9:34 AM, 14th March 2016, About 9 years ago 15
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Has anyone else received an invitation from Conservative Campaign Headquarters, asking for your support?
I received an email and felt compelled to respond (see below).
If you are receiving similar emails from the Conservative Party, you might like to send a similar response so that they start to get the message.
Dear Mr. Mabbutt,
I voted for the Conservative Party in the last election. However, I will never vote for the Conservative Party ever again. Neither will my parents, my brother, many of my friends and hundreds of thousands of hard working landlords. Landlords, like myself, who have taken responsibility to provide financial security for themselves and their families, and / or pensions so that they did not have to rely on others in their twilight years – including the State.
You will know that in his Summer 2015 budget, George Osborne chose to introduce a measure stolen directly from the Green Party manifesto, which was a piece of work compiled by a 26 year old Geography graduate – not even a Phd. The measure, which removes the ability to deduct finance costs from gross rental income, after other allowable expenses, in order to arrive at a taxable profit, will destroy hundreds of thousands peoples pension provisions and livelihoods. For me it will mean that I will start to lose my personal tax allowance, pay more tax on my property income than I actually earn and take a 28% drop in my take home pay.
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.
The measure will, of course, have been at the advanced planning stages prior to the General Election. However, no mention was made of the plans in the Conservative Party manifesto. Why? Well, the answer to that question is obvious to everyone – in a cynical and calculated move, the Conservative Party did not wish to divert the large number of landlord votes it knew it would lose if those plans were announced prior to the election.
The statements made by David Gauke to justify the move are, at best, misleading and at worst untruthful. Let me give you two examples:
1. It will only affect the wealthiest landlords. The opposite is true – it will not affect wealthy landlords at all. Wealthy landlords do not have mortgages. It will affect landlords with mortgages only, and the higher the mortgage, the more affect it will have. I guess it depends on your definition of wealth. If your definition of wealth is debt, then why is George Osborne so obsessed with reducing the deficit?
2. It will only affect higher rate tax payers. That statement is technically true. However, it fails to explain that hundreds of thousands (146,121 Source – National Landlords Association) of landlords will be moved from lower rate tax payers to higher rate tax payers.
So, rather than supporting your efforts I, and most of the 2 million landlords in the UK, will be actively working towards ensuring that the Conservative Party is not re-elected and that George Osborne does not become the next leader of the Conservative Party.
In closing, I would like to ask you to support our campaign instead – to fight the “Alice in Wonderland” Buy to Let Tax Grab – https://www.crowdjustice.co.uk/case/clause24/
Regards, Chris Cooper.
On 12 Mar 2016, at 12:01, Alan Mabbutt, Conservative Director of Organisation wrote:
Chris –
I’m asking for your help.
Unlike Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party we can’t rely on the Trade Unions to support our campaigns.
We can win across the country on 5th May but we need the support of people like you, Chris.
So please donate £20 today and get your Campaign 2016 Mug and your donation will directly support our campaign efforts.
Best wishes,
Alan
Alan Mabbutt
Conservative Director of Organisation
PS: Want the chance to win a Campaign 2016 mug signed by David Cameron? Donate £50 or more and we’ll enter your name into a draw.
From:The Conservative Party
Sent 10th March 2016
Subject:Tea, Chris?
Dear Chris,
Get your exclusive Campaign 2016 mug – donate £20 or more today and receive one as thanks.
In less than two months’ time, millions of people across the UK will head to the polls to help shape the direction of their community and country.
Conservative councils in England have shown that they can make the difficult decisions necessary to deliver value for money. Police and Crime Commissioners in England and Wales have demonstrated the key role they play in communities, by setting local policing priorities and overseeing budgets of hundreds of millions of pounds.
In Wales, our Assembly candidates are fighting to overturn 17 years of disastrous Labour control of the NHS. And in Scotland, Ruth Davidson is leading the charge to hold the SNP to account and say NO to a second referendum.
With these vital elections just around the corner, we’re knocking on doors, making phone calls and delivering leaflets up and down the country with our message: keeping council tax down, keeping our communities safer and delivering better public services.
It’s thirsty work, Chris. Donate £20 or more today and your post-campaigning cup of tea (or coffee) can come from one of these limited-edition mugs:
On Thursday 5 May, Britain has a choice: a strong team of local Conservatives who will continue to deliver security, stability and opportunity for our communities or the insecurity, instability and incompetence of Labour, who pose a real threat to our national and economic security.
Help ensure our communities continue to move forward with the Conservatives and not backwards under Labour. Donate £20 or more today and we’ll send one of these great mugs to say thanks.
Thanks for your support,
Conservative Campaign Headquarters
Promoted by Alan Mabbutt on behalf of the Conservative Party, both at 4 Matthew Parker Street, London, SW1H 9HQ
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PLC and stamp duty
Appalled Landlord
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Sign Up20:14 PM, 14th March 2016, About 9 years ago
Reply to the comment left by "Russell Thomas" at "14/03/2016 - 19:24":
Hi Russell
Osborne could make Clause/Section 24 applicable to future purchases only, which would be the normal procedure.
Russell Thomas
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Sign Up20:20 PM, 14th March 2016, About 9 years ago
Reply to the comment left by "Russell Thomas" at "14/03/2016 - 19:24":
Sorry I meant Local Parliamentary Association!! If it was the National one I would be creating hell
Appalled Landlord
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Sign Up20:33 PM, 14th March 2016, About 9 years ago
Reply to the comment left by "Ros ." at "14/03/2016 - 16:06":
Hi Ros
As he addressed me by my first name, I have reciprocated.
“Alan
On 29 April last, a week before the general election, David Cameron made a televised pledge that his party, if elected, would not increase income tax in this parliament - full stop.
Ten weeks later George Osborne announced - in an opaque way - that the income tax of individual landlords would be increased from 2017.
He adopted a Socialist policy that was in the manifesto of only one Party, the naïve Greens, based on propaganda written by someone who had just graduated in – Geography! Osborne’s announcement meant that he would start to disallow mortgage interest from 2017 for landlords who bought properties in their own name.
So individual landlords will pay tax on the interest they gave to the lender as if it was somehow still in their bank accounts as well. It will amount to a levy on interest. Some landlords will have to pay more in tax than their real profit. The difference will have to be made up from other taxed income, or savings. Those without either will be made bankrupt by HMRC. The levy will be demanded even when a pre-tax loss has been made, making the effective rate infinite.
It will be the only business in the country that will not be able to deduct interest from income to arrive at the taxable profit.
Landlords’ total income will be artificially inflated by the finance costs. Some landlords will be moved from the basic rate into the higher rate band. Some will lose the personal allowance. Some will be moved into the additional rate band.
To avoid having their assets confiscated by the Conservative government, landlords will increase rents, where possible. Thus, the levy will be passed onto the consumers just like any other new cost. This increase in rent won’t make landlords any better off – they will just collect the levy to pass on to the Conservative government.
Tenants who can’t afford the rent increases will be evicted. This is mostly likely to apply to those who are on housing benefit, which is capped. Other tenants will have to leave when landlords sell their homes. The number of homeless people will rise, as will the cost of housing them in “temporary” accommodation, wherever it can be found for them.
In addition to the extra financial cost there will be incalculable human cost. However, the impact statement that the Treasury issued last July in support of this change in tax rules does not even mention tenants, let alone assess what the effect will be on them.
Landlords who have had the same tenants for several years without changing the rent have already started to increase it. Others have started to issue eviction notices. This process will accelerate as the many landlords, who are still oblivious of what George Osborne has in store for them, become aware of it.
The result will be inflation of rents and inflation of the welfare bill. It will be another brilliant success story for George Osborne!
A similar measure was introduced in Ireland in 1998, and the average rent went up by almost half (from 600 euros to almost 900) over the following 3 years, at which point it was repealed. The Irish government has just tried it again in a small way by disallowing 25%. It has made the homeless situation so bad that the Irish government is going to exempt landlords who will take benefit recipients again.
Part of the reason for the excessive property prices in London is that foreigners have been encouraged to buy there. Some of them leave their properties empty, which causes an unrecorded reduction in the supply of dwellings. Yet in Singapore last July, David Cameron said on TV that he would welcome more foreigners buying property in the UK. He was advertising for foreigners to make the situation worse!
Landlords are not the cause of the housing crisis, but they are being made the scapegoats. Over the last 20 years or more, BTL landlords have financed new-builds, refurbished dilapidated stock and converted over-large properties into space-efficient shared houses. They have increased the stock of dwellings. If they had not done so, the crisis would be even worse than it is now.
George Osborne and the Treasury have given various reasons for the introduction of this tax change, but not one of them stands up to scrutiny. They employ sophistry, or blithely state the opposite of the truth.
There are two real reasons for its introduction. The first is to collect more tax - but this will come from tenants, via landlords. The second reason is that George Osborne wants institutions to build blocks of flats and keep them to rent out. Forcing rents up generally, and forcing some landlords out of business, will both make the sector more attractive to these institutions – many of which are donors to the Conservative party.
The question is to what extent they will be scared off by the Housing Policy Paper that Jeremy Corbyn wrote in August 2015 before he was elected leader of the Labour party. He would cancel the right to buy social housing, but introduce it for tenants of large scale private landlords.
I am at your entire disposal if you would like any further information on this topic. A wealth of it can be found at http://www.property118.com/budget-2015-landlords-reactions
Neither Cameron nor Osborne has ever done a real job. They rose from obscurity without trace. They have shown they cannot be trusted.
I am a landlord of mortgaged property. I will not give the Conservative party a penny-piece as long as the above duo is in charge of it.
Regards”
Dr Rosalind Beck
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Sign Up21:06 PM, 14th March 2016, About 9 years ago
Brilliant letter AL, covering the whole thing comprehensively yet concisely.
Paul Hickson
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Sign Up10:16 AM, 19th March 2016, About 9 years ago
Here is my response to Mr. Mabbutt's email ......
Dear Mr. Mabbutt,
Thank you for your email however - no thanks!
I should like to point out that my family no longer support the Conservative Government due to the very poor and ill-judged fiscal measures being taken by George Osborne without, in our opinion, any proper consultation. One gets the impression that he makes it up as he goes along and he is certainly antagonising a great many voters not just because some of his measures are unpopular but because they are simply so obviously wrong!
Osborne’s clause 24 (concerning buy to let properties) is one case in point. It effectively removes the ability to deduct finance costs from gross rental income, after other allowable expenses, in order to arrive at a taxable profit and this will adversely affect thousands of people who have based their pension provision on buy to let property investments as I have done. All businesses should be entitled to deduct the finance costs of running a business. I fail to see why 'private landlords' should be prevented whilst 'incorporated landlords' may continue to do so. It is unfair and a totally unexpected attack by a government I trusted and actually voted into power. What a fool I look now!
Many landlords will have no option but to sell up or increase their rents as this law could result in bankruptcy (especially if interest rates go up as the effect is then magnified. Has anyone in government bothered to do the mathematics?). In either case tenants will be adversely affected too as this will mean they are effectively paying this extra tax within an increased rent or, in the worst instance, they will lose their rented home if it has to be sold by the landlord who can longer afford to keep it. There are likely to be a catalog of unforeseen consequences as a result of this poorly judged action (unforeseen by George certainly!!). I would expect the Chancellor of the Exchequer to have been far more astute even if he has no honour or sense of fair play.
So I am afraid there is absolutely no chance that I will be donating £20 for your mug … whilst the Chancellor tries to make a mug out of me!
Kindest regards,
Paul Hickson
PS. Should Mr. Osborne take the honourable route and resign, please let me know and I may reconsider my position.