Thursday 20 December 2007

The Untouchable

Interest on loans

"If the taxpayer has borrowed some money, he is eligible for tax deductions for paying interest on certain loans. The general rule is to deduct the payments of interest from capital income. But if the taxpayer does not have any capital income, the deduction will have to concern earned income. The amount to be deducted is 28% of the paid interest (the 28% being the tax rate on capital income). In this way, the tax benefit is exactly the same as if the deduction had been made from capital income."

State to subsidies construction of rental housing in Helsinki region

"At current costs, rent per square metre is between EUR 14 and 15 in the Helsinki region.
Local authorities in the region calculate that a subsidy of EUR 28.000 for the construction of an apartment would bring down rents by EUR 1.80 per square metre."

"The state is demanding that local authorities hand over reasonably priced parcels of land for use as rental housing. "

Finnish civil servant's yachting investigated as bribe-taking

Finnish national daily Helsingin Sanomat reported Thursday that Helsinki police suspected the deputy harbourmaster of the Port of Helsinki of accepting bribes from tugging company Alfons HÃ¥kans.

Bribery, I though it was commonly used in many companies to get or keep contracts. Right it is usually done in smart way...

Have you ever wondered that TAX DEDUCTION and SUBSIDIES have always benefited the one in power especially those politicians in charge of housing policies.

We know that Owners can deduct interest paid on housing loan. This has only contributed to higher housing inflation. At the end it's the renters that are paying the bill by higher rent as cost soared.

Now, those same people are putting in place some scheme to artificially keep the current high level of housing prices by NOT reforming key areas . By not acting or dragging their feet they only contribute in creating imbalance, the longer it stays the bigger the impact will be.

Remember that our economy is heavily relying on internal consumption, so by increase debt burden on those same consumers, the society is shooting at its own feet. The US is currently experiencing it, UK will same as Spain, Finland and others.

Regarding Taxation of unused Lands , it's at a shamefull level and why is that? you should know the answer...

Source : VERO, HS

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The problem is that they have let the interest rate deduction for too long.

1- It exacerbated housing price growth- here it might be true that most politicians owns a house and are greedy too therefore kept that measure in place.

2- The issue is that they don't have any ammunitions to boost a "dying" housing market. In France they have just introduced the interest deduction in order to boost a faltering housing market.

So incompetence, greed and lack of vision is maybe behind that.

Soft landing, there is no such a thing...