Latest figures released by HM Revenue & Customs show yet another large increase in the amount of taxation received by the Treasury from landlords and other property owners.
Stamp duty continues to soar, reaching £7 billion between April and July 2022 – an increase of £1.3 billion on the same period in the previous year.
Meanwhile figures released over the weekend show HMRC raked in another £2.4 billion in inheritance tax receipts in the three months to July 2022. This is likely to have come from property value mainly, although not exclusively. It’s some £300m more than in the same period last year.
One in every 25 estates pay inheritance tax, but the freeze on inheritance tax thresholds, paired with inflation and decades of house price increases guarantee rising receipts. An estimate from business consultancy Wealth Club suggests the average bill could increase to just over £266,000 in the current tax year - a 27 per cent rise from the £209,000 average paid just three years ago.
The main threshold is the nil-rate band, enabling up to £325,000 of an estate to be passed on without having to pay any IHT. This has been unchanged since April 2009.
Unrelated to property but also coming in to the Treasury over the past quarter were income tax and National Insurance receipts up £17.6 billion between April and July 2022, thanks to 874,000 more employees, the July self-assessment deadline and the increase in National Insurance.
Helen Morrissey, an analyst at business consultancy Hargreaves Lansdown, says: “High employment, a strong housing market and burgeoning holiday demand means HMRC’s tax take keeps on rising. The burgeoning cost-of-living crisis has not dampened our demand for property with stamp duty receipts continuing to soar. This is reflective of lower tax rates being in play last year as the stamp duty holiday was in force.”
And Alex Davies, chief executive of Wealth Club, adds: “Inheritance tax reform is a potential vote winner for Rishi Sunak and Liz Truss among Conservative party members, but it’s hard to imagine it will be top of their agenda in any emergency Budget once they step into power.
“Cutting inheritance tax will do nothing to ease the cost of living crisis engulfing the country, and it’s a real cash cow for the Treasury too. IHT generates around £800m in tax revenue each month, a very meaningful sum at a time when 29m households are being given £400 each to offset energy bills.
“The increase in the monthly IHT take is being driven by soaring house prices and years of frozen allowances. With rampant inflation, the effect of freezing allowances will only increase in the years ahead unless the new Prime Minister chooses to intervene. While just four per cent of estates pay inheritance tax at the moment, without some review of the rules, more and more families are going to find themselves hit by death duties they might not have expected.”
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And the conservatives claim to be the low tax party ? lol
The CGT take has increased… because a lot of us are SELLING!! This moronic government are overseeing a catastrophic reduction in the number of properties to let, and they seem indifferent.
I’ve just parted with 30k on one to the thieving state. I wouldn’t mind so much but every penny will be waisted. And that’s one less home for a family in Cornwall where property to let is so desperately needed .
We should all be writing to our local MP saying there you go I’ve sold a property, one less problem for me one more for you
I've recently paid them over a million pounds! And I wonder how that has been spent.
Not to mention the vast amounts of VAT we pay on just about everything and the Child Benefit the government is saving by artificially pushing younger landlords into the higher rate tax band with Section 24.
Well when the govenment has finally destroyed the PRS and
Nobody will be able to rent a property, unless it's from a big corporate organisation with sky high rents, it's the poor that will be moaning then. Where will these Marxist Landlord haters be then? They will disappear like scotch mist no doubt.
So, let's take their logic to the next level and apply it to all who rent from others shall we?
I sometimes rent a car, so by their logic, that is greedy and bad, and I should be helped by the govenment to buy a car, and not have to rent one. How inconvenient! I dont want all that expense of buying a car, I just want it for a few days though! How stupid is that?
What about going on holiday, renting a holiday flat for two weeks? Cant do that, that's greedy, so now I have to buy a holiday flat now as well, and get govenment help for that too, no doubt!
Either that or buy a tent, perhaps?
Well you can apply this Marxists logic to all of life and come up with having to buy a Taxi, a Jet plane, a ship or ferry, and
all the things that are currently on hire for your convenience.
How stupid is that?
When I was renting, I trained myself up to become a contractor. The contacts were all over the UK, and the world. If I couldn't rent a property for the length of the contract, I would not have been able to move at short notice to WHERE THE WORK WAS!
I didnt want to buy, I wanted the convenience of renting, on a temporary basis. How does getting rid of landlords help us? All it dies is reduce the stock available to rent, and push rents sky high, and make it near impossible to move, due to the lack of available properties.
When I was unemployed, I was able to move to secure a new job, within weeks. It made me very mobile and attractive to prospective employers. It was a brilliant time for me, and got me out of poverty that I was doomed to be stuck in, had I not been able to move around the country quickly. I know this to be true, because many of my friends didnt do as I did and stayed in their town with no work, and they are still, after 40 years, stuck in their rutt, and still claiming benefits and still have nothing to show for it, except poor health, and loneliness.
A free and open rental market is the only way to go. It will lower rents and make more affordable homes available for those who can't or wont buy. The govenment should be encouraging private landlords with tax breaks etc. not destroying the PRS through unfair taxes and exorbitant fees and fines, for minor errors in the courts.
The govenment should be building much more affordable housing, and encourage landlords to rent out their properties on an open and free market basis.
It's Marxist views and ideas that are the politics of envy. Calling landlords lazy is just about the most stupid a thing to say, or think, obviously having total ignorance of the PRS and how it works and the effort, costs, risks and trouble involved in renting out a property, to those who cant afford to buy their own and, where many renters are happy to trash your home and leave you with £10k's of repair Bill's, as a going away present, and not give a fig about it.
Very well said.
Everything you've said should be blindingly obvious but clearly activists and politicians just want to keep as many people as possible trapped in poverty instead of protecting a system that for decades has allowed ambition to flourish.
Employers need a mobile workforce. A mobile workforce needs access to readily available rental housing (at least until they are settled in an area).
Well that did go on a bit Frank, but you are spot on correct on all points
Landlords rushing to get out while prices are high in case it goes belly up, so Government making a killing with huge capital gains on inflation, so the money you are left with after c/gains tax can’t buy the same property back so where’s the gain, are you richer if you can’t buy what you had, just your money has less value, the purchaser of your property has to SDLT to pay, its a double killing for Government well worth getting rid of you.
Generation Rent awareness week, working renter’s should be aware that they are paying rent with tax paid money where as Benefit claimants incl’ huge numbers of single parents have their Rent paid probably £1200. pm, more in London plus their living & other monies all paid nett, nett. How does a working tax payer whether single or a family man compete with that ?.
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