Angela Rayner was emotional today, faced with questions from lobby journalists at a Westminster lunch.
She was pressed, again, on why she didn’t pay Capital Gains Tax when she sold her council house back in Stockport in 2015. And where she was actually living between 2010, when she married, and 2015, when she sold her house.
And where she was actually living between 2010, when she married, and 2015, when she sold her house.
She insists that there was no tax liability. That she had taken advice at the time and also recently ‘expert tax advice’ since the allegations emerged in recent weeks. There was ‘no Capital Gains Tax’ to pay, she says.
Angela Rayner was emotional today, faced with questions from lobby journalists
PA
Which begs the question, "Why not?"
A house is exempt from CGT if it is a person’s main residence. But neighbours claim that Rayner lived largely at her husband’s house a mile away after their marriage.
You can choose which residence to designate as the ‘main’ one for tax purposes, but a married couple can only have one.
So for there to be no tax to pay, tax expert Dan Neidle says either they spent thousands renovating Rayner’s house, or it was designated as her ‘main residence’. In which case her husband’s house would have been liable for CGT when he sold it.
Rayner has not explained this, and argued it was wrong for hacks to ‘trawl through all my personal details.’
When asked directly where she had lived, the answer was long but did not answer the question.
She seemed to imply that she had lived at both, though her husband clearly lived at his house, the children were registered there and neighbours say Rayner lived there too.
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When asked directly where she had lived, the answer was long but did not answer the question
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Rayner is not a polished politician and being fiery and forthright is perhaps her strength. But today she was emotional and at one point close to tears.
She said she’d been a carer when she bought the council house through the ‘Right to Buy’ scheme in 2007.
She explained that when her son had been born at 23 weeks, he’d spent months in intensive care and is registered blind.
They’d had a lot of support from her family and brother in particular, who she said had served in Iraq. It seems he’d lived in her house, rent-free, after her marriage.
Her husband, she added, was 17 years older and had inherited his house from his parents.
It’s worth noting that the potential tax liability might have been only around £1,500.
Small change compared to former Conservative Party Chairman Nadhim Zahawi’s £5million which he had to cough up last year to HMRC.
And Rayner was quick to point out that the Chancellor Jeremy Hunt owns multiple flats and cut the rate of CGT in the Budget last week.
Hunt, however, has pledged to pay the tax at the original rate so as not to benefit from his own policy.
In Rayner’s case the sums are small, she wasn’t an MP at the time and it’s possible she didn’t understand the rules.
Conservative MP James Daly asked the police to investigate; they have decided there is no case to answer.
So does it matter? Yes, because she may become our next Deputy Prime Minister, and is Shadow Housing Secretary right now.
Her very raw emotion was uncomfortable today. There’s a family here, and children.
But she didn’t answer questions fully. So they will keep being asked...