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Comment by aurizon | Hacker News Reader

Often people are paid a 'London Allowance', to maintain their residence equitably. Their engineer/other salary being the same as places further away. I assume there is a cost of residency allowance for other UK cities that have a premium. If you move away, that residency allowance is adjusted to where you work from. Thus the technical salary is ~~flat. After all this allowance is a pass through to the landlords. Those whose parents onw London center digs do very well. I am not sure how property taxes are levied in the UK, but one would anticipare the Lords would have long since levelled that via head taxes that are levelled in some manner? Any UK people care to weigh in here?

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Public sector jobs often have an explicit "London weighting" (or HCAS), it's set at 20% of salary up to a cap of about £7k, and decreases the further you get from central London. Some private sector firms do similar apparently, but I've never heard of it in the tech sector.

Other cities don't usually get similar supplements, even places like Cambridge where housing costs can be really high.

Property taxes are called "Council tax" here, they're probably the most regressive tax in England (the rest of the UK have slightly different rules). The amount of tax depends upon both the local area and the value of the property in 1991. Everyone who's house was work more than £320k in 1991 pays the same rate. This means in Kensington, London someone in a swanky 250 sq.m. £8million house pays £2473 per year...as does someone in a £million apartment on the next street. The person a few streets over in a grotty 20sq.m £300k studio will be paying £962 per year.

Thanks for the info. The rich are well protected indeed...

"Often people are paid a 'London Allowance', to maintain their residence equitably.

Their engineer/other salary being the same as places further away. I assume there is a cost of residency allowance for other UK cities that have a premium.

If you move away, that residency allowance is adjusted to where you work from. Thus the technical salary is ~~flat.

After all this allowance is a pass through to the landlords. Those whose parents onw London center digs do very well.

I am not sure how property taxes are levied in the UK, but one would anticipare the Lords would have long since levelled that via head taxes that are levelled in some manner?

Any UK people care to weigh in here? "

Reformatting for readability, sorry aurizon my brain was struggling.

NP, I am known for my dense code...

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