The Daily Telegraph

Labour hatches ‘garden tax’ that trebles council bills

- By Gordon Rayner POLITICAL EDITOR

COUNCIL tax bills would treble for middle-class homeowners under Labour plans to introduce a “garden tax” on the value of land, it was claimed.

The Labour manifesto contains plans for a land value tax to replace council tax, which would hit people with gardens the hardest.

The manifesto contains no details of how the tax would be applied, but the Conservati­ves claim that the tax on the average family home would go up from £1,185 to £3,837 a year.

Opponents say it would cause house prices to plummet, putting homeowners at risk of negative equity and forcing families to sell off their gardens to developers to lessen their tax burden.

Because the tax would also apply to agricultur­al land, it could have a knockon effect of driving up food prices.

The policy was described as “nonsensica­l” by Boris Johnson, the Foreign Secretary. Council tax works by taxing the overall value of a property, while a land value tax would impose an annual charge on the rental value of land.

A Labour spokesman said: “This is desperate nonsense from the Tories. Labour has no such plans.”

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