‘People like me are being taxed into oblivion’
Landlord Mick Roberts, 40, will be hit by the reduction in the capital gains tax exemption when he sells his buy-to-let properties.
The exemption will be cut from £12,300 to £6,000 next April and to £3,000 the following year.
He wants to reduce the size of his portfolio in Nottingham, which includes hundreds of properties, but is waiting for his tenants to move out. If he were to evict them using Section 21, he said they would have nowhere to live.
Mr Roberts accused the Government of piling “punitive measures” on landlords to “get rid of us”.
He said: “This will affect a lot of landlords. They need to sell because they’re punishing them with all the other regulations and now they want to tax them into oblivion as well.”
Mr Roberts wants to sell because of proposed rule changes that will force landlords to improve the eco-efficiency of their properties.
He said the capital gains tax changes could devastate landlords who have been making a loss for years and now face reduced profits when they sell their properties.
Mr Roberts warned that tenants are most likely to lose out with tax changes like this that affect landlords. He said: “In the end we get every single penny from the tenant.” Mr Roberts also believes some landlords will be unable to sell their properties because it would cost them too much to do so.
He added: “There’s a lot of landlords that are just waiting for the tenant to go before they sell because of all these government actions in the last seven years. Low earning tenants cannot find anywhere anymore, it’s horrendous.”
‘A lot of landlords are just waiting for the tenant to go before they sell because of these government actions’
Property investor Hywel Morgan, 60, said changes to capital gains tax were the latest example of the Government treating landlords unfairly. He plans to sell some of his 18 buy-to-let properties in England and Wales if the Government goes ahead with proposals to require all rented properties to have an Energy Performance Certificate rating of C or above.
The cost of upgrading some of the older properties would make his business unviable. He said that even after making many costly improvements to one of his properties it still only achieved a D rating.