Rayner faces questions over tax on sale of council house
ANGELA Rayner faces growing pressure after questions were raised about whether she should have paid Capital Gains Tax on the sale of her former council house.
Labour’s deputy leader bought the property under the right-to-buy scheme in 2007 despite pledging to reform the benefit if she is in office, prompting claims of hypocrisy.
Sources close to her say she was not liable for the tax when she sold the house in Stockport, Manchester, in 2015.
But the Tories have written to her questioning her living circumstances after neighbours claimed she moved out in 2009. The Tories have also written to police seeking an inquiry after Ms Rayner appeared to give different addresses in official documents.
Ms Rayner, 43, bought an excouncil house in 2007 and stayed on the electoral register there until selling it in 2015.
In 2010, she married Mark Rayner – who owned a separate house – but claims she did not move in with him until 2015 when she became an MP. Questions have been raised about why they lived separately for five years.
It begs the question of whether Ms Rayner was correctly registered on the electoral roll at the time. Providing false information can lead to a prison sentence and/ or an unlimited fine.
She also faces questions about Capital Gains Tax if the property wasn’t where she lived. Under tax rules, a person who sells their main residence may be entitled to Private Residence Relief on any profit they make from the sale.
They can nominate a property as their main residence even if they are not living in it to get the relief, but they would have to have spent some time there. Her husband was listed as living at a separate property, so he would also have had to declare that her property was his main residence.
It is unclear what would happen if she was living separately from her husband, as she claims.
Sarah Coles, at Hargreaves Lansdown, did not comment on Ms Rayner’s circumstances, but said: ‘ The HMRC guidance assumes married couples live together and have one primary residence.
‘However, they can nominate whichever of the homes they want to – assuming it isn’t let to someone else.’ In his letter to Ms Rayner, Tory MP Jonathan Gullis said that there was a public interest in her setting out her living situation given she is the shadow housing secretary.
He asked her to clarify which address was her primary residence between 2009 and 2015. The Mail on Sunday interviewed neighbours of both properties who claimed Ms Rayner moved out of her original house in 2009 and into the new one. The claims were raised in a book ‘Red Queen? The Unauthorised Biography of Angela Rayner’ by Lord Ashcroft, which will be serialised in the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday next month.
A source close to Ms Rayner said that she was not liable for Capital Gains Tax on the sale. A Labour spokesman said: ‘Angela, who had an older child from a previous relationship, and her husband maintained their existing residences before moving into their shared marital home.’