Angela Rayner dodges £40,000 stamp duty
Angela Rayner saved £40,000 in stamp duty on her new seaside flat after telling tax authorities it was her main home, The Telegraph can disclose.
The Deputy Prime Minister is understood to have removed her name from the deeds of her house in Greater Manchester a few weeks before buying an £800,000 seaside flat in Hove, East Sussex.
The changes enabled Ms Rayner to avoid paying £70,000 in stamp duty, which would have been applicable if Hove was her second home. Instead, she is thought to have paid £30,000 in stamp duty, saving her £40,000 in the process.
18 comments:
Having seen that photo, the ginger growler should demand her personal photographer repay the £64,000 salary (back to the taxpayer, not to her).I
Penseivat
Vot meanz "removed her name from the deeds"? Has she gifted the house to her children? (Oh no, vile inheritance!) To her ex-husband? (That would be exotic!)
Or is it a sorta gift that will eventually be returned to her? Would that be legal as a tax-dodge?
Penseivat - poor Raynetta, that photo sticks in the mind and no other photographer is likely to put things right for her.
dearieme - it struck me as odd, I don't know what it means. It must be some kind of legal paperwork tax-dodge, otherwise it would presumably be a taxable gift to someone. Possibly worth understanding.
As I understand it, remmoving ones name from the deeds means reliquishing ownership to the person left, so this must count as a gift to that person. To have a name put on the deeds means paying stamp duty for the amount paid for ownership. Making a gift may reduce CGT, but I don't know whether she can do that after the event as if not on the deeds, she no longer has a claim to ownership?
Ian - I agree, it must count as a gift, but if so there would presumably be legal and tax consequences.
On further thought: is she actually divorced from her "ex-husband" or simply estranged? If the latter maybe the gift is part of the forthcoming divorce settlement, with him getting the house but giving up all claim to her pensions.
Whether that makes sense presumably depends on the size of debt still outstanding on the house, and the expected size of her future pensions.
An example for the Modern Child everywhere … lie and cheat and you too can be a highly placed MP.
That picture is now up there with Milliband's banana and his idiot brother's bacon sandwich...
dearieme - ah yes, that makes sense. Lucky chap if that's it.
James - and they seem to know it before they set out.
Scrobs - I've filed it for future use.
If AR gifted her half of the Manchester property to her ex husband, then most likely no tax is due on that transaction. Stamp duty does not apply to gifts, and assuming she was living at the Manchester home prior to gifting it to the husband then the PPR exemption applies to any CGT that might be due. If she had moved out more than 6 months prior to the gift then some CGT could be due, based on a calculation of the amount of time she had lived in it as a proportion of her total length of ownership.
For example, if she had lived in the Manchester home for 10 years with her husband, then moved out for 2 years prior to gifting him her half, then CGT would be due on 2/12ths of the gain in value over the 12 years of ownership. A Mortgage would of course be taken into account. Only the increase in value of the equity would be taxable, not just the headline house price.
What I'd love would be to find out that her half of the house was gifted not to her husband, but to a lifetime trust with him as the beneficiary and the children as the 'remaindermen" i.e. the people who would get the house after their father's death. The reason I'd like it is that Joe Bloggs assumes, quite wrongly, that trusts are nothing but massive tax dodges and so would be even more convinced that she's a jammy dodger.
Sobers - that's interesting, thanks. I'll forward your comment to a family member who might be interested at the moment. Even professionals who ought to know seem to tell people different things.
dearieme - yes it would be interesting. I've never taken any interest in lifetime trusts because our affairs have always been straightforward, but these things are worth knowing as houses become such a major part of inheritance planning.
@AKH: Rayner's husband is presumably young enough that he could have more children by a new woman. To protect her own children as filthy capitalist inheritors, a lifetime trust could be pretty sensible.
Otherwise you could end up with the husband re-marrying, dieing first so that the house goes to his second wife, and her leaving it all to her own children to the exclusion of her stepchildren.
dearieme - interesting, I see, thanks. If the house isn't being sold so the husband and wife split the proceeds, then that makes sense. It seems to fit Rayner's situation.
Oh did you ever? At teatime I got round to looking at the morning's Telegraph. It alluded to a "mysterious trust" involved in owning that house. Ha, ha.
Of course it doesn't say what sort of trust it is; it could be a Bare Trust for the children, or a Discretionary Trust, or some other sort of trust that is beyond my ken. Still, I award myself a pat on the back.
I’m not going to diss him [Sunak] because he’s very wealthy, I think that’s perfectly fine. What I do have a problem with is hypocrisy. When you’ve got a prime minister whose wife had non-dom status to save X amount of millions on their wealth — at a time where others are suffering — that’s going to be a problem.”
Angela Rayner, quoted in the Financial Times, 2022.
Also, the other version of the picture shows her reclining smirking in the stern with an iPad or phone while a pixelated topless man bends over the paddles.
I think my metaphor detector just went off the scale…
Trying a link:
https://www.google.com/imgres?q=rayner%20dinghy&imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Flookaside.fbsbx.com%2Flookaside%2Fcrawler%2Fmedia%2F%3Fmedia_id%3D1365444965590494&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2Fwakefieldnewspage%2Fposts%2Fangela-rayner-stuns-in-black-and-yellow-dinghy-as-she-sucks-on-vape-and-begins-h%2F1365448152256842%2F&docid=38AWaU2_c9_2yM&tbnid=qe_8SOYeSa37FM&vet=12ahUKEwiG4Y6gxLSPAxViUaQEHSNoBrkQM3oECB4QAA..i&w=1440&h=1044&hcb=2&ved=2ahUKEwiG4Y6gxLSPAxViUaQEHSNoBrkQM3oECB4QAA
dearieme - interesting, so mystery solved far enough to give us a fair idea of what went on. Not something Mrs H and I have ever considered, but in general it's worth being aware of at any time of life.
Macheath - yes, for most politicians hypocrisy seem to be an essential part of the political equipment. They do politics, not responsible government. Starmer does nothing else but politics and Reeves is the same. Our Chancellor doesn't do economics, she does politics.
That photo will stay with Rayner now though, could be very damaging in a drip, drip, drip sense.
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