Tea anyone?

Brilliant letter, Chris.

I have had two of these missives and replied thus:

'Are you serious?
I am a landlord and George Osborne is targetting landlords for grossly unfair taxes which are an outrage in the civilised world. The Conservative Party can get stuffed, thank you very much.
Yours sincerely.
Dr Rosalind Beck'

AND:

'Get George Osborne to reverse his immoral and discriminatory attack on landlords' businesses and I'll donate more than 20 pounds. Other than that, you are barking up the wrong tree. The 2 million landlords being attacked by the Conservative Party will not be voting for them again. I will abstain or vote UKIP.'

This is my own response to Mr Mabbutt..

Dear Alan

Thank you for your email.

If I could ask for a moment of your time, I’d like you to use your imagination please.

Imagine there is someone that you’ve trusted your whole life, and for the sake of this exercise let’s just say it’s a male. You trust this guy implicitly to always do the right thing and you have always been there to support him when he needed it too. Let’s say that it’s 9 times that he’s needed your support in a major way since you first came across him in 1979. You were happy to give it as you trusted him.

Then without any sort of warning, the guy betrays you in a devastating way. Use your imagination as to how that may have happened, but let’s say that he’s threatened your livelihood, and your business. The betrayal is so bad that you may not be able to send your child through University, you may have to sell your home, and your retirement plans are put heavily at risk. Indeed this “ friend’s “ betrayal may force you into bankruptcy! The man shows no remorse, and indeed is smug and unrepentant over his actions. To twist the knife further he comes out with a further betrayal to really drive his point home.

Not a good situation I’m sure you’ll agree!

Now, having done all this the man asks you for help again. He wants money from you for a project he’s involved in. Would you give it Alan? After all this back-stabbing, low-life has done to you would you give him money (not loan – GIVE)? I suspect not!

Then you will understand that as a residential landlord I will never trust the CONservative Party ever again. I have said it before and I’ll say again that it’s become a party of deceit and duplicity. It is light-years apart from the party I first voted for under Margaret Thatcher. You have lost my vote forever as indeed you have lost many other landlord’s votes and those of their tenants. Mrs Thatcher would be ashamed of what the Tories have become. You should be too.

John McKay

Another excellent letter John - a very clever and creative way of getting the message across.

Good letters - well done!

That's a no vote for the Conmen - however, I'm confident that most of us will not wan't to vote for Comrade Corbyn and the loony left - so I guess it'll be a vote for the good old UKIP. I nearly did it last time - next time I definitely will!!

Good letter Chris
I have adapted yours and written:
"Dear Mr Mabbutt,
Thank you for your email. I voted Conservative in the last election as I have for every election previously (I am in my mid 50s). I was in the same college as [NAME OF TORY MP] whom I consider a friend. However, I will not be voting for the Conservative Party again because of the outrageous tax changes in the Summer 2015 Budget. I am a landlord and with my family we provide decent homes for over 50 people. For that it seems we are to be despised by the Tory party.
In his budget, George Osborne removed the ability of landlords to deduct finance costs from gross rental income, after other allowable expenses, in order to arrive at taxable profit. This will have the result that some landlords will pay tax at over 100% of their true profits. Indeed it is possible that some will have to pay tax on actual losses, a tax rate of infinity. As there is not and never in the history of the world been a number higher than infinity, this means that for some people Osborne will be the highest taxing politician in the history of the world! So much for the Tories being the party of low taxation. “We are the Party of the infinite tax rate” might be a better more truthful slogan. Perhaps a few socialists might be persuaded to vote Tory but I doubt it.
This cynical tax which was not discussed or even mentioned before the election will ruin hundreds of thousands of people’s pension provisions. Every other business in the UK is able to deduct the finance costs of running the business, including incorporated landlords operating in the same sector and carrying out the same business activity. We are told that we are unfairly competing with first time buyers. This is nonsense. To add insult to injury the Chancellor has said that larger corporates and funds “support the Government’s housing agenda”. So if I buy one or two BTL properties a year I am a menace to first time buyers but if MEGAPropCo buys 200 or 300 or perhaps 2000 or 3000 it is pleasing the Government. What utter tosh!
The statements made by Treasury minister David Gauke to justify the move are pure spin and calculated to mislead:
1. This tax will only affect the wealthiest landlords. Not true. It will not affect wealthy landlords at all. They do not have mortgages. It will affect individual landlords with mortgages only, and the higher the mortgage, the more adverse the effect will be.
2. It will only affect higher rate tax payers. Technically true but misleading as the new rules mean that hundreds of thousands of landlords (146,121 Source – National Landlords Association) of landlords will be moved from lower rate tax payers to higher rate tax payers even though their true profit would make them lower rate payers.
Even worse the Government sends out two messages:
1. To our most loyal supporters: we take you for granted and even though we have knifed you in the back, we expect you to support us.
2. To Labour when they next get into power: It is alright to give some Conservative-voting business people a damn good kicking. Fairness and natural justice don’t matter.
Please pass this message on to the Treasury and urge them to reverse this disastrous tax grab. "

Reply to the comment left by "Ian Narbeth" at "14/03/2016 - 14:09":

Excellent, Ian. The more of these they get, the better. Please can everyone else also do this? It doesn't take long and you can write any length of email - it can even be a couple of sentences. It will make a great contribution to the campaign. Post your letters here so that we can see the great work being done.

At the start of this thread we have a comment along the lines of "its technically true" that C 24 only affects higher rate tax payers. Thats incorrect and unhelpful to our cause. There has been far too much talk of tax bands in all of this.The amount of pain C 24 causes individual landlords is primarily linked very directly to the amount of borrowing one has NOT your tax band. Myself and many others are not higher rate tax payers...but have multiple properties with mortgages.All those mortgages effectively becoming earnings,strangely,..under C24......
and we should be careful NOT to perpetuate osbornes myth that only top rate tax landlords will be affected.Indeed the inverse way in which this hits highly financed small landlords..many of whom are not currently high tax rate people is in fact one of the main planks of our judicial review argument.The essential point being it taxes the small person, most likely, more than the big low geared landlords. In other words the exact opposite of what he presented to the commons when he announced it....This is further exacerbated as contrary to whats being repeatedly put out one doesnt simply get 20% of the finance costs back at the end of all this..one gets THE LESSER of three amounts ..arrived at in various ways...which in many cases for small landlords with borrowing,, will actually be ZERO> Not being nit picky here i agree with the general threads but the pubklic often speak of us as "wealthy landlords"...thinking therefore we have little to carp about...this is often not the case and as isay the tax hits hardest by treating finace costs as earnings.Ones tax band only comes into play at the end of the calculation.

I also replied it is a precised version and from a pensioner view point.

I have been a Conservative Councillor on three councils, been Chairman of the Parliamentary Association and in the last election went canvassing full time for 4 weeks for 3 MP's as well as financially donating.

I feel that I can longer support the party as it is staying from it's true values, I only wish there was a Trade Union that I could belong to that would represent our views. Instead I am putting my money into fighting the government and Clause 24.

Osbourne can chant his mantra about austerity etc but a number of my friends feel we are being attacked on all sides. We have planned our lives not to be a burden on the state by getting pensions (devastated by Brown) supporting the housing market during the recession when it would have collapsed but for the BTL investors only to be now devastated by stamp duty and Clause 24.

Years ago I would have accepted these events but when you get to the autumn of your life your options and time are limited. You cannot go out and get a job or rearrange your finances, banks don't want to know. We cannot wait for 4-5 years for the rewards of the austerity measures.

I am sorry the party that I have supported all my life has let me and people like me down. Osbourne has forced himself into a position that he cannot extract himself from. How politically can he alter stamp duty on the larger properties and BTL purchases or alter the tax relief? Labour would have a field day!

To buy a mug is adding insult to injury. Who is the biggest mug? The wind of change is blowing, one only has to look at Europe and America.

Russell Thomas

"Dear Mr Mabbutt,

Until now I have only ever voted for the Conservative party. Yet having been made a target of the revenge/scapegoating politics of George Osborne's bid to become party leader, it is with no regret at all that I declare my intention never to donate or vote for the Conservative party in its present form ever again.

I am one of the 2.1 million individual landlords that voted Conservative in good faith last May, only to be utterly stabbed in the back by the Chancellor's destructive Clause 24 tax grab.

George Osborne has exempted the wealthiest corporate rental providers from his Clause 24 tax on turnover, and exempted corporate rental providers with 15 or more properties from his stamp-duty surcharge. In short, he has weaponised the tax system to destroy the competition faced by the numerous corporate landlords donating to and represented within your party.

As can also be seen from the preferential treatment dolled out to multinational corporations, such as Google, George Osborne has sold out the Conservative Party's tax policy to the highest bidders: On the one hand the Party is attacking private citizens and small businesses, by disgracefully spinning legitimate finance costs as being tax credits and imposing quarterly tax returns. On the other it offers sweetheart tax deals to the world's largest companies, and even permits its MPs to stand before the Commons, slandering the competitors of their own private businesses.

The morally bankrupt nature of George Osborne's Chancellorship is further reinforced by the failure of his family's own company, Osborne & Little, to pay any corporation tax in the last seven years, and its aiding and abetting of Nightingale Mews avoidance of UK tax.

It Margaret Thatcher (God rest her) were aware of the corruption and moral decay rife within this majority Tory government, she would be turning in her grave!

To the Government I say this:

Restore integrity to your party by permanently dismissing George Osborne as Chancellor, while reversing the raft of anti-individual landlord and anti-small business policies that he is responsible for, and I will drink to your redemption from one of the below displayed mugs.

But if you continue as you are, betraying Conservative values and the party's core vote, while harbouring a backstabbing and tax-avoiding Chancellor of the Exchequer, myself and a GROWING ARMY of Conservative Voters will desert you in the millions, teaching you a lesson that you will never forget!

Best regards,

Gareth Wilson"

I didn't vote for the CONservatives the last time round and I won't be voting for them the next time round either.
Well done all of you who wrote to back to this corrupt party to tell them to put their vote where the sun don't shine. If I get an email from them I shall be joining the chorus!