Corbyn plotting bombshell ‘war on homeowners’
He plans tax raid on rising value of houses
HOMEOWNERS would be taxed on the increase in the value of their home under bombshell plans being drawn up by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
The proposal to scrap the Capital Gains Tax exemption on main homes would force owners to pay income tax on the profits when they move home – and lead to a ‘double whammy’ levy on their estates when the owners die.
Yesterday Boris Johnson – making his first political intervention since the revelations about his domestic dispute with girlfriend Carrie Symonds – described the plan as a ‘mad’ house tax which would ‘cripple every Brit who owns or wants to own their own home’.
With Mr Johnson still favourite to beat Jeremy Hunt to become the next Prime Minister, the row could be a foretaste of titanic ideological battles to come ahead of the next General Election with Mr Corbyn – whose own childhood home was a 17th Century manor house in Shropshire.
The homeowner tax idea is included in Land For The Many – a report commissioned by Labour and published on its website this month – which has already caused fury by calling for a mammoth tax raid on middle-class parents who help their children get on the housing ladder by replacing inheritance tax with a ‘lifetime gifts tax’.
But the report also cites approvingly proposals by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) for primary residences to no longer be exempt from capital gains tax, which is levelled at people who earn more than £50,000 a year at 20 per cent of the profits.
Shadow Cabinet Minister Jon Trickett, a key ally of Mr Corbyn, has described the report as ‘groundbreaking’ and ‘part of our policy development process for the next General Election’ – although last night the party insisted the homes tax was ‘not under consideration’ for the next manifesto.
Mr Johnson told The Mail on Sunday: ‘This mad “tax on all your houses” would cripple every Brit who owns or wants to own their own home.
‘The choice facing Britain couldn’t be starker: Corbyn or modern, One Nation Conservatives. This is why the Conservative Party needs a leader with a proven track record of beating the loony Left to take on Labour and defeat Corbyn and his apparatchiks, for the sake of the country.’
Mr Corbyn’s team is canvassing widely for ‘redistributive’ policies to put in a draft manifesto in anticipation of a snap Election in the autumn if the next Tory leader is unable to break the Brexit impasse.
This newspaper has also been told by Labour sources that Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell has already mapped out the first hours of a Labour government if the party wins the next Election.
Dubbed the ‘4am plan’, it would involve him driving to the Treasury as soon as it became clear that Labour had a majority to form a government and imposing exchange controls to stop the pound from crashing – as investors take fright at the prospect of a Corbyn administration. Mr McDonnell has also admitted he would make the next Governor of the Bank of England someone who was ‘in tune with our ideas’ – by subscribing to the same hard-Left politics.
He would strip the Bank of England of its independence, saying he would end the Bank’s control over interest rates ‘in the first week of a Labour government’. He has also said he is studying plans for a ‘wealth tax’ which would seize 20 per cent of the assets of the richest 10 per cent of Britons.
Land For The Many backs the capital gains exemption on the grounds that: ‘It is not only rental income that makes homes attractive as financial assets. It is also the expectation of making capital gains on the value of the land. A welldesigned tax system would remove this expectation.’
Conservative Vice-Chairman Marcus Jones said: ‘Under Jeremy Corbyn, Britain’s homeowners would be under siege with yet another Labour tax raid on people’s homes.’
‘Cripple everyone who wants to own a home’