Labour’s secret plans for £4,000 ‘garden tax’

Land levy plot could treble the average council bill

FAMILIES could see their council tax bills treble under Labour plans for a ‘garden tax’, the Tories claimed last night.

The small print of Jeremy Corbyn’s manifesto contains proposals to replace council tax and business rates with a Land Value Tax (LVT) on homes and gardens.

Labour has pledged to use the levy – based on the land value rather than property prices – to raise extra money for their spending splurge.

The Conservatives last night put the average cost at nearly £4,000 and warned the ‘devastating’ and ‘destructive’ tax would send house prices plummeting and plunge mortgage holders into negative equity.

The Foreign Secretary declared the charge, which he branded the ‘garden tax’, would force families to sell off their backyards and send food prices soaring if farmers are forced to pay.

A costings document that accompanies Labour’s manifesto lets slip the party’s plan to hold a ‘review into reforming council tax and business rates and consider new options such as a land value tax, to ensure local government has sustainable funding for the long term’.

A blueprint for how the new tax would work has been drawn up by the Labour Land Campaign, which has received glowing praise from both Mr Corbyn and his Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell, who has said the levy will ’raise the funds we need’.

Under proposals, the new tax would be imposed as an up to 3 per cent levy on the value of land.

A Tory analysis estimates this would result in a yearly tax bill of £3,837 for an average family home in England – a massive 224 per cent increase on the current average council tax bill of £1,185.

The calculations are based on the assumption that land value is about 55 per cent of a house price.

The tax would fall hardest on areas with higher land prices, including London, the South and flourishing market towns. Tory campaign chiefs warned that some families could be forced to sell off their gardens to lower their bills and that it would incentivise people to build over green space.

The National Farmers Union has warned that if agricultural land, which is currently exempt from council tax and business rates, is also hit it would simply lead to hikes in food prices.

Labour business spokesman Rebecca Long-Bailey earlier this month endorsed plans to have ‘a land tax to ensure local government has sustainable funding in the long term’. Mr McDonnell has previously said the levy would be a ‘radical alternative to austerity’.

During his leadership campaign in 2015, Mr Corbyn said he had been ‘impressed by the work of the Labour Land Campaign … on making the case for LVT which can capture for local benefit some of the private gains generated by public investment’.

But Boris Johnson said yesterday: ‘Jeremy Corbyn needs to hit ordinary working families with a bombshell of new taxes to pay for his reckless hard-Left giveaways, and this lays bare the price we would all pay.

‘Corbyn’s garden tax will send tax bills soaring, house prices plummeting, plunge people into negative equity and force families to build over their back gardens.

‘This nonsensical policy sums up how Jeremy Corbyn, along with his SNP, Lib Dem and Green comrades in the coalition of chaos would bring misery to every single family in Britain.

‘It would wreck our economy, devastate farmers and increase the cost of food on the shelves.’

A Labour spokesman last night dismissed the criticism, saying: ‘This is desperate nonsense from the Tories. Labour has no such plans.’

David Dimbleby has claimed that Jeremy Corbyn has had an ‘unfair deal’ at the hands of ‘Rightwing’ press. Despite the Labour leader’s poor poll performance, the broadcaster said: ‘A lot of Labour supporters really like and believe in the messages that Jeremy Corbyn is bringing across.’

‘Wreck the economy’

HIDDEN in the small print of Labour’s manifesto is a plan which, say the Tories, could add more than £2,500 to the annual council tax bill for an average family home.

Highly praised by Jeremy Corbyn, and falling hardest on homes with gardens, the proposed Land Value Tax would inevitably cause widespread hardship to help fund a massive expansion of the State.

This is student revolutionary politics, straight out of a Marxist textbook.

But then what can we expect of a leader who has embraced every hard-Left cause for 50 years, attacking private property, flirting with IRA and anti-Western terrorists – and appointing to his team like-minded zealots such as Diane Abbott and John McDonnell (who has openly declared his aim to ‘overthrow capitalism’)?

Truly, it is a chilling thought that ten days from now, this rabble could be running – and ruining – Britain.