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

Reply to the comment left by Martin at 24/06/2026 – 18:11
The proposal is that they’d all pay 0.48% based on ‘property value’ but ‘second home’ owners would pay 0.96%. It’s not clear what that would mean though….would a ‘second home’ owner be somebody with a holiday home in a seaside resort like Brighton? Or would a ‘second home’ owner be a buy-to-let landlord? If the ‘second home’ owner was a buy to let landlord then of course the landlord would just pass the tax on as increased rent to the tenant and the tenant would pay twice as much as the owner of the principle private residence. It would be a stealth tax increase hitting Joe Public, like increasing employers national insurance and dropping the level at which it kicks in.

Currently, if the tenant pays the council tax and the council doesn’t collect the bins or fix the potholes the tenant knows about it and can complain because the tenant is the paying customer, not the landlord, who might be a hundred miles away.

The truth is that the proposal was never thought through, but as you can see that it’s a proposal to tax the landowner rather than the resident paying the council tax, it’s a bit of extreme left-wing b******t typical of the kind of thing Denis Healey and Gordon Brown would have done.

But it’s really related to Pat McFadden’s statement that back-bench labour MPs don’t care about anything other than who they can tax to pay benefits, the size of the benefits bill, the deficit in defence spending, and the fact that Andy wants to get his new job without actually being elected.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 18:35
If its an extra tax then home owners, second home owners and tenants all pay double (CT+LVT) assuming Landlords pass on 100% of the LVT through increased rent, Student will see just a rent increase for the LVT as they are currently CT exempt..

Reply to the comment left by Gromit at 24/06/2026 – 18:45
The only fair and objective way to allocate council tax would be on the basis of living space. But reforming council tax doesn’t always work out for politicians. The poll tax didn’t work out for Margaret Thatcher.

Where I live there is a mix of owner occupier, private rented and council house accommodation. The council house tenants have some of the bigger houses and typically pay about a third of what a house of the type that they rent would fetch if they were renting in the PRS. Their council houses are worth a lot of money when they are sold but the council tenants can get a massive discount on the purchase, as I presume Angela Rayner and her husband did.

Presumably the council would be paying Andy’s new property tax on behalf of their council tenants and this would reflect the value of the very large, very expensive houses these tenants live in at an enormous discount?

Because this proposal is to tax the land owners you can see that this proposal is a bit of extreme left-wing b******t. It’s an asset grab typical of Denis Healey or Gordon Brown. But it’s really about Pat McFadden’s statement that back-bench labour MPs only care about who they can tax to pay for benefits.

The country’s most urgent current priority is defence.

2 or 3 beds end up in market with no one to buy. 4 bed are rarely available but costs double than 3 bed. All because of this government. Rents are very high just because of all these. No one is benefiting with idiotic policies. 5% surcharge can never be earmed back as the rent yield is still poorer

I fully agree that it was the Tories who lost their way in the 13 years or so that started the landlord bashing, which Labour was bound to continue. The Tories deserve everything they get, but the sad thing is, we dont

Reply to the comment left by aydin at 25/06/2026 – 11:06
I agree that the Conservatives didn’t get everything right when in power but there isn’t much detail on Andy Burnham’s proposals either, other than that it is a tax paid by the property owner in lieu of council tax, and that fact gives the game away, just as Pat McFadden gave the game away when he said that all back-bench labour MPs care about is who they can tax to pay for benefits.

In the link to the Independent that I posted above, somebody called Tom Bill, head of UK residential research at Knight Frank, is reported to have “praised the proposal’s simplicity and the logic of scrapping stamp duty, which he noted hinders social and economic mobility”…although he also expressed reservations about the collateral damage from a proposal that clearly looks like an asset grab. Somebody called Tim Stovold, head of tax accountancy firm Moore Kingston Smith, is reported as saying that “a tax of this type will reduce property values when introduced.”

When George Osborne stopped landlords from offsetting their finance costs against rents he didn’t get that right: The collateral damage from that change included unnecessarily elevated rents and additional unnecessary tax that was in effect paid for by tenants and is still paid by tenants. Introducing a levy on property values paid for by the landowner would do the same thing and have other undesirable effects.

When the conservatives were considering the rental reform bill I had an open mind about it because a number of commentators were saying that the intention was to be fair to both landlord and tenant. Unfortunately, the final iteration of the bill came about not just under a labour government but under a labour government with a significant majority and almost no experience of business; this meant that a number of whacky things crept into the bill, they were not forced to moderate their bill and this then resulted in the Labour Renters Rights Act that will decrease competition and push rents up. The Labour Renters Rights Act is inflationary.

Both the conservatives and labour have put forward proposals to force landlords to move from band D to C and the effect of this policy would be to limit tenant choice, constrain the supply of rental property, and raise rents, effectively making tenants pay for the ambitions and egos of the conservative and labour climate tsars who managed to creep into the spotlight and pursue their own agendas. Both the conservative and labour parties have not got things right in this area in the past.

It doesn’t follow that another government couldn’t make things better: If any tenant could rent any property at any EPC band but the EPC system was changed such that it provided useful information then the market could help sort that problem out. If landlords could once again offset their finance costs against rents, at least for the more energy efficient properties, then once again, the market could help to sort that problem out. If the capital allowances for local energy generation and storage and also insulation improvements that were not biased to cavity wall insulation and cavity wall insulation companies, then again, this could help sort the problem out. Whether those proposals were delivered by a government that was labour, conservative or something else wouldn’t matter to me. But when commentators say that a 0.48% charge on property values is “simple” it isn’t. It’s complicated and it would result in a lot of collateral damage. If that’s what Andy Burnham thinks then he clearly isn’t going to make things better either for landlords or tenants. But this proposal isn’t about making things better…it’s about raising tax from anywhere they can to pay for benefits. Good luck to Pat McFadden with his sudden flash of honesty in saying that this is all back-bench labour MPs care about.

The current priority for the country is defence.

Reply to the comment left by Beaver at 25/06/2026 – 13:20
Purely by coincidence, after posting this I just noticed an article by the Telegraph saying that Ed Miliband vetoed a proposal to use North Sea Oil to fund defence.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2026/06/25/miliband-derailed-plan-to-use-north-sea-oil-to-fund-defence/?msockid=0b8a4155c7db6ba1058955b1c6196a07

When people like Michael Gove or Ed Miliband get into government and try to force landlords to upgrade from EPC band D to C to pursue their ‘climate change agenda’ what they are doing is self-serving. They are trying to further their own careers…they aren’t providing leadership. What they are doing won’t make any difference at all to climate change. There is an argument for adopting renewables, but it’s more about energy security than climate change.

If you wanted to look at a country that got things right on North Sea Oil it’s Norway. Norway used North Sea Oil revenues to build up one of the largest sovereign wealth funds in the world. Because Norway did that Norway has been able to adopt renewable technologies and ALSO can now fund increased defence spending. In contrast, over the decades a variety of labour governments have used North Sea Oil Revenues to fund the benefits bill. Nothing much changes with the labour party: As he departed, Pat McFadden said that all back-bench labour MPs care about is who they can tax to pay for benefits.

The priority for the country is defence: Heaven help us if Andy Burnham gets to be our unelected Prime Minister and Ed Miliband gets any position in government; if Ed Miliband is allowed to do anything more than make the tea or fix the photocopier it will be a disaster.

They will probably introduce a Local Community Charge payable to local council for emptying bins, libraries, local expenditure etc etc. On top of Land Tax….And it will all end up costing us all more one way or another!

It seems this would be a land value tax (whether that’s instead-of or in-addition-to council tax is not clear). Whatever is built on the land doesnt factor into the value.
Recently I have been looking at whether it makes sense to demolish a bungalow I have and build 3 houses. I was shocked at materials and construction costs nowadays. It simply didnt make sense. The market price for new property in that area is less than the construction costs. I looked at some other properties I have and the same applies. Property is too cheap (or rather policy has made building too expensive).
So effectively in terms of valuation, the land is worthless therefore if the land tax was based on solely land values it would mean that places like London, Edinburgh and Manchester would end up paying taxes whilst the rest of the UK would pay pretty much zero.

If it’s the landlord that pays then absolutely this would be passed onto tenants in the form of a rent increase.

Given there 4.4 million social houses in the UK and presumably these “landlords” would not pay this tax and neither would the tenants. That would mean a reduction in £10 Billion in taxation compared to council tax ….

I wrote this blog last week https://think-we-are-stupid.blogspot.com/2026/06/house-prices-and-rents-are-not-high.html as it became clear Burnham is going to throw money at house building but the council rents are not enough to even service the debt…..

In terms of the 0.48% tax on say the overall value of the property then for my home it would increase the tax by about 20% compared to council tax. I would imagine places where council tax is very low (eg city of london) then they would see their tax go up by 20x. I have an AirBnB property in cheap area – even with 0.96% second home charge that would reduce my double council tax rate by 60%. There will be winners and losers…

Council tax in areas of France and Spain I’ve been looking at is around £600 per year – if this comes in, it will accelerate my decision to sell everything and move somewhere warm (albeit it is too warm here this week).

Reply to the comment left by Jill Church at 25/06/2026 – 13:59
Yes, where I live there are council tax tenants alongside owner occupiers and PRS tenants and the council tax tenants pay about 1/3 of market rent for large properties with decent sized gardens and off-road parking. Typically we have the same number of cars, we use the same roads with the same un-fixed potholes. We have the same protection from the police and have the same police presence, which is low. We have the same number of bins collected, but now if you want a bin for green waste (e.g. grass and hedge cuttings) you have to pay for that. Essentially we receive the same services but the council tax tenants pay below market rent and less council tax in comparison to everybody else.

Under Andy Burnham’s proposal to introduce a property-value-based-land-tax paid for by the property owner, do we really think that the council is going to pay for the land tax? Or would the land tax actually be loaded onto the owner-occupiers and landlords such that the council tax tenants paid an even lower contribution to receive the same services?

We might have a reasonable debate about a fairer way to apportion council tax although even that isn’t simple given that where I live the council tax tenants pay less council tax for the same services on similar sized properties as the owner occupied and PRS properties; but at least with council tax the resident pays the tax for the services and can hold the council to account if the services aren’t delivered. Realistically, under Andy Burnham’s property-tax-asset-grab-proposal, local councils would be even less accountable than they are today. That’s a really unhealthy thing to do if you care not just about how much tax you pay, but also about how it’s spent.

But this proposal from Andy Burnham isn’t about fairness or equity; it’s about who can be taxed to pay benefits rather than bringing the benefits bill under control.

Recently, Poland has quite rightly criticised Britain for not being clear about its defence commitments to NATO. The most urgent priority for the country is defence. The only real disappointment for me in terms of what is currently happening (because my expectations of Andy Burnham are low as he is a left-winger like Angela Rayner) is that Al Carns apparently considered running for the labour leadership but withdrew.