General Election 8th June – Who on earth do landlords vote for?

Dear Mr. Barwell,

In the absence of any response from Lucy Allan (although this is the third time I have requested her opinion on S24, and I have notifications that my emails have been read) I am forwarding my email on to you.

In view of Ms. Allan’s failure to respond to something which has caused severe anxiety and damage to my health, as well as threatening my financial security, I shall not be voting for her going forward, and neither will my family and friends. I know that other local landlords feel the same, which is an issue with her majority of little over 700.

I speak to landlords on a daily basis; those losing their livelihoods, those in danger of losing their own homes. This tax on turnover is not only immoral, it is a betrayal of Conservative values.

If the Party is expecting landlords to still vote Conservative as the lesser of many evils, the feelings of betrayal have been underestimated. If a longtime supporter and party member like myself no longer feels able to vote Conservative, there is a serious problem. This country has many landlords; and those landlords have many tenants. This tax of Mr. Osborne’s is causing enormous hardship and suffering. The impact will doubtless be felt.

I cannot support any Party going forward that feels it is morally justified to impose a tax which is capable of exceeding income. The whole principle is ludicrous and terribly unjust. If the Party had any care for the hard working middle and working class people it was forcing into bankruptcy, the tax would have been imposed retroactively. We can only speak with our votes.

I would welcome your response.

Great link Ros, just spotted that my own MP has the highest BTL % of any ConMP. He has just emailed his opening call to arms to the voters in Plymouth - I think an email back to him might not go amiss! Johnny Mercer Plymouth Moor View 31% (Proportional size of PRS as %)
!!!!

Reply to the comment left by "Darlington Landlord" at "21/04/2017 - 20:43":

Hi D L

It is not a red herring.

I was not suggesting that the increases in the personal allowance and the basic rate band compensate in any way for S 24.

Barry and I are trying to correct a common misconception, published authoritatively from time to time, that an increase in interest costs will cause an increase in tax payable, whereas the reverse is true.

Each time this error is published some people are misled, and if it is not rebutted they remain convinced of it. If they repeat the error, supporters of S 24 can undermine us by claiming that landlords don’t understand the Section.

Reply to the comment left by "Appalled Landlord" at "21/04/2017 - 21:49":

Barry,

Using the spreadsheet and a couple of male pole dancers.

If you have 20 x £100,000 properties on a 70% LTV, borrowed at an interest rate of 4%.
That's an yearly interest bill of £56,000

Your tenant tax bill is now £2,200 from the 6th April, 2020, assuming you have no other income to declare.

Bang the interest rate up to 6% and it is now £7800 tenant tax on an interest bill of £84,000 assuming you have no other income to declare.

That's an extra £5,600 in tenant tax, with an interest rate rise of 2%

Thats BEFORE you make a single penny of actual profit and your personal allowance is already burned up.

Now assume your personal allowance is used up by being a male stripper and pole dancer and it's £11,500 stuffed down your underpants by screaming brides to be and their aunties admiring your budgeriga thrusting antics and oiled up pecks!

Your total tax bill now becomes £10,100.

But the dancing Chippendale on the next pole to you is unemployed, his tax bill is ZERO.

That's why Landlord pole dancers are becoming extinct, one is now a higher rate taxpayer on less than the Minimum Living Wage and the unemployed is one is financially better off, being a pole dancer.

The government intends to tax Landlords into oblivion and I don't want to be a pole dancer and my pet budgie doesn't like it either.

# Vote UKIP

Reply to the comment left by "Gary Dully" at "22/04/2017 - 01:37":

Gary

I am not Barry.

The extra tax of £2,200 would only arise if the net rental income before finance costs was also £56,000, so that the landlord currently makes zero real profit, and as you say, has no other income, so no income at all.

If interest rates went up to 6% so that the interest cost went up to £84,000, the extra tax in 2020/21 compared to last year would still be £2,200. The increase in interest would not make the tax go up. (The tax would not go down in either in this unlikely example because the relief would be curtailed - it would only be applied to deemed total income minus the personal allowance.)

You are trying to mislead people when you claim that the increase in interest would give rise to extra tax of £5,600, bringing it up to £7,800. The latter figure would only be reached if the net rental income before finance costs also increased by exactly the same amount as the interest cost. But the £5,600 would be due to the increase of £28,000 in deemed income, not the increase of £28,000 in interest cost.

What is your motivation for continuing to promulgate this misconception?

Corbyn has no chance of winning the next election. Even sensible Labour MPs deserted him and refused to serve in his shadow cabinet. They have just been caught out by the this snap election and not had time to oust him!
Agree with the earlier contributor that May may not reverse previous Osborne policy on S.24 but will be more sympathetic towards the role that most responsible landlords fulfill in the PRS.

Sorry this is a bit long, below is the email I have just sent to my MP who has a majority of, it has my rant plus part of the simplelandlordsinsurance.com/landlord-news betrayed landlords item.

Dear

I am a landlord who has worked incredibly hard in my business only now to be taxed on my turnover and not my profit with the introduction of section 24 in the summer 2015 budget. The stock response from the treasury is that it only affects 5% of landlords but this is simply not true. You will now be the cause of increased rents, landlords going out of business and tenants out on the streets.

There are two million landlords in this country and most are of the same opinion, many by default would have been conservative voters in the past and most will have families and friends affected by section 24 who also would have voted for you. Unless you lobby to get section 24 reversed your party could lose millions of votes, if you want our votes then start being the party of enterprise and achievement as you used to be.

You tried to bring in exorbitant charges for probate, and the extortionate charges for car tax on vehicles over £40,000. All you are doing is destroying your vote base.

There will obviously be a change in the manifesto promise not to raise taxes, which is the real reason for the election.

You have become a party that cannot be trusted by the very people that have always voted for you.

A campaign has been launched by the landlords union Property118 to target Conservative MPs in marginal seats, and the organisation is using strong language to express the discontent felt by landlords following a series of measures against the BTL business.

“They should not feel safe,” the spokesperson continues. “They should know that they cannot count on our votes.

“They have betrayed the landlords of this country and punished us for the crime of providing housing.”

The union is urging all landlords to write to their MPs, as well as visiting them and asking for a written pledge of how they intend to support landlords and what they will do to get Section 24 scrapped.

Please use the link below to take you to the site http://www.simplelandlordsinsurance.com/landlord-news and look for - Betrayed Landlords urged to target marginal seats.

Please also visit http://www.property118.com and look at the discussion – General Election 8th – who on earth do landlords vote for? This will give you an idea of the strength of feelings of landlords.

Unless you can give assurances that you will back landlords and fight this unjust tax then I, my family and many other landlords and their families in this and other constituencies will be voting tactically and force you and other marginal conservative MP’s out of office.

Sincerely

I havn't had time to go through everyones thoughts yet but heres my opinion:

You vote for ANY party and they will go after the PRS, its a vote winner as everyone out there thinks we are fat cats ( despite the service we provide for little return.)

Not voting or spoiling your vote is loosing sight of the fact that we should be grateful that we have one (not everyone in the world does.)

We should, at this election, think about the country and battle our corner (over section 24) later with the clear threat that if it isn't fixed this next parliament we'll switch our votes).

There is a difficult decision, therefore.

Vote for Teresa May who seems to be standing up to europe despite everyone trying to sabotage her efforts.
OR
Vote for the loony left and Corbyn which will give us extreme left and stengthening trade unions...I was mid 'o' level the last time the unions brought the country to its knees with the 3 day week.I had limited lessons in church halls when there was no power to heat the school for the other pupils. Childrens education suffered. We lost our car industry.
He also wants us to be defenseless with no deterrant. (Trident) and loosing those peoples jobs.

Vote for the SNP in Scotland so that Nicola Sturgeon can get her 2nd in a lifetime vote despite the once in a lifetime being only a few years ago. France and Spain told her they would veto the Scots joining europe, the Scots would have to take the Euro (at huge cost) and Schengen as a new entrant and have a hard border with the UK.

Vote for UKIP (who now no longer have anything to fight for, they achieved a BREXIT vote.)
Vote for any other party and weaken the UK negotiating hand with the EU.

I will be letting my MP know that I will vote Tory under sufference with the threat to switch next time if they don't start to put some of Osbornes crazy policies right.

I'm entitled to my view, just like everyone else.

Reply to the comment left by "Appalled Landlord" at "22/04/2017 - 10:05":

Dear Appalled (and Barry),

I am not so interested in the figures, what I'm more interested in, is the way I have been demonised, lied to, lied about, deceived, battered with legislation and generally picked on by this government and there is more to come.

# Vote UKIP

Reply to the comment left by "Gary Dully" at "23/04/2017 - 03:18":

Sorry Gary, but voting UKIP won't necessarily help - see twitter response to a post by one of our users earlier this week...

https://twitter.com/ukip_swindon/status/855021277584777216

P.s. I found your your response to Apalled Landlord rather rude. You can't publish spreadsheets breaking down rental figures and then simply claim you are "not so interested in the figures" once you are challenged. Just makes you look a bit silly & ranty.