Will there really be a new property tax - and how would it work?

0:02Lee Boyce: Welcome to This Is Money podcast sponsored by Charles Stanley Direct. I'm Georgie Frost and joining me and Lee Boyce today is Helen Crane. And coming up, could you be charged for making a profit when you come to sell your home? A host of new proposals are reportedly being looked at by the Chancellor as Labour looks to fill its big fiscal black hole. What will it mean though for you and your budget? Meanwhile, we look at the latest house price figures which don't make for pretty reading, especially if you live in the North East. Also today, what is a pump and dump shares scam and how can you spot a deep fake?

0:37Lee Boyce: Plus, heading off on holiday, the team has been investigating the great currency exchange ripoff. We'll tell you how to spot a French flea market bargain that could pay for your holiday. And we explore the etiquette of tipping wherever you are in the world. Don't forget you can stay up to date with all the latest breaking money news. Just go to thisismoney.co.uk or download the app.

1:25Lee Boyce: Your way. Take control today with Charles Stanley Direct. Sign up now.

1:31Helen Crane: Investment involves risk.

1:32Lee Boyce: But first, now I got a phone call, Lee and Helen, yesterday from my dear mother. She's a woman in her 70s, not in the greatest of health. She lives alone in our big old family home in Surrey. And she's a unfortunate, voracious reader of the papers. And these calls have become increasingly common occurrence as we edge closer to the budget this autumn. Now, her concern this time round was over alleged proposals by the Chancellor to include the sale of some homes in the capital gains tax net, as Rachel Reeves looks to fill the£51 billion fiscal black hole without breaking any manifesto promises or self-imposed rules.

2:16Lee Boyce: Now, at the moment, you only pay tax if you make a profit when selling a second home or a buy-to-let property, or indeed some other assets like stocks and shares, personal possessions, etc. But not your main residence, your family home. It follows reports in the last few days that the government is mulling over sweeping changes to stamp duty and council tax. Welcome, Helen. Welcome, Lee. Now, I don't know if you could tell in my voice there that I am getting a little bit frustrated. And I say this as a journalist, that it's people like my dear mother, bless her cotton socks. We'd love her to sell her property.

2:52Lee Boyce: Don't get me wrong. But she is a woman of a certain age who lives alone and is a bit, you know, she's not good with change. Right. This is not helping. I mean, it might help. It might make her want to sell. But it just explain some of the things that are being proposed. Now, firstly, we've got stamp duty and council tax. Then we got capital gains. I don't know how you want to play this, Lee. Do you want to just give it all to us in a big property proposal dump?

3:15Georgie Frost: I'll give it to you in a big property proposal dump. And actually, just quickly to reiterate that, I got a message from my wife this week saying stamp duty is being cut. My brother's messaged me saying the stamp duty is all getting changed and it's going to be cut. Now, my wife's brother is the least, is the complete opposite to your mother. He doesn't read the news. He's not very academic. He just doesn't really read. but like it's just how he is but when he's asking about it and talking about it because he heard it on the radio that's when you know it's got into the psyche and property you know our homes our cars and all that i think people get very very very hit up and let's give an overview here let's go back a year all of the speculation all of the stuff that we had ahead of the budget we're going to have it all again uh this year and again it just looks like nothing's off the table pensions inheritance all of that kind of thing but there wasn't much around property last year but this year it's like property has become this week the hot topic um you know there's going to be sweeping changes and whatnot now first of all i'm going to point out here that none of this has been uh sort of confirmed denied by the treasury except one part so there was a start of the week where there was a story suggesting that there was going to be a seller tax on homes valued at more than 500 000 pounds that went around like wildfire um so a seller tax yeah so it almost like flipping stamp duty on its head rather than the buyer uh paying stamp duty that the seller would pay stamp duty that has been shut down by the treasury they've said it's not looking to do that so that was just the start of the rumor train uh this week in which it has just got absolutely potty and out of hand now some of the things are believed to be under consideration so allegedly the treasury is looking into property how things can change now stamp duty as you've heard on this podcast a lot is one ripe for reform it's not a very uh you know well-loved tax it's quite it's very expensive outlay and whenever there's a stamp duty holiday etc it seems to give a rocket boost to the property market because people feel like they're saving money not just sending uh cash directly to the treasury coffers now there was this report that has been heavily cited this week from the London School of Economics, a professor at the London School of Economics.

5:35Georgie Frost: It's a year old. It's from last August. And we had to print this 48 page document out this week and pore over it. And between Helen and Ed Magnus, who are both our property, go to property experts, and me looking at this table, I honestly thought my head was going to explode at one point, but we got through it, we got there. So the one part of this plan that was in this document is essentially to put stamp duty as an annual tax rather than a one-off cost so what we mean by that is depending it would be based on your house value and instead of say paying say on a i've got the figures here actually so on an 800 000 pound home currently stamp duty would be 30 000 pounds for example um on this new annual tax part of this it would be 1620 pounds which sounds a lot fairer in principle because you're stretching that out over time and you'd be better off after something like 18 years or something 16 18 years something like that but the other part of this would be to then reform council tax and club that into an annual tax that goes alongside this to make this a catch-all term of a property tax.

6:50Georgie Frost: So you would be paying this every single year. Now we did this table to sort of try and figure out what this would mean. So again, on that£800 ,000 example, replacing stamp duty would be£1 ,620, as I mentioned. And then the local property tax, which would replace council tax, would be£2 ,200, which would give you an annual property tax of £3 ,820. Now as you move up the ladder, that actually doesn't sound that bad when you think about the stamp duty that you have to pay up front and the council tax bills that keep on rising then you start working your way up the ladder and then on a one million pound house you'd be looking at an annual catch-all property tax of four thousand nine hundred pounds on one point five million you'd be a catch-all of eight thousand nine hundred and fifty and on two million pounds it would be 13 grand a year but stamp duty on all of those price levels are really really high And then if you look down the ladder on a£200 ,000 home, for example, the annual property tax in this proposal would be£880.

7:50Georgie Frost: And that replaces council tax and it replaces stamp duty and it would be uprated with inflation. And there's question marks over how you would keep valuing the homes and how that would all work. Again, council tax is a bit antiquated. You think about it, all of the banding. there's lots of conversations around whether it's fair um you know we we had some examples in here so in wandsworth it's south london the average council tax bill for someone living in a band d property today is 990 pounds and seven pence but the average property price there is 718 000 pounds wow in cheaper areas so burnley in lancashire average band d property currently pays£2 ,463 ,000 in council tax.

8:39Georgie Frost: The average property price there is£121 ,000. So you can see when you hear the cogs are turning and you can kind of go, well, hold on a sec. Are people paying their fair share higher up the trend? It would be a massive thing to have to get your teeth stuck into to change. And I feel like you start doing all of that and it would take ages. and then add it into the mix. Just a quick one.

9:06Lee Boyce: I do think it's right for change, but just it would be great if the message was less about tax grabs, more about, you know, reforming a system. Yeah, making it fairer, reforming a system that is absolutely shambolic at the moment.

9:20Georgie Frost: That's the thing, isn't it? I mean, we've tried to write a balanced piece on this. It's very difficult trying to figure out what potentially this could look like with very little information from the Treasury and, you know, not what could happen. So we're just spitballing here, looking at a report that apparently the treasury has looked at and it could be far harsher than this georgie if we're being if we're being frank than what's in here and then okay so that was the first part of the week and then to the latter part of the week we've had a mansion tax banded around so as you rightfully say you can't you don't pay cgt if you sell their principal home if you sell your principal home known as the capital gain so if you buy a house for x amount then sell it for amount that's the profit um you don't pay a tax on that house prices you know on the whole have gone upwards in the last couple of decades but so is inflation and i would argue that house prices if you look at it on a chart compared to inflation over the last few years it's just about potentially keeping up probably not even quite keeping up so they're talking about here this merchant tax is levying a capital gains bill, basically, on a house sales over a certain amount of money, which would affect a million pounds.

10:32Georgie Frost: Two million, 10 million? A million pounds has potentially been banned around one and a half million pounds, we've heard. We looked at this figure. If you bought a home, again, I'm using£800 ,000 as an example, quite a lot compared to what goes around the country. But just to give the example, and it was sold by a million pounds, a high-rate taxpayer would attract a capital gains tax bill of£47 ,000. £280. And that's on top of the monstrous stamp GT Builder would have been paid ahead of time for that£800 ,000. That's quite a lot of cash. So that's been the other thing. Listen, the Chancellor is short of easy options to fill this black hole that you mentioned earlier.

11:08Georgie Frost: You know, the manifesto pledges of keeping income tax, VAT, national insurance at the same level, despite calls for substantial increase in taxes. What's the easy targets? It feels like, as always middle england is the easy target and people like your mother rattling around in a potentially a bigger home what what really should be happening in my opinion people like that is an encouragement to downsize by incentive absolutely downsizing and getting the rest of the market moving and having enough suitable accommodation for people that do want to downsize um and probably as you say not things that are labeled tax grabs um and boosting treasury treasury coffers when you want to do things to get the property market moving and working better for people i do agree though that there should be a fairer system uh around council tax how you i i you know i don't know but all of this stuff is ripe for reform but it would take a very brave chance to start reforming things like pensions, inheritance, property, all in one go.

12:16Georgie Frost: You're just going to be upsetting a lot of people. Very difficult to do all of that at the same time. Very complicated.

12:23Lee Boyce: I go back to it. For me, it's the messaging because this stuff, yes, it's difficult. It's hard. But you are in power and you're in power to make things better. So let's change the narrative and rather than everything being a mad tax grab, say it's a reform, which is exactly fairer tax. Helen, as the property expert, is any of this likely? I mean, capital gains is all right. Fair enough if you are not looking to buy something of a similar value, because when you come to sell your home, you'll be paying capital gains and then you'll be paying all of the stuff that you need to when you buy a new home, including stamp duty.

13:01Lee Boyce: Are you not just going to get a wave of people going for properties just in a smaller band, basically.

13:08Helen Crane: Yeah, exactly. Well, that's the risk with all of these policies is that, you know, say people have a property that's around the value. The number that's been bandied around this is 1.5 million pounds, which is quite high. Personally, I think they could actually go for something a bit lower than that. But it's the risk that, you know, properties around that value, people kind of just want to get them under that threshold because buyers won't want a property where they have to pay this, you know, this capital gains tax, is do they try and shunt things under and then it starts kind of distorting the market.

13:41Helen Crane: So, you know, you'll find there will be homes that will be really, really difficult to sell because people are scared of having to having to pay this tax. And it's just a case also of like, how would it all work? How are they even valuing the properties for these kind of purposes? And also one of the experts I spoke to this week said, what government department would be handling this? it would be HMRC. And in the minute, HMRC take like six months to reply to a letter. So it seems like, you know, this would be a huge undertaking to actually get any of this done. And, you know, also what's been said is to get these policies in place, it'll take a long time.

14:20Helen Crane: And will Labour, frankly, still be in power by the time that any of this could be sorted out? So it's the risk of people making snap decisions based on these rumours, I think is really dangerous. As you said, you know, they sort of float these ideas out and it's all rumour. And, you know, we've been sort of scrambling around trying to work out what's going on. But there will be people like Lee's brother-in-law who look at this and think, oh, is this going to affect me? How, you know, I'm looking at buying a house. Should I not buy a house? Should I buy a house now to try and avoid all of this?

14:53Helen Crane: And I think people do inevitably end up factoring these things into their decision making. You know, it's like earlier in the year when we were seeing people pulling money out of their pensions because they thought there might be changes to pension tax and it didn't happen. But those people have done that. And, you know, can you really say they're wrong if it's clear where the direction of travel is going on this property stuff? You know, Labour wants to obviously have sort of homeowners in their sights and people who have sort of worked hard and are fortunate to own these higher value houses clearly are a group that's sort of ripe for higher taxation in Labour's view.

15:30Helen Crane: So, of course, they're listening to these noises that are happening and they're thinking about how it could affect them. But, you know, the property market has been through so much, I think, in the last few years. We've had the pandemic when prices absolutely rocketed. Mortgage rates went absolutely crazy. we've had all these policy changes and it's like when is it just going to calm down for people who want to just move house it is broadly a good thing for the economy for people to move house it means people can move for jobs they can move to suit their life circumstances you know if you have a family you can upsize to a bigger place if you're older you can downsize that's generally a good thing and you know when people move it pours money into things like removal companies and furniture.

16:11Helen Crane: And it's just a good thing to keep the economy sort of ticking over. And things like this, I think, will prevent people from doing that ultimately.

16:18Lee Boyce: While I have you here, Helen, talking about property prices, we got some official stats out. Not pretty reading if you live in certain areas of the country. So official figures show that the typical home has risen in value by£9 ,000 over the past year to£269 ,079. That's based on sales data from June. And it's £100 off the all-time record set in March 2025. What stands out in those figures for you though, Helen?

16:50Helen Crane: So they show a massive gap emerging between house prices in some northern regions and in London. So homes in the northeast are rising in price need 10 times faster than London. So they've gone up 7.8 % in the 12 months to June. These are government figures, so they run on a little bit of a lag, but they're very accurate. So 7.8 % in the northeast and just 0.8 % in London. So it shows this real gulf that is opening up between house prices up north, where more affordable compared to salary and in London where there's just this real sort of crunch things seem to be really sort of stagnating and how to perhaps reach this sort of affordability ceiling where buyers just won't and can't pay more because of you know things like higher mortgage rates and just homes being so out of whack with what people earn um it's kind of reaching a stalemate between sellers and buyers um you know people really struggling to get the price they want and buyers kind of holding firm and yeah everything just seems a bit sort of stuck in the market in London at the moment.

17:59Lee Boyce: I mean it's not really a surprise because North East has come from a pretty low base so what averages are we talking about in the North East compared to say London for example but it does it does show a picture do you think there's some stage where I mean it's never going to get to the stage where it's the same price but when do you think that perhaps the North East will start to reach its peak as it were.

18:20Helen Crane: That's true so at the minute just under£164 ,000 is the average property in the northeast compared to London which is£561 ,000 so it's a huge it's a huge difference. Inevitably you know 7.8 % in a year is a big rise and if we saw that for another couple of years that would start to see things in the northeast quite out of whack with people's earnings so So house prices are still unaffordable in most areas. If you look at, you know, people are still paying quite a few times their average wage to buy a house. And there obviously will still be people in the northeast for whom getting that together is a struggle.

19:02Helen Crane: But I think the thing is, as well, people from the south are moving out to these sort of northern cities or other cities just in other places around the UK where it is still a bit more affordable. And that will unfortunately also drive prices up. So, you know, the direction is probably up just about everywhere, apart from maybe London for now. But it's a good picture if you live in the further north of the country at the minute anyway.

19:26Lee Boyce: Right, we're going to move on from property to one of the most 2025 headlines that I think I've seen in a while, Lee. Deep fake of fund manager Anthony Bolton could savage your savings in pump and dump share scam. There's a lot to unpick in that headline, isn't there? So firstly, what is a deepfake? What is pump and dump? And who is Anthony Bolton?

19:48Georgie Frost: Deepfake is the videos of people that mimic real life people and they can be quite the technology around it has become more sophisticated around AI. And it can be quite difficult to decipher what's real and what's not. Pump and dump scam is when you pick a random stock that's a very low level and you encourage people to pump loads of money into it. So the stock price, the share price starts to rise. And then whoever's kind of been at the bottom of that will exit. And hopefully, well, they'll be hoping to make a huge amount of money out of that. Well, everyone else is a loser, so to speak. And Antti Bolton is a fund manager, a very well-known fund manager.

20:26Georgie Frost: And both he and Peter Hargreaves have been mimicked in this deep fake scam. And I'll take you back to a couple of months on how I found out about this. I logged into Fidelity because that's where the workplace, our workplace pension is housed. And there was a big red warning sign on there saying, watch out for deep fakes of Anthony Bolton and other fund managers that are currently doing the rounds. And like a red rag to a ball, I kind of wanted to know more about that. So he went off and found out what was going on. And lo and behold, there were these deep fake videos that were circulating on social media.

20:58Georgie Frost: Very convincing. The one of Anthony Bolton, he looks like he's sitting in front of a very big mahogany desk. You watch him speak. And honestly, it is so good. I think the average person would not cotton on that. That's a deep fake. Even Simon said to me, I thought that was Anthony Bolton. I'll be honest. It was so good and so convincing. I thought that was him. And that's someone that has met and spoken to Anthony Bolton. Wow. Even recently. So that's how frightening this thing is. To take you through to the chronological order of this story by Harvey Dorsett, he's gone into a bit more of a deeper investigative dive in this.

21:33Georgie Frost: And he joined the WhatsApp group that was being promoted by this deep fake scam. So it was to click a link. You watch the video, click a link through to this private WhatsApp group. And in this private WhatsApp group, these slick looking professionals who were mimicking a real life U.S. investment firm with real names were basically saying, follow this stock advice these stock tips you know coming from directly from allegedly Anthony Bolton and Peter Hargreaves but not through not not encouraging people to send money to them so this is where a crucial part of this is they were being encouraged to invest in certain stocks through their own investment platforms and in the examples we found people did this through Robinhood and Trading 212 and the company that we've written about here is called Feetan Holdings which is a real company it's based in China it was founded in 1998 it was listed on the Nasdaq stock exchange in the US in 2022 and what had happened what happened what transpired was there was enough people to have been encouraged to invest in this feet and stock it went up from six dollars to eighteen dollars a share within three weeks so as an investor you're looking at that going oh okay this is a hot share pick like well done they've done well here and it kept on rising and rising and rising and what these forsters would be waiting for is that they would have invested at a very very very low level and probably considerable but a considerable amount of money they were waiting for it it appears to go over 30 dollars a share and then they've absolutely sold out of everything they've got and the share price has just collapsed and the people that we've spoken to have lost tens of thousands of pounds uh into this because a they got hooked into it thinking it was a real investment manager be they're in this whatsapp group and if well of course anthony bolton's not going to be whatsapping you but that's not really what the scam was it was more these slick looking investment professionals were pretending that they had their share advice and i think people that got involved in this we know that around about at least 100 people that got involved in this it's likely to be far more than that across the world because you're doing it for your own investment platform you kind of think well you're in control of it so what you know what could possibly go wrong and just to reiterate how kind of convincing this scam was and this deep fake was we actually had a professional stock broker uh you know he's professional he does this for a living he got he got hooked into it and he put 13 grand into this stock it doubled he cashed out on it decided well that was nice and then it kept on going up and he felt like he was missing out so he put it all back in and then it all collapsed and he said all of the noises that these scammers were making nothing was a red flag it was really professional they knew all of the talk all of the spiel the reason why i wanted to mention it on this podcast is that do not believe these videos that go around the social media like you know it's like whack-a-mole trying to get them down they're very convincing and i know you would go this would never happen to me i'd never end up you know clicking through to a whatsapp group uh from Anthony Bolton as if he'd be doing that and of course but he at the moment you know you can end up doing it and the reason why I wanted to mention that a professional stockbroker involved in that it shows you just how convincing this was this isn't just some you know classic scam with typos and things that you can spot a mile off this is a new world of sophisticated deep fake scamming and I would predict it's only going to probably get worse and just wanted to put them all in out though.

25:13Georgie Frost: That's it for part one.

25:18Georgie Frost: I'm joined now by Rob Morgan from Charles Stanley Direct for our weekly finances explained feature. We have a question from a listener today, Rob. David from Liverpool asks, from September, my salary will go to just over£50 ,271, which I understand takes me into the higher tax bracket of 40%. Will I be taxed 40 % of my whole salary, i.e. the full£50 ,271, or the difference between my salary and the cutoff point, which is just over£800. Hi Lee. Well, income tax works in tiers.

25:49Lee Boyce: So you only pay the higher rate to the extent that your income exceeds the higher rate threshold of£50 ,270. Up to that point, you pay£20p in the pound on your income over and above the income tax personal allowance. and then it's 40p in the pound for the slice of income over the 50 ,270 level. So in this instance just the£800 or so. That's not quite the full story because this level of income is also the point at which national insurance contributions actually drop from 8 % down to 2%. So broadly your earnings at that point effectively go from being taxed at 28 % to 42 % when combining income tax and NI.

26:35Lee Boyce: Now, one thing you can do to reduce the income tax you pay while saving for the future at the same time is to make pension contributions that have the effect of reducing your earned income for the tax year. You might already be doing this, of course, via your workplace pension. In respect of any higher rate tax relief, though, you'd need to check whether you have a salary sacrifice scheme at work or an arrangement where all the tax relief, including higher rate, is automatic. Many work pensions are set up that way. But if not, you'll only get the basic rate tax relief automatically and any extra higher rate relief has to be claimed from HMRC.

27:15Georgie Frost: Brilliant. He explained. That's Rob Morgan from Charles Stanley Direct.

27:18Lee Boyce: Welcome back. Currency firms are short-changing travellers by as much as 150 euros on every £500 exchanged at airports by failing to be clear about just how poor the rates are. A Money Mail investigation has been looking into the great currency exchange ripoff and uncovered just how hard it is to get the information that you need at Bureau de Changes at airports across Britain. So what can you do to get the best rates? Helen, what did they uncover? How widespread a problem

27:51Helen Crane: them is this so i thought this story was really interesting because i kind of assumed that everyone knows that you don't exchange money at the airport because it's really expensive and the rates are such a rip-off but actually i were kind of talking about around the office and people said oh no actually i went on holiday with my friends you know a few months ago and and they said you know trotted up to the exchange desk at the airport and tried to exchange some money you're like what are you doing but i think a lot of people still don't know although they think it's a bit more expensive but they don't realise exactly how much more expensive it is.

28:25So we've looked into this and we found that the likes of Change Group and Travelex,

28:31Helen Crane: they're short-changing travellers because they're not clear about just how poor these rates are. And they're actually being quite opaque about what these exchange rates are. So anyone who's been to an airport knows you go up to the desk and you have these scrolling or ticker boards showing the rates. These kind of go by really fast. So you're standing there waiting for yours to come up. And it's really not always quite clear what the rate is that you're actually getting. And we found that staff will actually, you know, you'll ask the staff about the rates and they won't explain them properly or they won't print out the rate.

29:05Helen Crane: So you can kind of see it there in black and white. They also don't publish the rates on the Internet. And one of our reporters actually tried calling round some airports and asking what the rates were for someone who wanted to go up to the desk and exchange currency. And they either didn't answer the phone or they wouldn't tell us. Only a couple of airport desks actually told us what the rates would be for someone going up to the desk. It's really difficult if you are exchanging currency at the airport to know what deal you're getting. And the people who work there essentially aren't telling you.

29:40Helen Crane: But we did manage to get the information out of a couple of the companies. So Stansted Airport on 18th of August, we actually had someone go there to check what the exchange rate would be. So if you went to the desk there, you would get 0.84 euros for a pound and 0.98 euros for a pound. That compares to 113 euros and 132 dollars if you bought online 24 hours in advance. So it's an absolutely huge difference. And that's the sort of key trick to this. So even if you haven't been prepared way ahead of time, you can still with sometimes with just four hours, you can book this currency online and you can still collect it at the same desk.

30:24Helen Crane: But just by booking online rather than going up to the desk, you can save an absolutely huge amount on your currency exchange.

30:29Lee Boyce: change this is so poor isn't it lee and i wonder if a little bit of an element is holiday mindset you know when you go abroad and it's a bit like oh i'll just pay a little bit extra i mean we could all take sandwiches to the airport couldn't we but we well overspend when we go there and we know it's more expensive that might be a little bit coming into play here but this is poorly it's

30:49Georgie Frost: poor and what they do is they hide behind and say well it's way more expensive to provide currency at the airport because of big overheads etc and the cost of delivering the currency to the airport but how is it then that you can order it four hours in advance and completely boost the rate to a rate that's actually way palatable and a couple of things that we found out in this investigation as um i think most of us know we're going to get poor rate at the airport it was so difficult to find the euros and dollars rate on a screen because it was buried in a little ticker at the bottom of the screen that flashed around really quickly and our reporter said it took at least five minutes for euros and dollars to be displayed so you are encouraged to go up to the council without really knowing what the rate is the rate was that poor and he was told and then he managed to haggle and get a slightly better rate so you can you can get a slightly better rate if you do do haggle and be polite the other thing i should point out here as well massive big bowl right and it says 0 commission but it's completely untrue so you have to pay £1.50 for exchanging money up to£20 there's a flat fee of£4.99 between£20 and£300 pounds so that sinks that rate even lower and i think that the lack of transparency around this is absolutely it's got worse yeah in the last few years and where we know that airport currency rates are probably poor i think what a lot of people don't realize is just how much a lack of information there is and we're actually doing a follow-up looking at what the rules and regulations are around this because i think it's absolutely poor poor form well i look forward to seeing that

32:18Lee Boyce: Yes, as you say, it is expected to be charged more, but I want to know how much more. That's the thing that gets me. Right. Every year, more than 10 million Britons holiday in France, lured by the wine, weather and laid back pace of life. But what most of us don't realise, except Lee, never go broke author, boys, probably, is that just a few steps from the boulangeries and the beaches lies one of the antiques world's best kept secrets. brocante part flea market part antiques emporium and for those in the know a gold mine so this is money you've been getting the tips from tv guru dan hatfield on how to bag yourself a bargain that could pay for your holiday lee brocante i i please don't make me speak french

33:05Georgie Frost: i think that's about across the english language brocante um i said well i never i'd never heard off before until I edited this story and found it. That's in the second edition of Never Go Broke,

33:18Lee Boyce: yeah? Never Go Broke in France.

33:20Georgie Frost: It's a Dan Hatfield and Lee Boyce tie-up this time around as we go around the continent looking for bargains to bring home and sell it for a profit. I'm not well-travelled in France, to be honest with you. I'm more of an Italy man myself, but he has been there quite a lot because his husband is the producer of Chateau DIY, that popular the Channel 4 TV series and in his blood is a kind of buying and selling mentality so he wanted to do this piece for us about how to basically bring back French bargains and sell them in Britain two of the things that he's saying here is that there's an abundance of these uh about 50 ,000 of them they can be really sort of unofficial sort of flea markets but they can also be quite permanent almost like antique malls and he said that lots of French families tend heirlooms where actually post-war here um lots of stuff was just chucked and given away and you know never to be seen again and this is embroidered linen silverware antique furniture all kinds of things like that and then they trickle down into this circuit via inheritance house clearances and estate sales um but crucially he said to me from a cultural point of view at the moment in france they're just not really into all of the vintage and old kind of items so where we see it as shabby chic they just sort of see it as tat which i thought was quite a funny line so the six items you should be looking out for in israel can't art deco mirrors they can be picked up for as little as 20 euros but you can bring them home and sell for between 100 and 300 pounds typically 1920s 1930s vintage linens and monogram textiles again very inexpensive but a good easy thing to bring home so not very large mid-century ceramics particularly between 1950s 1970s he picked up a lava glazed piece of pottery for 10 euros and had it valued at 350 pounds antique enamelware 1900s 1940s there's plenty of designer fashion and accessories between 40s and 90s that he said that you can get and louis the 15th style furniture all things really worth looking uh looking for his five golden rules for doing this is haggle with charm um he's put a french sentence here i'm not going to say i'm just going to say what the translation is can you give me a small discount go away and go find out how to say that properly he says that works wonders cast a wide net hit as many as possible these can't uh look beyond the dust cobwebs could be hiding gold bring cash they most of these places you know will just want cash and you can probably haggle more and protect your finds protect lots of bubble wrap with you and if you are going to bring this home he has another five tips um you have a 390 pounds personal allowance if you go over this you may have to pay 20 vat plus duty antics more than 100 years old they could save you money because you could prove that it's over 100 years old yeah you might have to pay you would only have to pay reduced vat of five percent of no duty um shipping big items home remember there's going to be import fees um if you're selling on you've got a thousand pound buying and selling allowance otherwise the HMRC sees you as a trader and you'll have to do self-assessment and declare your earnings and don't fear born value.

36:26Georgie Frost: Be truthful with customs because telling a white lie comes with risk of confiscation. I can't at all. Risk of having it taken away. Also, remember that some of this furniture is obviously going to be quite chunky and things like that. So you'll have to really think ahead and be sure on the bigger purchases. That's probably more for an experienced trader. but I thought it was really interesting and it transported me into back streets of France and kind of I think it would be quite a fun thing to do actually go on an adventure and try and pay for your holiday while finding items that are kind of considered shabby chic here as I say

37:06Lee Boyce: it's the next book from Lee Never Go Broke Voice available in all good uh bookstores no no no

37:13Georgie Frost: Georgie you're thinking about it all the wrong way I'm not writing another book it's too much work video series we'll do a six-part uh podcast series where you and i go around france and we're hunting for bargains let's get a commission if you're listening to this and you want to sponsor that please do get in touch absolutely thank you or italy or spain i mean obviously yeah we can do

37:32Lee Boyce: it all i'm not fussy thanks all right finally sticking with being abroad on holiday to tip or not to tip? That is the question. And the answer could be the difference between not getting served again because you haven't tipped enough to seriously offending your server. Apparently, half of holidaymakers fear making an awkward faux pas. So what do you do? Helen, Lee, have you, either of you experienced a tipping torment, it's called? I can't say I have, but Lee, you're nodding there. You have?

38:04Georgie Frost: I have. Yeah, I have both here and abroad, actually, to be honest. but let's go with this is all about abroad uh when i first went to the states well it wasn't the first time i went to the states first time i went to the states as an adult i was in new york and i was in this quite nice restaurant uh it was quite an expensive bill we just landed we were full of wine at the next table was uh will forrell from uh anchorman fame i was like oh wow this is pretty cool it wasn't that swanky like it wasn't but it was it was nice and whenever the bill came to I didn't leave a tip um I hadn't really got to spit in your face we just got there well almost because I stepped outside into this cold snowy New York backdrop it was absolutely freezing realized I'd left my coat uh in the restaurant so I went back in and they were moaning about me and saying yeah that British guy didn't tip and I was absolutely mortified and I said I'm really sorry I promise I'm a nice guy I honestly just did don't know the rules I was like what should should I leave as a tip?

39:03Georgie Frost: And I really awkwardly ended up leaving a tip. Did you? Did you leave a tip? Yeah. I find it quite confusing. You know, it was my first time adulting in the States and I didn't know the etiquette of tipping. And then soon found out, after being also chased by a taxi driver in New York for not tipping, to be fair, the driver was an absolute menace and spoke on the phone the whole journey. on his phone that I'd had enough and I didn't want to tip. And then he chased me down the road. So yeah, a bit of tipping torment in the States, but not really anywhere else.

39:38Lee Boyce: I err on the side of caution there. I think if someone is a bit of a dodgy character, give them what they want, take the money. The only time, I cannot remember where I was, but I had someone, I offered a tip and they said, no, we don't, I have a feeling it was Spain, but I could be wrong. We don't take the tips. And they just almost like shoved it out. I don't think it was Spain, but I can't remember where it was. It was somewhere.

39:58Helen Crane: so I had the opposite of you Helen yeah um my story's from New York as well so I was there earlier in the year and I tend to over tip out of worry that I won't tip enough um at one point we were walking and I went to a bakery because I wanted like a traditional New York cookie I paid for it on card I think the cookie was like four dollars and then it came up with an automatic tip you know how it does on the card machine I think this always catches people out and I ended up tipping them five dollars for them to basically hand me a biscuit I walk out of this place and my friend's like what's wrong and I'm like I've just paid someone a fiver to just put a biscuit in my hand like this this is extremely silly but it's a good point though we've spoken earlier about

40:41Lee Boyce: being ripped off at airports for currency but I tell you what I bet people over tip that must be costing a ton of money and can I just say please this is something I've noticed in Canada and America is that especially in places like Starbucks before you've even been given your drink and literally all they do is press a button they're like give a tip please can we say no can I say is that allowed to say no even in America because I am the biggest bestest tipper in America because I'm frightened they'll never serve me again but this is ridiculous I was buying a mug as well from Starbucks a mug I wasn't they weren't even doing anything they literally I got

41:21Helen Crane: it off the shelf so a friend who i have he lives on the west coast told me that if you go up to a counter and they don't serve you your food you don't need to tip so we're at a food truck and you know where they just hand you a burger and i went to put a tip in the jar and he was like no we don't tip in places like this if they're not serving you your food we don't tip so okay that's good to know american first like just saying that's what you need you need like locals to

41:47Georgie Frost: tell you actually what the practices are so this has all come off the back of a survey from apt to the trade association saying that almost half of holiday makers have so-called tipping tournament and only seven percent of us feel very confident about a country's tipping culture and always know what is expected i think most of us have more of a load of land around europe you know we have a culturally i think quite a lot of similarities in terms of tipping like Here, if I have a good service and I'm feeling jolly enough, I don't mind tipping like 10%, 15%. And I think that's fine. I think there's a rule of thumb.

42:20Georgie Frost: That's kind of fine. The big difference between the UK and the US is in the US in some states, the wages in certain states, they really fluctuate. And actually tips make up a huge part of the hourly rate. Whereas here we have a minimum wage and people are paid to do a job. And I think the argument is, you know, they're not living off tips. And we've had all this conversation and argument before. But I thought it was just very interesting that when you go away, a lot of people don't quite get what you should be doing. And it is quite confusing, and especially in the States.

42:54Lee Boyce: It is quite tough. I did a bit of research into this one. Plus, I've been around in the US, for example, as we've discussed. Yes, and a high percentage, up to 25 % in big cities. Places like Japan, seen as rude, China, some places it's frowned upon. I mean, France, service charges are already included by law, so roundups are really appreciated, though they're not required. What I thought was rather interesting, Switzerland, rounding up is accepted, but a big tip can feel odd as if you're suggesting the worker needs charity. Isn't that interesting? Anyway, that's it for this week. You can keep up to date with all the latest Breaking Money news.

43:33Lee Boyce: Just go to thisismoney.co.uk or download the app. And if you have any comments or questions for the team or anything you'd like them to look into, Lee?

43:41Georgie Frost: Yeah, you can email us at podcast at thisismoney.co.uk. You can comment on the article comment section where this will live. And you can leave comments, I think, even on Spotify and leave a review on iTunes and all that kind of jazz now. So go for it. Fill your boots.

43:58Lee Boyce: and anyone who wants to sponsor us to do that show around europe we're game for that you can just email us or find us somewhere on social media and if you like our podcast as lee just said there you can rate us wherever you found us it helps other people find us too take control of your finances with charles stanley direct invest save coach or plan using technology where it's helpful and people where it matters. Our website and app make trading cost-effective and flexible, but we're more than just an online investment service.

44:32Georgie Frost: We're here for you regardless of your financial needs or if your life takes an unexpected turn. Your finances, your way.

44:40Lee Boyce: Take control today with Charles Stanley Direct. Sign up now.

44:45Helen Crane: Investment involves risk.