Sunday, September 13, 2009

British Home Snooper's Handbook

(London, UK) The British government has prepared a "snooper's handbook" to instruct tax investigators on how to detect improvements to citizens' homes. The intent is to have tax professional scour the countryside for residences that show improvements so the assessed valuation can be increased.
The Big Brother manual trains valuation experts how to follow up leads from ‘informants’ by undertaking ‘detective work’, including photographing properties, plundering estate agents’ details and room-by-room inspections. [...]

The Valuation Office Agency is compiling a database that will give all 23million homes in England one of 100 ‘dwelling house codes’, which are expected to form the basis of a council tax revaluation if Labour wins the next Election.

Middle-income families are likely to bear the brunt of any tax increases as the Government struggles to fill the black hole on its balance sheet caused by the recession.

The handbook, complete with audio commentary, sets out how inspectors can catch homeowners who have so-called ‘value significant’ features.

One exercise reads: ‘Your office has been informed the roofspace has been converted into a fourth bedroom. Your task is to establish whether existing details [for the house] require amendment.’

Another states that ‘information has been obtained’ about a house that has been ‘extended to include another living room and two new bedrooms with en suites. It also emerges that the house has a partial view of the mountains’.

The trainee inspectors then have to change their valuation to place the home in a higher bracket.

A further exercise trains inspectors to look out for ‘a garage large enough for two cars and a drive large enough for three’, a ‘hardwood conservatory with single glazing and tiled floor’, a ‘full sea view’ and recent modernisation.

The language in the manual will strike homeowners who have carried out improvements as positively Orwellian.
Heh.

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