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

Rates, in the old days, was paid by the property owner not the tenant. When Margaret Thatcher brought in the Community Charge/Poll Tax, it was paid by individuals. When John Major brought in Council Tax, it was payable by the occupant. It seems that Labour have only just caught on to this sleight of hand.

Another thought: how will the properties be valued? The house next door to me has just been sold for 20% less than the original asking price.

Reply to the comment left by Gromit at 24/06/2026 – 09:41
It would take years to implement. With some luck they will be booted out and (maybe?) some more sensible crowd come along. In the mildest form their plans would be tantamount to a form of wealth distribution between the regions

Reply to the comment left by Ian Narbeth at 24/06/2026 – 11:28
Everything always seems so simple to the far left, doesn’t it?

So the idea of this ongoing tax is based on ‘property value’ but nobody really knows what the value of a property is until it’s sold. Until then it’s just somebody’s opinion of the value of a property. And if somebody comes out with a subjective idea of what a property’s value is in order to raise taxes to fund the ballooning benefits bill, rather than face up to the more difficult task of reducing it, this then distorts the market and causes collateral damage.

These kinds of speculative ideas from people with little grasp of economics or business always cause collateral damage. The Renters Rights Act is pushing up rents now and will continue to push up rents. A ‘land tax’ would also be passed on as higher rents, just as stopping small portfolio landlords from offsetting finance costs against rents puts up rents now. This policy would be inflationary: It would increase rents, increase pressure on wages and increase inflation generally.

In principle, for someone who doesn’t understand business, land, economics, defence or much else ‘land tax’ seems like a good idea. But if you have 100 acres of land, 20% of which is unproductive because it’s marshland, or is chopped up into small fields with permanent grazing by hedgerows and coppices and you are taxed on it all at the same rate then the only thing you can do is drain the marshland, grub out the hedgerows, plough up the permanent pastures and heathland and cut down the coppices. If you can do it, ploughing up the extensive grazing which would be regarded as ‘low value agricultural land’ and putting high-density housing on it will give you a better return than ploughing it up and trying to grow wheat. But improving soil health and biodiversity would certainly make more difference to reducing climate impact than moving band D properties to band C, because this change will make no significant difference at all and punitive land taxes cause environmental damage. This is essentially what happened under the Common Agricultural Policy when the UK was part of the EU. People who are old enough to remember EC butter mountains and milk lakes will remember this issue. The EU and France are still paying for excess agricultural production. When we were in the EU the CAP was close to half of the EU budget with France being the principle beneficiary. In theory the CAP was supposed to move to being more environmentally responsive, but in practice the EU is turning wine into industrial alcohol:

https://www.irishtimes.com/world/europe/2026/04/03/france-faces-wine-hangover-as-falling-sales-force-emergency-measures/

We don’t pay for this destruction any more because we left the EU and its Common Agricultural Policy: This left us free to plant trees, maintain hedgerows and restore wetlands. But Andy Burnham is reported as saying recently that he’d like to rejoin the EU:

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2025/09/andy-burnham-i-want-to-rejoin-the-eu

If you want to avoid the EU and Brexit debate and look for the REAL reason behind Andy Burnham’s reported statement about land tax then the area to focus on is the fact that he depends upon labour MPs to get elected (rather than being elected by the electorate) and Pat McFadden recently reported that all back bench labour MPs care about is who they can tax to pay for increasing benefits.

A blanket land tax would not only be environmentally damaging, it would also increase rents. Much of the electorate doesn’t yet understand that it is GOVERNMENT that is increasing rent: Landlords are just passing the increasing costs on, including the additional tax levied on them. If Andy Burnham wants to look at decreasing costs somewhere then his first step should be to ditch Ed Miliband completely (in a very deep ditch that he can’t crawl out of) and look instead at what the Norwegians have done with their north sea oil revenues. Norway is significantly increasing its spending on defence and is able to do so partly because it took a long term view of investing north sea oil revenues, rather than just spending them on benefits.

A land tax would not be based on land value, not property value.

Reply to the comment left by Ian Cognito at 24/06/2026 – 13:13
As I understand Andy Burnham’s proposal it is based on property value:

https://www.independent.co.uk/bulletin/news/andy-burnham-property-tax-stamp-duty-b3001061.html

Apparently, this has triggered fears of escalating council tax: Understandably, because when you look at your living costs and your disposable income, your (escalating) tax bill is a big chunk of that. The tax take is as high now as it was at the end of World War II, and we haven’t even had another world war (yet).

https://www.finance-monthly.com/andy-burnham-council-tax-property-tax-shock/

People are right to be afraid of rising taxes because rising taxes take a big chunk out of people’s income when you consider both the direct and indirect taxes e.g. income tax, national insurance, employers’ national insurance, VAT, tax on electricity, tax on fuel, and the fact that government policy on taxation increases rents.

You only know what a property’s real value is when you sell it.

Reply to the comment left by Ian Cognito at 24/06/2026 – 13:13
Correcting typo…

A land tax would be based on land value, not property value.

Reply to the comment left by Ian Cognito at 24/06/2026 – 15:46
I think I see what you mean.

If it was a land tax payable by the landlord this would increase rents. If this was in effect a property tax replacing council tax paid for by the tenant in the same way that council tax is paid by the tenant, then I suspect that landlords would care less about it. But as far as I can tell from what is in the public domain about the Burnham proposal, this is a land tax levied on property owners, i.e. on the landlord. It’s a left-wing “tax-the-rich” proposal typical of the tax-and-spend policies that we saw from Denis Healey in the 1970s and Gordon Brown when he took over from Tony Blair, even though he wasn’t elected. It’s the usual labour trojan horse….vote for Tony Blair to a fanfare of Brit-pop “things can only get better” and “we want to encourage entrepreneurship” but when the gates to the city have been opened temporarily you get Gordon Brown crawling out from where he’s been hiding. Vote for Keir Starmer on the basis of “we are going to grow the economy”, then you get two years of labour attacking small business before finally you get Andy Burnham and a tax-the-rich lie without any kind of election, not even amongst labour MPs.

I can see why this proposal would be attractive to a very left-wing politician as occupiers of properties tend to pay less attention to the value of the services they receive from local or central politicians if it is not them directly paying the tax. It’s the same kind of principle behind increasing employers NI and reducing the level at which it gets paid. It allows left-wing MPs to pretend that they aren’t taxing the rank and file worker, even though they are losing their jobs, their hours are being reduced, and their wages are being held down as a consequence of record levels of taxation.

The real reason behind Andy Burnham’s proposal will be related to Pat McFadden’s statement that all back-bench labour MPs care about is who they can tax to increase benefits. It’s much easier attacking the obvious target that can’t get out of the way than tackling the benefits budget.

But this proposal would increase rents. It is government that puts up rents: It isn’t landlords.

The current priority for the COUNTRY (as opposed to Andy Burnham) has to be defence.

Reply to the comment left by Ian Cognito at 24/06/2026 – 15:46
How would that work with the huge number of two and three bed Victorian terraceds in the north that are currently worth less than £100k? On the basis that the building would cost at least £100k to build today then it would seem the land is at best worthless.

The Land tax is the worst of all taxes.

All houses in New Zealand have a government valuation.
This valuation has nothing to do with the properties real value. How can you continuously value a whole country’s properties?

Putting that aside. The land value tax is just as much a property tax as a land tax.

If you put solar panels in, and it costs 10,000 pounds, if the land and properties value increases by 12,000 pounds, that extra 2,000 pounds created by your actions becomes “land value”.

Essentially once government have this lever, any property with a positive value will be taxed at higher and high rates until the market value is 0.

Equality will be achieved!

Its just a tax grab, and they will never be satisfied by how much tax they get.

Reply to the comment left by Keith Wellburn at 24/06/2026 – 16:13
The Burnham proposal is reported as a new proposal based on PROPERTY VALUES but paid for by the landowner, i.e. by the owner of the principle private residence or by the landlord. Inevitably landlords would pass this on as increased rent.

This debate is really about Andy Burnham trying to secure his job because he’s not prime minister yet and he knows that labour back-benchers only care about who they can tax in order to pay benefits, as of course Pat McFadden has said.

And it’s just more scapegoating…more smoke and mirrors. If you levy a huge increase in tax via employers NI on employers you can pretend that you are taxing employers, not employees. In reality you are taxing employment and putting a brake on economic growth at a time that you are claiming you are growing the economy. Scapegoating and lying.

If you tax property owners you can pretend you are taxing the rich when in reality this indirect tax on tenants is going to raise rents. The reorganisation of property taxes would also inevitably be used as a smokescreen to increase the tax take over and above what council tax takes today. And these taxes would be passed on as higher rents.

It’s all just lies and scapegoating to make sure Andy gets his job whilst avoiding the difficult issue of decreasing benefits spending and increasing spending on defence.