Could Andy Burnham’s proposed land tax force landlords to sell?

Reply to the comment left by Debra at 28/06/2026 – 20:50
0.96% is for landlords as well,

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while landlords, overseas owners and second-home owners could face a higher rate of 0.96%.
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Many properties in London are worh about a £1m. This means the landlords will need to pay land tax of about £10k or more. This is ridiculous, as it will not be possible to pass this to the tenants.
The only way is to sell the properties. Thsi is an unfair tax on landlords. Jyust to pay mortgage interest, maintenance, compliance certifications and tax is more than sufficient costs. Not much left for the owners/landlords.
This will be a risk too far to far to contain.

Reply to the comment left by Tiger at 20:57
One of the problems we have is that prices have become too high for average folk to afford. There is a correction in certain sectors and areas at the moment and prices are already falling in London. True, many properties in London are worth more than £1 million. Many of these will have been purchased years ago perhaps for a quarter of their value now. That is a tax free gain.
Pity the people who have bought a property worth over a million recently with a 75% mortgage. They will struggle with at 0.48% or 0.96% levy every year. This in turn will lead to a drop in values which will lead to lower tax. It appears that Burnham is making it up as he goes along. Labour hog tied themselves with their pledges on VAT, NI and income tax (although landlords will have to pay an extra 2% income tax). They are how thrashing around trying to find other things to tax. This will distort the economy.
It would be better for Burnham to bite the bullet and put 2p on income tax. Then most people will contribute and the effect on the economy won’t be so damaging.

Reply to the comment left by Ian Narbeth at 16/07/2026 – 14:12
You are absolutely right that taxing assets would distort the economy and the negative effects would extend far beyond the housing market causing the economy to stagnate further, not grow. On properties in London though whether these properties of £1M purchased years ago for a quarter of their value result in a tax-free gain depends in part upon whether they have EVER been rented (because if so there’ll probably be a CGT bill) and if they’ve always been a PPR (principle private residence); also from a family perspective upon whether anybody is about to get stung for inheritance tax. That’s especially the case now that Rachel Reeves has included pensions in the inheritance tax net. Inheritance tax is very unpopular because it results in people being taxed twice on the same asset….at 40%.

For those people who have a PPR in London that has never been rented out and who also have a pension, my suspicion is that their families would be way better off if they didn’t pay Andy’s asset tax, but instead they sold their principle private residence for cash, moved to somewhere like Portugal, and drew both their state pension and their personal pension in Portugal. I believe were they to do this they would lose the benefit of the ‘triple-lock’ but they might be able to avoid capital gains tax at their marginal rate and their heirs probably wouldn’t face inheritance tax at all or might face it at 10%, not 40%.

I’m guessing that if you have a SIPP or SSAS then you can have your pension paid in Portugal or possibly transfer it to somewhere else like Cyprus en route to Portugal, and your SIPP and SSAS assets might then be lifted out of the inheritance tax net.

If you had property invested in a limited company in GB but you were resident in Portugal, I suspect that your company would be liable to Corporation tax in GB, but your dividend income would be taxed at your marginal rate in Portugal, and any inheritance tax on the shares might disappear as well, perhaps without you having to issue freezer shares or do anything complicated.

If you did head for your golf-course in the sun, as a pensioner you’d lose the benefit of the triple lock and losing the benefit of the triple-lock would help reduce the GB benefits bill. But at a time that the governor of the Bank of England has pointed out that the priority is to grow the economy, when most of the nation’s wealth is tied up in pensions and housing stock, and when (because they paid mortgages and into pensions for years) most of the wealth in the country is tied up in the hands of the relatively elderly, only an idiot would suggest that it would be a good situation to be in for pensioners to be better off taking their pensions outside GB. But I suspect that’s the situation many people are already in now after Rachel Reeves’ changes.

If Andy taxes assets he will only make the situation far, far worse, he’ll get in a mess. These days it’s not just rock stars and film stars who can go abroad to escape punitive levels of taxation.

Reply to the comment left by Tiger at 15/07/2026 – 20:57
No that’s wrong. Go to the source.

Reply to the comment left by Debra at 18/07/2026 – 14:55
I don’t know whether he’s right or not because it’s not clear to me what the source is.

But Andy Burnham just made a speech saying that he has accepted the invitation of the King to form a government and become prime minister. He’s also said that he’s going to end homelessness and empower every postcode in the land to achieve growth. He’s talked about radical changes and the biggest political changes in 40 years….40 years…mid ’80s…the Margaret Thatcher era?

As a small portfolio landlord I haven’t been empowered: the opposite has happened. When the Labour Renters Rights Act came in and ended no fault evictions it ended any powers that I had to deal with no fault evictions. The changes George Osborne introduced stopping me from offsetting finance costs against rents, and the changes the previous governments also made restricting the amount of deposit I can take and restricting any other charges that I might impose also leave me with no options other than to increase rents to decrease my risk. The Labour Renters Rights Act increases the costs and risks of renting my property out. The proposals to force all properties to move from band D to C are also inflationary.

I haven’t in theory been empowered by anybody to do anything: I’ve been left with no options other than to increase rents; in this area, because rent increases are now limited to once a year to market rent, like most landlords I now HAVE to increase rents every year to market rent, just in case I can’t do it later. Previously I wasn’t increasing rents once a year.

If somebody wanted to “empower” me as a landlord to do something about homelessness then they could make it clear that the responsibility to check for eligibility for benefits is not mine as the landlord. They could also make it clear that the responsibility to do something about anti-social behaviour is with the council and the police and if anybody wants me to do something about antisocial behaviour then they have to impose an obligation on the council and the police to provide me with the evidence of the antisocial behaviour so that I can take this to court. And they also have to make the courts work so that the evidence of non-payment, or evidence of anti-social behaviour is accepted promptly so that I don’t have to wait more than a year to get my property back. If somebody wants to empower me they could allow me to offset finance costs against rents and introduce the capital allowances to make energy efficiency improvements.

Even if he has been invited to form a government by the King Andy Burnham wasn’t elected and he doesn’t have a mandate for “radical changes”. If he wants to introduce a more “collaborative” form of government then he could fix the problems above and stop agreeing with this b******t about taxing assets, whether that is at 0.48%, 0.96% or any other percent. I have heard 1% elsewhere on assets above 1 million. Taxing assets = withdraw properties from rental market + increase rents on remaining properties.

Also, there’s a lot of talk about building more council houses. As long as somebody has the money to pay for it I’m naturally sympathetic to the idea of more social housing being built because there are some tenants who will always be too high risk to house in the private rented sector (and the Labour Renters Rights Act made even more tenants too high risk to house). But I can’t see the evidence anywhere that if you adjust the “Council House Balance Sheet” to current market value that Councils are the people who can house the most people for any given amount of investment.

Given that the priorities for the country have to be economic growth and defence I cannot see how he can afford all these new council houses and I also can’t see how he can provide the housing required unless he “collaborates” with the private rental sector and stops penalising small portfolio landlords.

So what are you going to do Andy Burnham? ARE you going to build all those council houses (how many for how much investment and where’s it coming from?) OR are you going to generate economic growth and address the deficit in defence spending?

Will be yet another boost for the black economy. Having been resident in Peru and Uruguay where many pay back handers in cash to officals to ignore regulations,here things are so far somewhat different how many fined, imprisoned for the flagrant Grenfell tower disaster?