Labour wealth tax ‘will target Home Counties’

LABOUR will hammer London and the South East with new wealth taxes, a senior party figure admitted yesterday.

Scottish leader Kezia Dugdale claimed Labour would ‘tax wealth in London and the South East and redistribute it across the UK according to need’.

She said the United Kingdom was the ‘means by which we redistribute wealth’.

Her comments will alarm middle- class families in and around the capital and raise concerns that Jeremy Corbyn intends to milk them to pay for a spending spree in Scotland and other parts of the country.

The Tories said Mr Corbyn was planning ‘punitive taxes for his hard-Left agenda’.

Labour’s manifesto floated the idea of a wealth tax, but the party has refused to spell out how it would work.

In France, an annual tax of up to 1.5 per cent is charged on assets including property, cars, jewellery and even furniture. It could mean an annual tax bill of thousands of pounds for those who own their home.

Labour is also considering a ‘land-value tax’ to replace council tax and business rates. The policy does not appear in its manifesto but is buried in the small print of an accompanying costings document.

It would mean calculating the value of the land under all homes and businesses and charging an annual percentage.

Three weeks ago, shadow Cabinet minister Rebecca Long-Bailey referred to a land tax when asked how the party would fulfil its spending commitments, saying: ‘There’s a land tax to ensure local government has sustainable funding in the long term.’

Senior party figures have refused to say how it would work, the level it would be set at or who would pay.

The Tories warn that with tens of billions of pounds’ worth of uncosted spending commitments, Labour will have to target those with modest assets. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said last night: ‘Kezia Dugdale has let the cat out of the bag. Jeremy Corbyn is planning extraordinary tax hikes on London families and wants to create punitive taxes to pay for his hard-Left agenda.

‘This London tax bombshell would be waved through by the Liberal Democrats and SNP who are willing to prop up a Corbyn coalition in return for a whiff of power.

‘If we want a strong economy, a London economy that is supported rather than attacked, and a strong hand at the Brexit negotiations, then only a vote for Theresa May next week will suffice.’

But a Labour spokesman said Miss Dugdale’s comments had been taken out of context, adding: ‘It’s nonsense to suggest Kezia was talking about anything other than refusing to join an alliance with the SNP. Kezia pointed out the SNP is refusing to match Labour’s plans to tax the rich and big business and guarantee 95 per cent of taxpayers in the UK will not pay more tax.’

Labour says that even though a wealth tax was an ‘option’ in its manifesto, it was not official party policy and would only be introduced with cross-party agreement.

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We’ll hit wealth in the South and redistribute it across ’ the UK Scottish Labour leader Kezia Dugdale