To buy or not to buy…

We are constantly asked ‘is now a good time to buy’ and the answer as always is ‘that depends’. It depends on what you are hoping for, if you want to invest in an asset that will never lose value then no, it’s a terrible time to buy a house. If you want to buy a home because you are at a point in your life where that is what you want to do then it’s a decent time.

We were telling people from 07′ until this year to stay away from property, and now we believe that the time has come where you can make decisions rationally. It doesn’t sway it either way but you can at least get a good idea of some of the pros and cons involved.

Firstly, there is the property price register, there are issues with it – we have pointed this out before. While knowing what something sold for in the past gives no indication of the future selling price (and property is particularly heterogeneous) it …

Read More →

High tax, and 'super tax' will collapse the tax base

I have said that taxing certain sectors of society more will actually decrease, the most recent and public evidence of this was U2 moving elements of their business to the Netherlands. What we don’t see on the front of the paper are the myriad of people who silently seek to do the same as the tax regime is tightened.

We have stated before that 50% of the tax take is paid for by the top 6.5% of workers, which is why I believe that a new ‘super tax’ for people earning more than €100,000 (for instance – nothing has been announced at the time of writing this) is actually a mistake. Why? Because there will be a surprising number of people who used to earn €150,000 or whatever amount above this you want to take, who will instead change their wages to €99,000 and leave the rest as retained earnings, increased pension contributions, use as expenses etc. etc.

This doesn’t help to push money into the economy, it …

Read More →

High tax, and ‘super tax’ will collapse the tax base

I have said that taxing certain sectors of society more will actually decrease, the most recent and public evidence of this was U2 moving elements of their business to the Netherlands. What we don’t see on the front of the paper are the myriad of people who silently seek to do the same as the tax regime is tightened.

We have stated before that 50% of the tax take is paid for by the top 6.5% of workers, which is why I believe that a new ‘super tax’ for people earning more than €100,000 (for instance – nothing has been announced at the time of writing this) is actually a mistake. Why? Because there will be a surprising number of people who used to earn €150,000 or whatever amount above this you want to take, who will instead change their wages to €99,000 and leave the rest as retained earnings, increased pension contributions, use as expenses etc. etc.

This doesn’t help to push money into the economy, it …

Read More →