The housing system is broken. With the stroke of a planners pen, land values multiply by a hundredfold. Young people are then suckered into servicing a lifetime of debt for a shitty new build house. House prices are unsustainable, they are kept propped up by an ever increasing array of wheezes from the government. Help to buy was bollocks- 50k a house went straight on the price and then into Persimmon's profits. Interest rates are currently at an emergency rate cut on top of an emergency rate cut on top of the lowest rates in history. Negative rates are being proposed. Buy to let landlords have a chokehold on young families trying to get ahead- things our parents took for granted. The current stamp duty freeze is bollocks- people are paying 40k extra to save 15k in tax! The can is being kicked down the road.
I'm past the jealousy phase mate- I make OK money and have fun doing it with lots of toys. I have a nice starter house with my missus- an old flint cottage with character and great views, for less than the price of a red brick new build. But this crisis has turned the way I see things. You have people who, through no fault of their own, have accurued a year of debts all the whilst whilst having no way to earn money. Just because I am, on the face of it, a go-getting 'have'- doesn't mean I don't have sympathy for people who are suffering, especially if they were the same as me beforehand but for a different business.
But yes Eggs, I am possibly conflating two different issues, although they are both intertwined. There's my suggestion for raising more tax though. Were I PM, my manifesto would be less tax for genuine businesses, and more tax for speculators, gamblers and people who get lucky due to a broken system.
Capital gains tax it could be argued is a tax upon gains won in the course of business. Hence the term 'windfall tax' I feel is more appropriate.