Renters would no longer have to pay Council Tax under new plans being considered by the Labour party.
Instead a new replacement tax would be paid by landlords.
While landlords might want to pass the tax bill on to their tenants in the form of higher rent, it seems unlikely, as among the new policies proposed in Land for the Many are rent controls.
According to the report, council tax would be replaced by a new ‘progressive property tax’ which would be set nationally.
Owners of empty homes and second homes and non-UK resident home owners would pay the new tax at higher rates. Also paying proportionately higher rates would be family households with bigger gardens.
The plans are in the new document, calling on Labour to make “radical” changes if it wins the next election.
The document specially says: “Unlike Council Tax, this tax would be payable by owners, not tenants.
“This would result in significant administrative savings, lower levels of arrears and less court action.”
It also says that the new tax would “discourage the use of homes as financial assets, reduce the tax paid by the majority of households, and encourage more efficient use of the housing stock.”
As well as shaking up the property tax system, Labour is also urged to “end the buy-to-let frenzy”, make public all information about land ownership, and introduce public development corporations with the power to buy, develop and sell land in the public interest.
The Bank of England should also do more to cool the housing market.
Shadow cabinet office minister Jon Trickett is to study the recommendations in detail but has said that Labour is committing to “delivering a fundamental shift in wealth and power from the few to the many”.
Current Housing Secretary James Brokenshire called the plans a “tax bombshell”.
The full independent report, commissioned by Labour, is at:
Comments (48)
Back in 2015 I wrote this article in my blog, mainly read by a couple of blokes and their pet dogs: https://www.landlordsandletting.co.uk/Blog/2015/12/ It posited a Dystopian (or Utopian as The Geography Teacher would have it) future where landlords will be forced to undergo Mandatory Psychological Assessments (MPAs) at cost to them of £490 plus VAT and the establishment of the Bureau for the Administration of Landlord Legislation and Supervision (BALLS) with a staff of about 4000 to oversee all new Landlord Legislation. I also envisage a future where public flogging and humiliation of errant landlords becomes the norm. Members of Generation Rent, Shelter and The Labour Party will be allowed to mercilessly beat landlords in pillories, armed with wet rolled up copies of The Guardian. This may be a bit fanciful but who knows!
Labour and its supporters think its here already!
Lol, A Handmaids Tale, but for Landlords and agents. The establishment did need a shake up, but they’ve now fallen from their Ivory towers and are being trod underfoot to the march of Left…Left left left!
Never thought I’d say it, but can it be true that only Farage or Johnson can save us from High Sparrow?
ARE YOU F*****G KIDDING ME??
Seriously, the Council tax is there to be paid by the people living in the property who use the police/schools/waste removal etc! Do those idiots in Labour have NO clue about how the housing market and the PRS works? Are they seriously that deluded to think that this would in any way be a good thing for the country, the economy and Tenants?
And rent controls? The rent is already controlled by the bl00dy market you incompetent showers of excrement!
AAARRRGH!!
Now now country lass I sense a little frustration here. I get the sense you might not be voting labour? Sit down, count to one hundred with a large G&T and bar of chocolate in hand and dream of sweet things. Then calmly deal with the rest of **** this government has imposed on the property profession (I do not believe it to be an industry!!!!)
To be perfectly honest, I have no idea who to vote for! I’ve always voted Tory, but if Boris Johnson is leader I won’t be.. Who else is there? Certainly not Labour with that gob-sh!te in charge, UKIP and Brexit all seem to come across as a tad on the xenophobic side so probably not them, and are the Lib Dems still about?
At the moment I feel like that bloke in the film who inherited millions, but had to spend it all by a certain date to get billions, with his None Of The Above! I just feel like so many politicians have forgotten that they are there to serve us! We elect them to carry out our wishes for the country, not further their own ends whilst feathering their nest with our tax money! I can’t be the only one who has had the thought that maybe Guy Fawkes might not have been COMPLETELY crazy flit through their mind… Sack the lot of them and bring in some new blood!
Another nail in the coffin of the loony left Corbyn party (once labour).
The irony is that the conservatives could actually put this tool in government, unless they return to the center right, instead of following him down the anti-capitalist Utopian path that leads to nothing more than a swamp of decaying ideologies.
Somebody, grow a backbone, get a grip, and stand as a real alternative to this gibberish that has lead to a parliament full of appeasers and no leaders.
Is this some sort of horror story designed to stop me from sleeping at night? Im struggling to understand how the tax paying home owning population will respond to this – does being a tenant mean you dont use the same facilities and amenities as everyone else? Are tenants in general a different species requiring special attention ……I know most of my tenants would be embarrassed to be considered or singled out in this way. One point that is made loud and clear though is that more of the council tax arrears and court action seems to come from the rental sector…… I wonder why that is?
Will the last person to leave the PRS please turn the lights off………
You are having an fff…. laugh. The looniest policy ever devised, the poll tax pales into insignificant. Just the idea, at this moment of time will push many landlords over the edge, they are being bombarded everyday and the feedback from the coal face … we have had enough, were off. This idea if implemented with abolition of Sec 21 and rent capping is end of PRS. Now try and house your voters labour with no housing … the looney left never disappeared, tried to hide its spots and this is Corbyn and Macdonald at their best. Be worried, very worried UK.
What is so worrying isn’t the idea (it is), its the people in power who are coming up with these suggestions. As a country we should be very worried about who we now have in Westminster, most are looking like they are not fit for purpose and there is no party that demands respect from the country to govern.
We don’t need to worry. As long as that clown Corbyn is leader they’ll never get in to power.
They will
Fantastic news!! Great work Jeremy, this will help me out massively.
Hi Pat123-
I’m very interested to know how this will help you?
Well i’m a renter so it would help lower my outgoings so i can eventually save up a big enough deposit to buy.
Hi Pat123-
I see…
Not wishing to come across as churlish- I am a car driver, but I don’t expect the dealer to pay for my car insurance/Road Tax, simply because it will ”reduce my outgoings”. I would also not welcome such a suggestion, as I would be abundantly aware that this would most probably manifest itself negatively in other areas…perhaps increasing the purchase price of a vehicle/increase finance costs and possibly reducing the service quality proposition of the dealership/ manufacturing quality.
I am both a Landlord and Tenant, however I harbour no sense of entitlement in respect of being the former or the latter.
On the basis that money is not produced from ‘thin air’ (irrespective of the belief of the current crop of politicians, that all Landlords and Agents have money trees growing in the gardens of their palatial mansions, just behind the orangery), such a move (given your status as a ‘renter’) could result in your Landlord selling up as it would represent another (perhaps the last?) ‘nail in the coffin’. So instead of saving you any money, it would possibly be the case that the cost of moving (when your current Landlord sells-up) would negate any positives gained from not having to pay Council Tax…Just a thought…
Yes Pat123- it probably would help you – towards homelessness when your landlord is forced to sell up or move your home to holiday accommodation.
How very short sighted, it wouldn’t save you anything and in the long run actually end up costing you more. rents will just keep going up to cover any additional charges levied against landlords not to mention the decrease in rental properties increasing rents even further.
i see in the future the rents going up again as Landlords having to recoup another cost to their business, and thats what Labour forget, renting is a business.
#Clown
The lettings industry is moving into a more regulated industry and no one will know how this will look like in 5-10 years. To future proof your business I’d be looking to work with all size of PRS firms to sure up your instruction levels.
The way its going there will not be a private rented sector with all the lunatic ideas and legislation. They had better start building bridges for the poor evicted tenants to live under, and recycling cardboard boxes to keep them warm. The people I feel really sorry for are the people they say they are trying to help. I just hope they never help me!
“This would result in significant administrative savings, lower levels of arrears and less court action.”
Are they suggesting that tenants don’t always pay what they owe ?
Pope and Catholic springs to mind
It’s come down to offering the voters money now to pick him .. desperate stuff, we have the worst set of politicians in U.K. history and Corbyn and halfwit Abbott are the biggest threat to the U.K. economy in decades
As mad as these ideas are, firstly if there is balance with a much quicker route to return a property to the owner should the tenant stop paying the rent, i think some of these ideas would be well received.
Secondly as has been the case in recent years, Labour ideas quickly become Tory policy.
You can get your copy of “Land for the Many” online or at any good recycling centre (you may have to rummage for it)…
Readers also enjoyed other titles such as:
“15 easy recipe ideas using roadkill, for when winter sets-in”
”The buy-to-let frenzy is over! So here’s a nice bridge to sleep under”
”Our community tractor is broken, and a replacement part won’t be available until summer”
”Counting: with Diane Abbott”
”When Geography teachers go mad! : The Jeremy Corbyn story”
Will there be an initiative introduced so that the landlords tidy the house, make the bed and leave a chocolate on the pillow for every evening.
They’ve partly got that with HMOs. I’ve heard of an environmental health officer demanding a landlord shift a duvet from a communal area. According to the law apparently, the landlord should be walking behind the tenant making sure they leave nothing non-communal in a communal area, presumably also having a dustpan and brush to sweep up behind each tenant.
Current Housing Secretary James Brokenshire called the plans a “tax bombshell”. Worrying really as I am convince the conservatives are forming their policies on labour theories and shelter’s recommendations! Poor James is probably feeling he has been out manoevred.
Hopefully “poor” James won’t be there much longer. The Tory’s could try to find a Housing Minister with some common sense…but it’s going to be difficult, if not impossible.
God help us if it’s Kevin Hollinrake.
No ideas of his own and one of May’s “super puppets”
They could do with finding someone who has been in the industry for a start!
“Any reform that makes residential land and property less attractive as financial assets could prompt investor flight, which would exert downward pressure on prices. Although many aspiring homeowners would welcome this, the risks associated with falling prices must be avoided…”
SO WHAT IS THE POINT OF THIS REPORT…?
HOT AIR to attract votes for the naive young voters.
Is it the 1st April?
Madness
Crazy. The report has several contradictions throughout and idealist unworkable “solutions”
It demonstrates how out of touch the Labour Party are and how misguided their proposed policy is.
nonsensical rubbish
But Corbyns virgin voters will believe in utopia and think they can get something for nothing.
Usual left wing vitriol attacking the “rich”
Reading the report in depth it’s ALL back to front and doesn’t make any sense.
ALL back to front and doesn’t make any sense. – true, but it fits the agenda so it absolutely does make sense. To them.
Socialism DOESN’T work.
Look a Venezuela. Their economy has crashed and the poor are worse off.
Corbyn and his mates need to realise that his brand of communism died in the 1970’s.
Renters have much better standards thanks to Thatcher and Major and all they did for the private rental sector.
I think if they ever got in Corbyn and Mac Donald would be assassinated.
They would completely destroy the UK. The Tories are also going down this path.
Yes the Tories are so desperate for votes they are attempting to copy all of Labour’s outdated ideas of yesteryear to try and appeal to young voters. It is both pathetic and alarming how clueless they have become. Sooner May goes and someone with some new ideas and commonsense takes over the better..
This is actually quite sensible, collecting Council Tax from tenants who move every 6 or 12 months is extremely inefficient and leads to arrears and additional cost to collect the debt. Add to that, the fact that void periods mean less council tax is paid and the end result is that those of us who do pay – pay more.
As the proposal also appears to include the abolishing of SDLT (with some exceptions for non doms) – it should be cautiously welcomed.
If you read the .pdf in the link, there are far more scary things in the 75 odd pages !
This is exactly why they should never be allowed in power again!
They’ll never get a chance to implement it so no news story here.
It won’t be long before we have to make tenants a nice cup of hot chocolate every evening and tuck them into bed. The poor, poor hard done by little things.
Any council tax you would just Incorporate within the final rent rent.
Labour are finished anyway!
This is just getting silly now.
How about we stock their fridges as well?
I don’t know about silly but lunatics and asylums springs to mind.
I’m old enough to remember Monty Python and whenever one of their sketches became absolutely ridiculous, Graham Chapman, dressed as an army colonel would stride into the sketch and say, ‘Right now! Stop this! It’s just getting too silly’ And they’d just stop the sketch. Are you sure this idea isn’t a spoof by some comedians somewhere?