Housing crisis
Your editorial on the housing crisis (11 February) echoes conventional political wisdom: that only supply shortages are to blame – not regional policy and distortions from UK taxation. Yet The Tablet can voice truths no politician dares. Another kind of Mammon needs dethroning.

Those fortunate enough to afford home ownership (ourselves included), enjoy a threefold taxation privilege. Inevitably, this inflates demand for housing, and thus its price, and multiplies empty rooms.

Threefold? First, when we move house or die, our home is free from capital gains tax. Second, threshold and lifetime gift exemptions make our home substantially free from inheritance tax; and our heirs freely use inherited wealth to buy more housing value themselves, stoking the cycle. Third, income in kind from one’s home is income tax free – ever since the 1936 standstill of “Schedule A”, abolished in 1963.