RAYNERGATE: Unanswered questions

ELECTORAL ROLL

O DID Angela Rayner break the Representation of the People Act 1983 by putting on the electoral roll – between 2009 and 2015 – that her home was in Vicarage Road, Stockport, when she lived with her then husband

CAPITAL GAINS TAX

■ MS RAYNER is accused of avoiding capital gains tax (CGT) on the sale of Vicarage

Road in 2015. This is a tax on the profit when anyone sells an asset that’s increased in value, though not liable on the sale of a ‘main home’. HMRC lets couples count

COUNCIL TAX

■ SINGLE occupants can get a council tax discount of 25 per cent. Ms Rayner’s Vicarage Road house was in Band B, incurring

PERJURY AND FRAUD

■ IF SHE is found to have lived at her then husband’s property, Ms Rayner could face charges under the Fraud Act (which came into force under Labour in 2006) regarding ‘false representations’ for lying about her address. Labour’s deputy re-registered the births of her two younger children and children in Lowndes Lane? Testimonies from neighbours and Rayner’s social media posts from the time suggest the latter address was her ‘home’. Under the Act, anyone providing false information is guilty of an offence, which could lead to a prison sentence of six months and/or an unlimited fine.

only one property as their main home. As Ms Rayner claimed Vicarage Road to be her main home, she did not pay CGT when she sold it.

She bought the house for £79,000 in 2007 and sold it for £127,500 in 2015, a gain of £48,500. Tax experts disagree on the sum she could owe – with estimates ranging from £1,500 to £3,500.

council tax of £1,213 in 2010/11, rising to £1,249 in 2014/15.

If she wrongly claimed a discount (because, in truth, she lived elsewhere), she could have saved more than £300 a year – totalling £1,534 across five years.

in 2010, stating that (although she claims her main address was Vicarage Road) they lived with her then husband in Lowndes Lane. If Ms Rayner did not live at Vicarage Road, as she claims, she may have committed an offence under the Perjury Act 1911, as it is illegal to make a ‘false statement with intent to have the same inserted in any register of births or deaths’.