Hello from The National and welcome to the View from London – your weekly guide to the big stories from our London bureau
Tax blitz
For London residents, the scars of the Second World War bombing blitz are still present if you know where to look.
So too is the legacy of the infamous Window Tax, where the government's overreach caused householders to brick up their surplus openings to save money.
From next year a new reign of crackdown is set to descend on the city. The tax authorities in the UK are to send inspectors to high-value properties to determine if owners will pay a new wealth levy on their value.
His Majesty's Revenue and Customs is hiring valuation agents who can demand entry to assess whether homes are worth more than £2 million ($2.7 million). Crossing that threshold means coming under the high-value council tax surcharge, commonly known as the mansion tax.
The new tax will be applied to about 1 per cent of homes in England. Owners would be expected to pay £2,500 a year for properties worth £2 million to £2.5 million, and £3,500 for properties worth up to £3.5 million. Properties between £3.5 million and £5 million would accrue a charge of £5,000 annually, while those worth more than £5 million would face a £7,500 levy. The surcharge is separate to the council tax and would rise annually with inflation.
That will cover a lot of addresses in London and is already having a chilling impact on the property market. It is reported that gazundering (or a buyer reducing an offer at the signing) is back in vogue.
Token gesture
A UK think tank close to Andy Burnham's leadership team is promoting an international token tax for jobs lost to AI. The move could straddle the gap if AI starts to eat into state revenues from payroll levies.
The Institute for Public Policy Research findings would require AI companies to audit their token production process and pay up on resulting revenues.
International co-operation holds the key to a workable tax regime. "If the UK were alone in implementing a token tax, it potentially faces competitiveness issues as high-value service sector AI app users in the UK pay taxes not faced by rival firms abroad," said the IPPR report, which came out overnight.
"Moreover, with frontier AI models largely based in the US and China, Britain would face the difficulty of asking foreign companies to engage in continuous auditing for British fiscal needs."
It would almost certainly need a future US administration less beholden to AI companies, too. Last week President Donald Trump's trade negotiator Jamieson Greer reiterated Washington's demands for London to drop its digital services tax as an imposition on US companies.
Back to school
Pupils returning for the new school year in London are to be given training in how to detect extremism online as well as challenge anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has announced funding for a programme that tackles misinformation, prejudice and intolerance in London’s communities and online.
The Shared Endeavour Fund will receive £875,000 which will fund projects including workshops run by Tech Against Terrorism aimed at helping school pupils detect extremist content online.
Mr Khan pointed to statistics showing the Community Security Trust recorded a 24 per cent increase in the number of anti-Semitic incidents in London, while Tell Mama has reported more incidents of anti-Muslim hate in the first six months of this year than in all of 2023.
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