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

Reply to the comment left by "Appalled Landlord" at "20/05/2017 - 21:52":

Brilliant summary as usual AL. Do you want to send this info to our pal Jonathan or shall I?

Reply to the comment left by "Barry Fitzpatrick" at "20/05/2017 - 17:18":

Hi Barry

I have seen a copy of the Treasury’s reply to David Kingman’s FOI request. It gave the figure of £5.973 bn for finance costs for individual landlords in 2010/11 and explained that the above figure includes finance costs for furnished holiday lettings in the UK and in the EEA.

I have also seen the figure in the Green Party’s 2015 Manifesto for the first time, on page 44. https://www.greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/manifesto/Green_Party_2015_General_Election_Manifesto_Searchable.pdf

On page 82 under “Our proposed increases in revenues are as follows” it states “Abolition of mortgage interest relief for landlords £5.8bn [per full year]”. Assuming they were referring only to individual landlords, and not to rental companies, it looks like they over-estimated the tax yield - unless the finance costs more than doubled between 2010/11and 2015. Disallowing £6bn would not raise 97% of that figure in extra tax. If every landlord paid tax at 45%, which they don’t, it would only raise £2.7bn.

So that leaves us with a cliff-hanger until you get a reply from Bartley. Is his £6bn an update of David Kingman’s figure, based on no deductions of any cost for any individual landlord?

Or has he just rounded off the figure from their 2015 manifesto, based on only disallowing finance costs? If so does this include corporate rentals, or have finance costs more than doubled since 2010/11, or is it just plain wrong?

Reply to the comment left by "Dr Rosalind Beck" at "20/05/2017 - 22:36":

Thanks Ros

I think we should give him a chance to explain where his figure came from first. It might not be from Kingman.

Let's not get sucked into the details of costs etc which are all an irrelevant ploy. This is wrong from any angle and an assault on a singled out section of society. If this was happening to anyone else, the screams of racism and bigotry would be being trumpeted by the liberal left in indignation and the perpetrators being hounded by the press et al

There are no details worth debating. It's wrong full stop!

Reply to the comment left by "J Moodie" at "21/05/2017 - 04:35":

I disagree Jamie.
It is very easy for the anti-landlord brigade to argue on emotive prejudices but when hard facts come into it, their argument crumbles.
Have a listen again at this;

http://www.lbc.co.uk/politics/parties/green/natalie-bennett/when-natalie-bennett-got-brain-fade-live-on-lbc-10/

Reply to the comment left by "J Moodie" at "21/05/2017 - 04:35":

"If this was happening to anyone else, the screams of racism and bigotry would be being trumpeted by the liberal left in indignation and the perpetrators being hounded by the press et al"

I utterly agree with your sentiment. The discrimination against an identifiable group of people (individual landlords) is something I recognised a long time ago. It stinks. It also smacks of villifiying one's equals and trying to remove their potential to earn a living. Still, as the anti-landlord brigade are picking on anything negative about LLs your largely incorrect comment (taken as it is written - I'll break this down if asked) gives them ammunition.

Separately, I'm a strong right winger now, but using one group of people to moan about treatment of another group of people is downright distasteful to me even though it is relatively common place.

Reply to the comment left by "J Moodie" at "21/05/2017 - 04:35":

Hi J M

These are not costs, they are lies.

In Kingman’s case the £5bn is the result of the absurd premise that, instead of paying tax on their profits like every other enterprise in the country, landlords should pay tax on their rent receipts, and pay finance costs and all other business costs out of the remainder, if they can.

Because this would be ruinous, no government has introduced it. Because it has not been introduced, Kingman describes its absence as a public subsidy, in propaganda designed to mislead. It is a nonsensical lie.

Kingman’s nonsense was adopted by Jeremy Corbyn in the paper on Housing Policy that he published in August 2015 during his first leadership contest:
https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/jeremyforlabour/pages/106/attachments/original/1438782182/housing.pdf?1438782182

Page 4:“By a range of measures, including building more housing overall, restricting subsidies to buy to let landlords, and regulating rental value, we can bring down house prices and make home ownership an affordable option for more people.”

Page 5: “We could re-direct some of the £14 billion of tax reliefs received by private landlords to help struggling private tenants; this would of course include building new council homes and helping private tenants to overcome the deposit problem.”

In the case of the Green Party, whatever the £6bn is based on, it is another lie because landlords do not receive subsidies.

These people are following the propaganda principle: Make the lie big, keep repeating it, and people will believe it. They will believe a big lie more readily than a small one.

So it is very important that the lies be exposed and rebutted. If we do not do so, no-one else will.

Reply to the comment left by "Monty Bodkin" at "21/05/2017 - 08:16":

Hi Monty

Bartley’s “subsidy” could be what Brainfade Bennett alluded to in that clip - housing benefit payments to the PRS. At the time she was quoted as saying "Tax relief is often offered because you're doing a public good, but at the moment landlords are collecting large amounts of funds from the public purse from housing benefit and we're not seeing the benefit of that," she told the Independent.”
https://www.accountancyage.com/aa/feature/2405508/election-2015-the-parties-tax-and-spend-cases

In 2015 this was described as a subsidy by Generation Rent, who put the figure at £9.3bn:
“Subsidies
First, private sector landlords receive £9.3bn in housing benefit per year (DWP 2013/14).”

They proposed an extra tax of 22% on rent receipts to raise £9.31bn, to return the housing benefit. Simple. They must be.
http://www.generationrent.org/making_money_like_a_landlord
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2015/feb/09/private-landlords-gain-26-7-billion-uk-taxpayer-generation-rent

As someone pointed out at the time under the GR article, housing benefit is not a subsidy to landlords. It is the tenants who are being subsidised for not being able to command an income high enough to support their households. The purpose of the subsidy to tenants is to prevent people becoming homeless and having to be housed by councils at greater cost than the private sector rents.

GR’s proposal was ignored but they had helped foster the myth about the “subsidy”. Kingman recommended that our finance costs be disallowed. The Green Party included this in its 2015 manifesto. Its policy was adopted by the inept and mathematically challenged Chancellor, who would not even venture an opinion when a seven year old child asked him what 7 times 8 was, Omnishambles Osborne.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zOGMCRDOEB8

This has resulted in some private landlords evicting tenants on benefits and refusing to accept any more, so David Kingman, Generation Rent, the Green Party and the Conservative Party can all take pride in what they have done - for homelessness.

Reply to the comment left by "Barry Fitzpatrick" at "20/05/2017 - 20:45":

Sent this reply to Andrew Knee, LMS:

Andrew,

Best regards

Reply to the comment left by "Jay James" at "21/05/2017 - 13:23":

Yes she is a liar a troublemaker and incongruous witch without a clue In the world how to deal with any social problem, but she gets air time and we don't. I suppose countering her lies is one way but we have to do that for every leftie nut looking to vilify us as easy low fruit distractions. We need a loud voice of our own with gravitas that they are then forced to disprove, which they won't be able to. I'm not sure what that looks like yet but it isn't any of the bodies representing landlords. Needs to be someone already in the mix