NLA urges landlords to lobby parliament over tax changes

The National Landlords Association (NLA) continues to urge landlords to lobby the government over taxation changes announced by the now former chancellor George Osborne last year.

The association says it is fighting the government over the proposed changes detailed in Clause 24 of the Finance Bill relating to the proposed removal of mortgage interest relief, and has launched an e-postcard campaign to encourage landlords to do the same, ahead of the Autumn Statement later this month.

The NLA wants landlords to send one of two e-postcards (pictured) that outline the damage of the ‘Tenant Tax’, directly to the Chancellor and the Treasury, via its campaign website www.rethinktenanttax.org.

The campaign is timed to run in the weeks leading up to Chancellor Phillip Hammond’s first Autumn Statement, due on 23 November.

Richard Lambert, chief executive officer at the NLA, said: “Despite more than a year’s worth of campaigning, the Treasury still won’t accept the disastrous impact that Section 24 will have on landlords and their tenants.  It seems that all our words and figures haven’t got through to them, so we’ve decided to make it as clear as possible – by drawing them a picture.

“With the Autumn Statement just around the corner, this provides the perfect opportunity for landlords to make their voices heard, and to relay the message that the proposed tax changes will only make housing problems in the UK worse.”

The NLA claims that while 440,000 basic-rate tax payers – 22% of approximately 2 million landlords in this country – will move up a tax bracket from April next year, once planned changes to landlord taxation comes in to force, all landlords could be at risk of seeing their tax liability increase regardless of their existing rate of tax. It believes landlords in central London (31%), the East of England (30%), and the West Midlands (28%) will be particularly hit.

Lambert added: “This policy will push 44% of basic rate tax-paying landlords into a higher bracket, forcing them to either sell up and end perfectly happy tenancies, or increase rents. We want the Government to minimise the impact by applying the rules only to landlords who take out new buy-to-let loans from April 2017.”

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