According to the BBC the average house price at the moment is £211k, and prices rose on average by 9.25% last year. So your estimate of £250k is a little way off, though perhaps it's a fair assessment of the mean average family home given that the £210k figure includes flats. Your estimate of a 60% price rise in the next year is also frankly ludicrous, you'd only see rises like that in highly overvalued areas of London, and most people I know who work in property think the silly rises we've seen here in recent years are going to end soon. Currently only 6% of households pay inheritance tax, and the highest estimates put the peak at 40%.
But here's the thing - let's say you're a family in 2010 and you own a home that's worth £370k. You can still give £350k of your assets to your spouse and kids when you die, tax free. You only get taxed on the rest. Give families a larger break? If they have paid off their mortgage and are able to pass on that kind of asset to their kids then frankly I think their kids will be OK!
Let's use progressive taxes like inheritance tax to tackle real problems like the lack of affordable housing, the sort of problem that neither Labour nor the Tories are very keen to get stuck into. After all, building lots more social housing, using compulsory purchase orders to solve the land price issue and giving a leg up to housing co-operatives isn't going to sit very well with the kind of middle class opinion makers at the Evening Standard who own their £400k family home in north London!
© Tom Chance 2001-2007. 
According to the BBC the average house price at the moment is £211k, and prices rose on average by 9.25% last year. So your estimate of £250k is a little way off, though perhaps it's a fair assessment of the mean average family home given that the £210k figure includes flats. Your estimate of a 60% price rise in the next year is also frankly ludicrous, you'd only see rises like that in highly overvalued areas of London, and most people I know who work in property think the silly rises we've seen here in recent years are going to end soon. Currently only 6% of households pay inheritance tax, and the highest estimates put the peak at 40%.
But here's the thing - let's say you're a family in 2010 and you own a home that's worth £370k. You can still give £350k of your assets to your spouse and kids when you die, tax free. You only get taxed on the rest. Give families a larger break? If they have paid off their mortgage and are able to pass on that kind of asset to their kids then frankly I think their kids will be OK!
Let's use progressive taxes like inheritance tax to tackle real problems like the lack of affordable housing, the sort of problem that neither Labour nor the Tories are very keen to get stuck into. After all, building lots more social housing, using compulsory purchase orders to solve the land price issue and giving a leg up to housing co-operatives isn't going to sit very well with the kind of middle class opinion makers at the Evening Standard who own their £400k family home in north London!