by Andrew Dixon, Founder and Chairman of Fairer Share

The Mansion Myth

What is a mansion, anyway? James Max asks the question in the Financial Times while at the same time answering it himself. He conjures up Downton Abbey visions – 30 bedrooms, ballrooms, turrets and helicopter pads – and then tells us that a £1.5 million property in London is “just a house.”

Here’s the contradiction: Max knows perfectly well what a mansion is. Yet when it comes to paying a fair share of tax on high-value properties, suddenly the definition becomes slippery.

£1.5 Million Is Not “Just a House”

The truth is simple: £1.5 million is around 15 times the median UK house price. That’s not “just a house.” For the vast majority of people in the UK, it’s a dream they’ll never come close to. To dismiss it as ordinary, or as “Middle England,” reveals a gulf between those at the top of the property ladder and everyone else.

The Real Problem: Upside-Down Taxation

And this is where the current system is so deeply broken. Council Tax charges ordinary families in modest homes far more, as a share of their property value, than the owners of million-pound houses. Someone in a small terrace in Blackpool or Hartlepool can be paying double the tax rate of someone in a Kensington townhouse. That is upside-down taxation – and it’s corroding trust in local democracy.

The Proportional Property Tax Solution

That’s why Fairer Share is calling for a Proportional Property Tax (PPT). It’s a simple, transparent idea: properties are taxed according to what they’re worth today, not based on 1991 valuations frozen in time. Under PPT:

  • 18 million households would pay less, saving the average family £556 a year.
  • Those who’ve gained the most from decades of house price inflation would contribute a fairer share.
  • Local councils would be properly funded to deliver the services we all rely on.

Who Really Counts as “Middle Class”?

James Max claims this debate isn’t about “soaking the rich” but about “wringing out the middle classes.” Yet his “middle class” turns out to mean households sitting on £1.5m assets. The real middle class – the millions of families earning average wages and struggling with rent or mortgages – are nowhere in his story.

The Ultimate Irony

And the ultimate irony? Max says he doesn’t mind paying for “roads, hospitals, the occasional police force”, while opposing a fair property tax that would help fund exactly these things.

Building a Fairer System

What is a mansion? The truth is that it doesn’t matter. What matters is whether our tax system reflects today’s reality or whether we let outdated council tax bands and political scare stories keep punishing those with the least.

Fairer Share’s Proportional Property Tax is not about envy, or poetry, or playing word games with “mansions.” It’s about building a tax system that is fair, transparent, and fit for the 21st century.