Chancellor Rachel Reeves says she wasn’t responsible for a string of pre-Budget leaks and kite-flying exercises, including many potential taxes affecting landlords.
In late summer and early autumn – months before the late November Budget – there was speculation in the media, citing unnamed government department sources, about possible income tax, capital gains tax and national insurance increases hitting landlords.
This led to fevered speculation across the industry, including comments from respected trade bodies such as Propertymark and the National Residential Landlords Association.
As it turned out there was one tax rise for landlords when the Budget was eventually delivered – a 2% rise in income tax rates on rental profits from April 2027, with new ‘property’ tax bands of 22%, 42%, and 47%. This means landlords will pay 2% more tax on every pound of taxable rental profit earned after April 2027, assuming income remains within the same tax band.
But speaking to the House of Commons Treasury Select Committee, Reeves now says the leaks, briefings and speculation were “damaging” and that there will be an official investigation.
Reeves claimed there were “too many leaks” which were “inaccurate” and very damaging. She particularly commented on an apparent leak to the Financial Times on November 13, which she says suggested “that I had ditched core elements of the Budget strategy that [I] had set out just days before. This wasn’t true”.
When committee chairperson Dame Meg Hillier – a Labour MP – told Reeves that the story was attributed to officials briefing the FT, Reeves said: “It was not an off-the-record briefing – it was a leak”.
Opposition parties and many economists now suggest Reeves presented an overly-negative picture of the UK’s finances in order to justify tax rises to fund additional welfare spending.
This article is taken from Landlord Today