10th
Sep 2021
Labour’s Shadow Prime Minister Keir Starmer demands that further funding for social care must be raised by a new landlord tax, in his recent conference speech to labour run LGAs.
This follows Boris Johnson recently announcing the government’s plan to increase National Insurance tax to pay for social care and the NHS backlog.
Starmer was originally expected to denounce the increase as "unfair" and "poorly thought through", however his party had been pressurising him in the past few days before the conference to lay out his own plans to raise funds for the ever increasing social care needs.
Last week the Prime Minister announced in parliament of the incoming National Insurance tax hike and admitted it would break the party’s manifesto pledge of not raising taxes, however he defended the plan as “the right, reasonable and fair approach" because of the pandemic.
He answered demands for capital gains tax to be raised immediately by saying it would not provide sufficient money to "even begin to deal with this problem".
Starmer was expected to be highly critical in his speech to the Labour Party’s Local Government Association of the government’s plans by saying that: "Working people will pay more tax now, but might still have to sell their home to pay even more later.
"This is an unfair plan that doesn't work. And who is left with the bill? It's working people. It's especially low earners and young people who have already borne the brunt of the economic impact of the pandemic.”
Instead of sticking to his expected speech he said in Saturday’s conference that: "…the money could have been raised by taxing the incomes of landlords, and those who buy and sell large quantities of financial assets, stocks shares".
He also said Mr Johnson's plans leave "a private landlord renting out multiple properties not paying a penny more in tax, and their hard-working tenants to pick up the burden".
He also added "an Amazon worker's taxes raised, but Amazon itself able to squirrel profits away in tax havens and only pay a fraction of what high street shops do".
The government’s plan is to introduce a 1.25 percentage rise in National Insurance for all workers and employers in April 2022.
So for instance workers earning £30,000 per year will have to pay an additional £255 and anyone earning £50,000 will have to pay an extra £505.
Richard Merrick of PIMS, says:” If this joke of a ’solution’ is introduced, not only workers who rent their homes having to pay extra National Insurance Tax, they will also have to bear the brunt of higher rents to pay the Landlord Tax.”
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