, in your letter to the Committee, you mentioned providing training. Is this training man…”

“I appreciate that it is difficult to give estimates of the future, and the MPC cannot do that either. The thing I wanted to get at is whether, in your own minds, there is a trade-off between tolerable harm and the amount of people who might be helped. Would that trade-off help guide the way that you see regulation in t…”