Unlike most others, apparently, I'm content to await the judgement of the Independent Adviser on Ministerial Standards before I decide whether Ange is a saint or a sinner. I suspect Starmer will do the same, as he's as boring as me.
Moron or sinner You cant avoid 40k in tax and be a saint. The Beatification panel have tax rules and everything
Starmer should ask for confirmation of the legal advice she was given .
If he’s convinced that means she’ll be exonerated he should defend her .
Exonerated? Hah. Even if the advice was wrong, it’s the sheer hypocrisy of using tax minimisation strategies whilst criticising others who do the same.
Is it a tax minimisation strategy to own one residential property & pay the relevant stamp duty on purchase? I’m not entirely sure people will see paying exactly what everyone else pays as “a tax minimisation strategy” however hard the right wing press pushes that angle.
Had Raynor transferred the family home to her husband when they divorced, all of her transactions would have been entirely above board.
Rather like David Laws, Raynor has been caught out by trying to structure her own affairs in ways that eventually came back to bite her. Like Laws, she might well have to resign but that’s not certain at this point - if she can prove that she was given bad legal advice even after revealing everything to her lawyers then she’s probably in the clear.
David Laws lied.
Now, he allegedly lied for non-financial reasons (as in to try and prevent his parents from finding out he was gay). I would argue that his breach was the less serious because the investigation found "no evidence that [he] made his claims with the intention of benefiting himself or his partner". Nevertheless, he was right to resign.
I thought Laws was very unfortunate - his (understandable) dissembling over his personal relationships was of no financial benefit to him whatsoever. He should have offered to resign & that offer of resignation should have been refused.
Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .
And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.
Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .
So tax minimisation is actually OK providing you have a good enough reason to do it?
The trust was set up to look after her son , that’s it. Any good parent would do what they could to do that given he’s now disabled . The Tories who were happy to fellate Bozo and Tice who supports a traitor should STFU .
Rayner doesn’t need lectures from them .
In what way is it necessary to set up a trust to look after a child?
I feel like trusts only reason for existence is to dodge tax.
"She said in her statement: “Ashton remains my family home, as it has been for over a decade. It contains the majority of my possessions and it is where I am registered for most official and financial purposes ranging from credit cards to the dentist to the electoral roll. But most importantly, it is where my children live and have gone to school and now college, and where I regularly live while caring for them.”
Rayner has another property she spends time in, too – a grace-and-favour apartment in Admiralty House on Whitehall. She neither owns this nor pays council tax on it.
This is one reason some have accused her of hypocrisy. For almost everything, Rayner counts the Ashton home as her main property. For stamp duty reasons only, the Hove flat took precedence"
It already looked dodgy af. Where did she get the money?! But now there is potential fraud, to add to the dodginess
And she's housing minister
This is surely not survivable
It depends whether she engaged in tax evasion or not. And we don't know.
My problem is the optics. Basic principle in our modern democracy surely has to be that you live in and around the constituency? I give a little leeway for people who find themselves removed from it by a boundary change, but in and around the constituents you represent.
She claims that she still does. But not when declaring taxes? Even when the belief was that this tax arrangement was allowable it looked politically brave.
Yes, it's the optics
Even if it turns out she has a decent excuse for underpaid tax, the optics are terminal. At the very least she bent the law to avoid tax, on a lovely new flat, by claming her real home is hundreds of miles from her constituency. And she is housing minister?!
Can't be squared away
That point can be squared away. I'll do it now.
The stamp duty payable on the Hove flat depends on whether it was the only property she owned when she bought it. She declared it was. This meant she avoided the higher rate of stamp duty that's applicable to second (and third etc) properties.
This is not tantamount to her claiming it as her 'real home'. Main residence is a separate matter which isn't relevant to the stamp duty calculation.
In which case, there would be no underpayment. However, she says that there was an underpayment. So, the Return was incorrect.
That might be an innocent, or negligent mistakr, rather than fraudulent, in fact, it most likely was.
Yes exactly. The issue would appear to be the trust which owns the family house. That constitutes an interest in it (for her) such that the flat becomes not her only owned property and thus liable for the higher rate of stamp duty.
They must now ascertain whether the error was an innocent one. If it was perhaps she survives (and deserves to). If not she surely doesn't.
My view is that she should resign as a minister, if HMRC impose a penalty. But, not otherwise.
Essentially, penalties are imposed depending on whether the underpayment was innocent, negligent, or deliberate; and whether the disclosure of the underpayment was voluntary or prompted. On a few occasions, as a professional executor, I've discovered that I have underpaid Inheritance Tax, because more assets of the estate have come to light. I've faced no penalty, because the underpayment was innocent, and I disclosed it without any prompting. All I had to do was pay the balance with interest.
Rayner has voluntarily disclosed the underpayment, and it is most unlikely that she was deliberately filing a false return (if she did, she would be made to resign as an MP). So, the issue is likely to be innocence v negligence.
What the British diplomats think, but cannot say. Former Conservative chairman Lord Patten describing the "gathering of blood soaked dictators" in Shanghai as in part "a triumph for the ignorance of Trump’s foreign policy". Patten says the leader present in Shanghai that is most difficult to explain is the Indian prime minister Modi adding “that has happened as a result of America’s clueless diplomacy. The way in which Trump has managed to drive people into China’s arms is a very good display of the crazed diplomacy this sociopath has been inflicting on the rest of us. "In dealing with Trump, we have to recognise that America historically was our best friend and ally. Is that true today? I think at least self-respect has some part to play in foreign policy, and when the King in some style welcomes Trump on a state visit what values can we point which Trump shares with the rest of us? "He is on the road to becoming an authoritarian which makes it very difficult to explain to countries in Asia why democracy is better for them, and their security".
Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .
And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.
Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .
So tax minimisation is actually OK providing you have a good enough reason to do it?
The trust was set up to look after her son , that’s it. Any good parent would do what they could to do that given he’s now disabled . The Tories who were happy to fellate Bozo and Tice who supports a traitor should STFU .
Rayner doesn’t need lectures from them .
In what way is it necessary to set up a trust to look after a child?
I feel like trusts only reason for existence is to dodge tax.
A disabled child may not be competent to look after money on their own behalf. It's no different, in principle, to being an attorney or deputy.
It's not a good look. At the very least it was aggressive tax minimisation, while criticising others for similar behaviour. (I.e. rank hypocricy.)
It's entirely possible it is outright tax evasion.
I like "Our Ange", and thing she's a great bruiser. She's also essentially impossible to remove if she does not want to go. But this was bad behaviuour.
According to her, it was an error. To say, "At the very least it was aggressive tax minimisation" is clearly wrong. At the very least, she and her ex set up a trust because of her son's life-changing injuries and, because of the confusion arising from the trust owning a property and not Rayner, but her counting as owning it for certain tax purposes, she made a mistake.
At the very least may be being too generous to her, but at the very least, it was an innocent error.
Would she be as charitable if it was a political opponent ?
Yeah fuck that shit
She's dumped on "scum" Tories for years for exactly this. Now she's hoist, petard, finished
Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .
And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.
Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .
So tax minimisation is actually OK providing you have a good enough reason to do it?
The trust was set up to look after her son , that’s it. Any good parent would do what they could to do that given he’s now disabled . The Tories who were happy to fellate Bozo and Tice who supports a traitor should STFU .
Rayner doesn’t need lectures from them .
In what way is it necessary to set up a trust to look after a child?
I feel like trusts only reason for existence is to dodge tax.
It might be be because her son isn’t old enough to have been simply put on the deeds . In that case you need a trust .
OT - Prior to today Rayner was most likely to be the next PM and no doubt losing that is a difficult pill to swallow.
However, this is a resignation issue both as a Minister and IMHO as an MP. I understand current MPs tend to think these things don't matter but they do. Certainly she should be gone as a Minister and putting the ball in Starmer's court to sack her rather than being ready to preempt the inevitable is not the sign of either a team player or a capable politician
Not a big fan of Angela's, but I'm not convinced that voters in general care very much. I've not read every detail but gather that she misinterpreted the rules during a divorce. It's a fringe issue for most people. However, resigning to sort out her affairs may make sense, and would probably be enough to enable her to stand for the leadership in a couple of years.
I think they will care - because a lot of people are looking at the £800,000 flat and asking how can she afford that
£400k from her half of the sale of the family property into trust, paid for out of the financial settlement for her child’s future care needs & the other half from a mortgage at ~5x MP‘s salary of £80k. (Exact financial details to be determined, but it will probably turn out to be something like that.)
Sorry, how does she “sell” her property into trust for her children? Who is giving her £400k? Wasn’t the house also valued at a convenient £650k for settlement into the Trust.
I was making up the numbers. If the house was £650k, then presumably her & her husband received £325k each.
The trust that received the settlement payment from the NHS to fund care for her child is the legal entity giving her the £325k in this scenario.
Wait a minute. So she's "sold" her share of her former home to a trust in order to extract hundreds of thousands of pounds from a medical settlement awarded to her child to buy a very expensive flat somewhere else?
That sounds worse to me than making a mistake over stamp duty.
What the British diplomats think, but cannot say. Former Conservative chairman Lord Patten describing the "gathering of blood soaked dictators" in Shanghai as in part "a triumph for the ignorance of Trump’s foreign policy". Patten says the leader present in Shanghai that is most difficult to explain is the Indian prime minister Modi adding “that has happened as a result of America’s clueless diplomacy. The way in which Trump has managed to drive people into China’s arms is a very good display of the crazed diplomacy this sociopath has been inflicting on the rest of us. "In dealing with Trump, we have to recognise that America historically was our best friend and ally. Is that true today? I think at least self-respect has some part to play in foreign policy, and when the King in some style welcomes Trump on a state visit what values can we point which Trump shares with the rest of us? "He is on the road to becoming an authoritarian which makes it very difficult to explain to countries in Asia why democracy is better for them, and their security".
Imagine if it was a political opponent who had done this I’m sure Saint Angela of PB centrist dads would take the same benevolent vote her party and sycophants are taking now
Why would they care about her predicament ?
I certainly don't (if only because I have no bets on the next Labour leader).
Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .
And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.
Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .
So tax minimisation is actually OK providing you have a good enough reason to do it?
The trust was set up to look after her son , that’s it. Any good parent would do what they could to do that given he’s now disabled . The Tories who were happy to fellate Bozo and Tice who supports a traitor should STFU .
Rayner doesn’t need lectures from them .
In what way is it necessary to set up a trust to look after a child?
I feel like trusts only reason for existence is to dodge tax.
Because the child is under age, or not otherwise competent to manage their own affairs & has been given a large sum of money. The money is not the property of the parents, it is the property of the child but someone under 18 cannot legally own it. So the parents hold it in trust for them, either until they come of age or perhaps more permanently if the child is never going to be capable of managing their own affairs.
You should pray that you’ll never be in a situation where the creation of such a trust matters to you & yours. The circumstances that demand it are almost always awful ones.
Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .
And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.
Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .
So tax minimisation is actually OK providing you have a good enough reason to do it?
The trust was set up to look after her son , that’s it. Any good parent would do what they could to do that given he’s now disabled . The Tories who were happy to fellate Bozo and Tice who supports a traitor should STFU .
Rayner doesn’t need lectures from them .
In what way is it necessary to set up a trust to look after a child?
I feel like trusts only reason for existence is to dodge tax.
If the child has been awarded a large financial settlement to pay for their care for the rest of their life. Then a trust with independent trustees would seem a sensible precaution in the child's interest.
"She said in her statement: “Ashton remains my family home, as it has been for over a decade. It contains the majority of my possessions and it is where I am registered for most official and financial purposes ranging from credit cards to the dentist to the electoral roll. But most importantly, it is where my children live and have gone to school and now college, and where I regularly live while caring for them.”
Rayner has another property she spends time in, too – a grace-and-favour apartment in Admiralty House on Whitehall. She neither owns this nor pays council tax on it.
This is one reason some have accused her of hypocrisy. For almost everything, Rayner counts the Ashton home as her main property. For stamp duty reasons only, the Hove flat took precedence"
It already looked dodgy af. Where did she get the money?! But now there is potential fraud, to add to the dodginess
And she's housing minister
This is surely not survivable
It depends whether she engaged in tax evasion or not. And we don't know.
My problem is the optics. Basic principle in our modern democracy surely has to be that you live in and around the constituency? I give a little leeway for people who find themselves removed from it by a boundary change, but in and around the constituents you represent.
She claims that she still does. But not when declaring taxes? Even when the belief was that this tax arrangement was allowable it looked politically brave.
Yes, it's the optics
Even if it turns out she has a decent excuse for underpaid tax, the optics are terminal. At the very least she bent the law to avoid tax, on a lovely new flat, by claming her real home is hundreds of miles from her constituency. And she is housing minister?!
Can't be squared away
That point can be squared away. I'll do it now.
The stamp duty payable on the Hove flat depends on whether it was the only property she owned when she bought it. She declared it was. This meant she avoided the higher rate of stamp duty that's applicable to second (and third etc) properties.
This is not tantamount to her claiming it as her 'real home'. Main residence is a separate matter which isn't relevant to the stamp duty calculation.
In which case, there would be no underpayment. However, she says that there was an underpayment. So, the Return was incorrect.
That might be an innocent, or negligent mistakr, rather than fraudulent, in fact, it most likely was.
Yes exactly. The issue would appear to be the trust which owns the family house. That constitutes an interest in it (for her) such that the flat becomes not her only owned property and thus liable for the higher rate of stamp duty.
They must now ascertain whether the error was an innocent one. If it was perhaps she survives (and deserves to). If not she surely doesn't.
My view is that she should resign as a minister, if HMRC impose a penalty. But, not otherwise.
Essentially, penalties are imposed depending on whether the underpayment was innocent, negligent, or deliberate; and whether the disclosure of the underpayment was voluntary or prompted. On a few occasions, as a professional executor, I've discovered that I have underpaid Inheritance Tax, because more assets of the estate have come to light. I've faced no penalty, because the underpayment was innocent, and I disclosed it without any prompting. All I had to do was pay the balance with interest.
Rayner has voluntarily disclosed the underpayment, and it is most unlikely that she was deliberately filing a false return (if she did, she would be made to resign as an MP). So, the issue is likely to be innocence v negligence.
That pretty much nails it, I think. Although I imagine it will be the politics that mainly dictates the outcome for her.
Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .
And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.
Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .
So tax minimisation is actually OK providing you have a good enough reason to do it?
The trust was set up to look after her son , that’s it. Any good parent would do what they could to do that given he’s now disabled . The Tories who were happy to fellate Bozo and Tice who supports a traitor should STFU .
Rayner doesn’t need lectures from them .
In what way is it necessary to set up a trust to look after a child?
I feel like trusts only reason for existence is to dodge tax.
You set up a trust because it is a child who can't directly own the asset. The trustees look after the interests of the child.
It's not a good look. At the very least it was aggressive tax minimisation, while criticising others for similar behaviour. (I.e. rank hypocricy.)
It's entirely possible it is outright tax evasion.
I like "Our Ange", and thing she's a great bruiser. She's also essentially impossible to remove if she does not want to go. But this was bad behaviuour.
As suggested the other day even before this tax kerfuffle, it looks bad for a Labour would-be leader.
But context is everything. The second MP who springs to mind for home-shuffling is Robert Jenrick, the man who would be LotO, who drove between first and second and third homes during the pandemic. So it is unfortunate for Rayner that, due to Labour's landslide, so many backbenchers will not remember the days when MPs routinely flipped the designations of first and second homes to maximise their parliamentary expenses. To the newbies, this looks bad.
The public attitudes of Labour and Tory MPs towards tax ... minimisation do also differ quite a bit.
Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .
And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.
Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .
You really do not see just how this looks do you
Rayner's previous tweets about other politicians make her continuing in office utter hypocrisy and I doubt the public will be on her side
The big question to be answered is whether or not President Xi of China will mention the massive amount of support and “blood” that The United States of America gave to China in order to help it to secure its FREEDOM from a very unfriendly foreign invader. Many Americans died in China’s quest for Victory and Glory. I hope that they are rightfully Honored and Remembered for their Bravery and Sacrifice! May President Xi and the wonderful people of China have a great and lasting day of celebration. Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America. PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP' https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/115137717177283585
Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .
And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.
Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .
So tax minimisation is actually OK providing you have a good enough reason to do it?
The trust was set up to look after her son , that’s it. Any good parent would do what they could to do that given he’s now disabled . The Tories who were happy to fellate Bozo and Tice who supports a traitor should STFU .
Rayner doesn’t need lectures from them .
In what way is it necessary to set up a trust to look after a child?
I feel like trusts only reason for existence is to dodge tax.
You set up a trust because it is a child who can't directly own the asset. The trustees look after the interests of the child.
The big question to be answered is whether or not President Xi of China will mention the massive amount of support and “blood” that The United States of America gave to China in order to help it to secure its FREEDOM from a very unfriendly foreign invader. Many Americans died in China’s quest for Victory and Glory. I hope that they are rightfully Honored and Remembered for their Bravery and Sacrifice! May President Xi and the wonderful people of China have a great and lasting day of celebration. Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America. PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP' https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/115137717177283585
Irked that several of his favourite authoritarians didn't send an invite ?
OT - Prior to today Rayner was most likely to be the next PM and no doubt losing that is a difficult pill to swallow.
However, this is a resignation issue both as a Minister and IMHO as an MP. I understand current MPs tend to think these things don't matter but they do. Certainly she should be gone as a Minister and putting the ball in Starmer's court to sack her rather than being ready to preempt the inevitable is not the sign of either a team player or a capable politician
Not a big fan of Angela's, but I'm not convinced that voters in general care very much. I've not read every detail but gather that she misinterpreted the rules during a divorce. It's a fringe issue for most people. However, resigning to sort out her affairs may make sense, and would probably be enough to enable her to stand for the leadership in a couple of years.
I think they will care - because a lot of people are looking at the £800,000 flat and asking how can she afford that
£400k from her half of the sale of the family property into trust, paid for out of the financial settlement for her child’s future care needs & the other half from a mortgage at ~5x MP‘s salary of £80k. (Exact financial details to be determined, but it will probably turn out to be something like that.)
Sorry, how does she “sell” her property into trust for her children? Who is giving her £400k? Wasn’t the house also valued at a convenient £650k for settlement into the Trust.
I was making up the numbers. If the house was £650k, then presumably her & her husband received £325k each.
The trust that received the settlement payment from the NHS to fund care for her child is the legal entity giving her the £325k in this scenario.
Wait a minute. So she's "sold" her share of her former home to a trust in order to extract hundreds of thousands of pounds from a medical settlement awarded to her child to buy a very expensive flat somewhere else?
That sounds worse to me than making a mistake over stamp duty.
It does sound like self-dealing, but equally it seems to me that owning the family home to ensure continuity of housing in the future isn’t the worst thing to spend part of a medical settlement on. This way, the house remains the property of the child even after the death of their parents & will never have to be sold out from under them in order to pay IHT, regardless of future IHT threshold changes.
The value of the house will probably track inflation fairly closely & if circumstances require it can always be sold in the future to fund the purchase of a more suitable property.
It's not a good look. At the very least it was aggressive tax minimisation, while criticising others for similar behaviour. (I.e. rank hypocricy.)
It's entirely possible it is outright tax evasion.
I like "Our Ange", and thing she's a great bruiser. She's also essentially impossible to remove if she does not want to go. But this was bad behaviuour.
According to her, it was an error. To say, "At the very least it was aggressive tax minimisation" is clearly wrong. At the very least, she and her ex set up a trust because of her son's life-changing injuries and, because of the confusion arising from the trust owning a property and not Rayner, but her counting as owning it for certain tax purposes, she made a mistake.
At the very least may be being too generous to her, but at the very least, it was an innocent error.
Would she be as charitable if it was a political opponent ?
Probably not, but I was commenting on a sentence that began "At the very least", so I was looking at the situation in those terms.
OT - Prior to today Rayner was most likely to be the next PM and no doubt losing that is a difficult pill to swallow.
However, this is a resignation issue both as a Minister and IMHO as an MP. I understand current MPs tend to think these things don't matter but they do. Certainly she should be gone as a Minister and putting the ball in Starmer's court to sack her rather than being ready to preempt the inevitable is not the sign of either a team player or a capable politician
Not a big fan of Angela's, but I'm not convinced that voters in general care very much. I've not read every detail but gather that she misinterpreted the rules during a divorce. It's a fringe issue for most people. However, resigning to sort out her affairs may make sense, and would probably be enough to enable her to stand for the leadership in a couple of years.
I think they will care - because a lot of people are looking at the £800,000 flat and asking how can she afford that
£400k from her half of the sale of the family property into trust, paid for out of the financial settlement for her child’s future care needs & the other half from a mortgage at ~5x MP‘s salary of £80k. (Exact financial details to be determined, but it will probably turn out to be something like that.)
Sorry, how does she “sell” her property into trust for her children? Who is giving her £400k? Wasn’t the house also valued at a convenient £650k for settlement into the Trust.
I was making up the numbers. If the house was £650k, then presumably her & her husband received £325k each.
The trust that received the settlement payment from the NHS to fund care for her child is the legal entity giving her the £325k in this scenario.
Wait a minute. So she's "sold" her share of her former home to a trust in order to extract hundreds of thousands of pounds from a medical settlement awarded to her child to buy a very expensive flat somewhere else?
That sounds worse to me than making a mistake over stamp duty.
I think she has to resign - even if there was a genuine mistake (and as the Lead Trustee for a trust for my children and nieces my initial thought was there was nothing wrong as she only owned one property). Purely on optics - it doesn't look good for the DPM and housing minister to be pocketing £40k on buying a smart flat when there is both a shortage of money and housing. Why do politicians never learn that you have to be squeaky clean, and look even cleaner?
As an aside, on the questions over council tax on second homes, it occurred to me I'd never been asked if my current residence is my only one, so I looked up the Council Tax and found to my surprise that Havering has brought in a 2nd home surcharge this year. I thought it was only something that was applied in holiday/2nd home hotspots but it must be universal now if even Havering are doing it.
Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .
And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.
Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .
So tax minimisation is actually OK providing you have a good enough reason to do it?
The trust was set up to look after her son , that’s it. Any good parent would do what they could to do that given he’s now disabled . The Tories who were happy to fellate Bozo and Tice who supports a traitor should STFU .
Rayner doesn’t need lectures from them .
In what way is it necessary to set up a trust to look after a child?
I feel like trusts only reason for existence is to dodge tax.
You set up a trust because it is a child who can't directly own the asset. The trustees look after the interests of the child.
Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .
And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.
Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .
You really do not see just how this looks do you
Rayner's previous tweets about other politicians make her continuing in office utter hypocrisy and I doubt the public will be on her side
Social media is awash with angry Labour tribalists demanding benefit of the doubt and awaiting due process. You know, like they always do for any other party's MPs 'issues'
If conspiracy or cock up she should still fall on her sword. She will be flung from office within a fortnight so best to go now. Back in the Blair days, Peter Hain was hounded out after ten days of being THE daily BBC News headline, and Hain was a white South African former Liberal and not a gobby Manc.former council house earth mother.
Starmer held the Tories to account over scandalous conspiracy and cock up. Granted Tory Ministers (particularly under Johnson) weren't hounded out like Rayner will be, but Starmer still made the accusation, so what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .
And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.
Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .
So tax minimisation is actually OK providing you have a good enough reason to do it?
The trust was set up to look after her son , that’s it. Any good parent would do what they could to do that given he’s now disabled . The Tories who were happy to fellate Bozo and Tice who supports a traitor should STFU .
Rayner doesn’t need lectures from them .
In what way is it necessary to set up a trust to look after a child?
I feel like trusts only reason for existence is to dodge tax.
You set up a trust because it is a child who can't directly own the asset. The trustees look after the interests of the child.
Where does this situation that there was a payout from the NHs for her child come from, genuine question? I can’t find anything apart from the fact that one of her children was premature and tragically has bad health issues as a result but nowhere does it state that this was due to an NHS error that would have been compensated for, she herself praises the NHs for their work helping him, so I’m still at a loss where this money to buy the house on behalf of the trust comes from.
Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .
And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.
Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .
So tax minimisation is actually OK providing you have a good enough reason to do it?
The trust was set up to look after her son , that’s it. Any good parent would do what they could to do that given he’s now disabled . The Tories who were happy to fellate Bozo and Tice who supports a traitor should STFU .
Rayner doesn’t need lectures from them .
What I do not understand is your constant STFU when discussions are difficult for you
And this mantra about Tories is not shared by many commentators who are highly critical including Kevin Maguire
Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .
And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.
Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .
You really do not see just how this looks do you
Rayner's previous tweets about other politicians make her continuing in office utter hypocrisy and I doubt the public will be on her side
I know how it looks to some . If she’s cleared and it was a genuine error then she should stay as Deputy PM . Starmer clearly was given notice of what Rayner was going to do today and I’m sure will have satisfied himself that she will be exonerated. He might be dull , he might be clueless when it comes to politics but he’s not stupid and given his legal background will have a good idea of what’s likely to happen with the two investigations.
Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .
And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.
Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .
So tax minimisation is actually OK providing you have a good enough reason to do it?
The trust was set up to look after her son , that’s it. Any good parent would do what they could to do that given he’s now disabled . The Tories who were happy to fellate Bozo and Tice who supports a traitor should STFU .
Rayner doesn’t need lectures from them .
In what way is it necessary to set up a trust to look after a child?
I feel like trusts only reason for existence is to dodge tax.
You set up a trust because it is a child who can't directly own the asset. The trustees look after the interests of the child.
Was it essential for her to be a trustee?
I don't think we know whether she is a trustee or not. I think it's irrelevant to the point. Because she sometimes lived in the house she had a beneficial interest so she couldn't claim that the Hove property was her only property. However it would make sense for her to be a trustee to look after the interest of her child, together with her ex-husband.
The big question to be answered is whether or not President Xi of China will mention the massive amount of support and “blood” that The United States of America gave to China in order to help it to secure its FREEDOM from a very unfriendly foreign invader. Many Americans died in China’s quest for Victory and Glory. I hope that they are rightfully Honored and Remembered for their Bravery and Sacrifice! May President Xi and the wonderful people of China have a great and lasting day of celebration. Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America. PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP' https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/115137717177283585
Irked that several of his favourite authoritarians didn't send an invite ?
Perhaps but looks like an own goal by Putin sucking up to China just after he had got a one on one with Trump to discuss Ukraine.
Zelensky if he is clever will tell Trump how appalled he was that the US was not sufficiently honoured in the Chinese parade and that Ukraine will fly 1000 US flags in Kyiv every VE day in response
The new Deputy Leader of the Green Party - one Mothin Ali - looks an "interesting" character. Wonder what his take is on organic courgettes.
"Slightly closer to his ward, but on a similar theme, the now deputy leader of The Green Party called the Jewish chaplain at Leeds University, Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch, 'creep', a 'low-life' and an 'animal'. Ali also falsely claimed that Rabbi Deutsch had tried to kill women and children in Gaza. "Unsurprisingly, the Rabbi and his family were forced into hiding after this attack after receiving a large number of death threats. From those who want peace, obvs."
Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .
And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.
Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .
You really do not see just how this looks do you
Rayner's previous tweets about other politicians make her continuing in office utter hypocrisy and I doubt the public will be on her side
I know how it looks to some . If she’s cleared and it was a genuine error then she should stay as Deputy PM . Starmer clearly was given notice of what Rayner was going to do today and I’m sure will have satisfied himself that she will be exonerated. He might be dull , he might be clueless when it comes to politics but he’s not stupid and given his legal background will have a good idea of what’s likely to happen with the two investigations.
He is clueless when it comes to politics so he will probably try to cling on to her, making it all worse, because he doesn't understand politics. He just understands "rules"
And then she will have to resign anyway, or continue as a permanent wound
"She said in her statement: “Ashton remains my family home, as it has been for over a decade. It contains the majority of my possessions and it is where I am registered for most official and financial purposes ranging from credit cards to the dentist to the electoral roll. But most importantly, it is where my children live and have gone to school and now college, and where I regularly live while caring for them.”
Rayner has another property she spends time in, too – a grace-and-favour apartment in Admiralty House on Whitehall. She neither owns this nor pays council tax on it.
This is one reason some have accused her of hypocrisy. For almost everything, Rayner counts the Ashton home as her main property. For stamp duty reasons only, the Hove flat took precedence"
It already looked dodgy af. Where did she get the money?! But now there is potential fraud, to add to the dodginess
And she's housing minister
This is surely not survivable
It depends whether she engaged in tax evasion or not. And we don't know.
My problem is the optics. Basic principle in our modern democracy surely has to be that you live in and around the constituency? I give a little leeway for people who find themselves removed from it by a boundary change, but in and around the constituents you represent.
She claims that she still does. But not when declaring taxes? Even when the belief was that this tax arrangement was allowable it looked politically brave.
Yes, it's the optics
Even if it turns out she has a decent excuse for underpaid tax, the optics are terminal. At the very least she bent the law to avoid tax, on a lovely new flat, by claming her real home is hundreds of miles from her constituency. And she is housing minister?!
Can't be squared away
That point can be squared away. I'll do it now.
The stamp duty payable on the Hove flat depends on whether it was the only property she owned when she bought it. She declared it was. This meant she avoided the higher rate of stamp duty that's applicable to second (and third etc) properties.
This is not tantamount to her claiming it as her 'real home'. Main residence is a separate matter which isn't relevant to the stamp duty calculation.
In which case, there would be no underpayment. However, she says that there was an underpayment. So, the Return was incorrect.
That might be an innocent, or negligent mistakr, rather than fraudulent, in fact, it most likely was.
Yes exactly. The issue would appear to be the trust which owns the family house. That constitutes an interest in it (for her) such that the flat becomes not her only owned property and thus liable for the higher rate of stamp duty.
They must now ascertain whether the error was an innocent one. If it was perhaps she survives (and deserves to). If not she surely doesn't.
My view is that she should resign as a minister, if HMRC impose a penalty. But, not otherwise.
Essentially, penalties are imposed depending on whether the underpayment was innocent, negligent, or deliberate; and whether the disclosure of the underpayment was voluntary or prompted. On a few occasions, as a professional executor, I've discovered that I have underpaid Inheritance Tax, because more assets of the estate have come to light. I've faced no penalty, because the underpayment was innocent, and I disclosed it without any prompting. All I had to do was pay the balance with interest.
Rayner has voluntarily disclosed the underpayment, and it is most unlikely that she was deliberately filing a false return (if she did, she would be made to resign as an MP). So, the issue is likely to be innocence v negligence.
All of this is just another major distraction for the government, though, over something which is almost impossible to explain to the average voter, other than in the kind of tabloid headlines which are giving her such grief.
Is it fair ? I really don't have much of an idea either way.
But she might have been far better off to have resigned and made her case away from the tabloid barrage, after the Revenue judgment came out.
That might have ended up enhancing both her and the government's reputations. As it is, that outcome now seems unlikely.
She won't be 'cleared'. She avoided 40k in tax. The only question is whether it was mendacious or moronic. The tax was avoided regardless and shes meant to be bringing in harsher taxation on housing. She is obviously not competent nor appropriate to be in charge of housing policy whether or not she clings on like a limpet to her cabinet position
OT - Prior to today Rayner was most likely to be the next PM and no doubt losing that is a difficult pill to swallow.
However, this is a resignation issue both as a Minister and IMHO as an MP. I understand current MPs tend to think these things don't matter but they do. Certainly she should be gone as a Minister and putting the ball in Starmer's court to sack her rather than being ready to preempt the inevitable is not the sign of either a team player or a capable politician
Not a big fan of Angela's, but I'm not convinced that voters in general care very much. I've not read every detail but gather that she misinterpreted the rules during a divorce. It's a fringe issue for most people. However, resigning to sort out her affairs may make sense, and would probably be enough to enable her to stand for the leadership in a couple of years.
I think they will care - because a lot of people are looking at the £800,000 flat and asking how can she afford that
£400k from her half of the sale of the family property into trust, paid for out of the financial settlement for her child’s future care needs & the other half from a mortgage at ~5x MP‘s salary of £80k. (Exact financial details to be determined, but it will probably turn out to be something like that.)
Sorry, how does she “sell” her property into trust for her children? Who is giving her £400k? Wasn’t the house also valued at a convenient £650k for settlement into the Trust.
I was making up the numbers. If the house was £650k, then presumably her & her husband received £325k each.
The trust that received the settlement payment from the NHS to fund care for her child is the legal entity giving her the £325k in this scenario.
Wait a minute. So she's "sold" her share of her former home to a trust in order to extract hundreds of thousands of pounds from a medical settlement awarded to her child to buy a very expensive flat somewhere else?
That sounds worse to me than making a mistake over stamp duty.
It does sound like self-dealing, but equally it seems to me that owning the family home to ensure continuity of housing in the future isn’t the worst thing to spend part of a medical settlement on. This way, the house remains the property of the child even after the death of their parents & will never have to be sold out from under them in order to pay IHT, regardless of future IHT threshold changes.
The value of the house will probably track inflation fairly closely & if circumstances require it can always be sold in the future to fund the purchase of a more suitable property.
NB. To give an idea of the size of compensation claims in these kind of cases, this consultation document from 2016 says that “The average settlement for a severe neurological birth injury case equates to a value of £6.25m, including costs paid out over the injured person's lifetime.”
We obviously don’t know anything about Raynor’s child (and nor should we) but settlement payments in the mid single digit £millions in 2025 would be plausible. Spending £650k of that to gain security of future housing might seem an entirely reasonable expense, if such a settlement had been paid out.
Stamp Duty is about ownership not where you live . Where she actually resides for council tax is irrelevant. Some of the media seem to be confused about this .
If only Angela Rayner, deputy PM of the UK, had contacts, perhaps at her workplace, who could point her to the very best tax and legal advice for such purchases who would do all the right due diligence and ensure all was tickety boo
Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .
And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.
Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .
You really do not see just how this looks do you
Rayner's previous tweets about other politicians make her continuing in office utter hypocrisy and I doubt the public will be on her side
I know how it looks to some . If she’s cleared and it was a genuine error then she should stay as Deputy PM . Starmer clearly was given notice of what Rayner was going to do today and I’m sure will have satisfied himself that she will be exonerated. He might be dull , he might be clueless when it comes to politics but he’s not stupid and given his legal background will have a good idea of what’s likely to happen with the two investigations.
He is clueless when it comes to politics so he will probably try to cling on to her, making it all worse, because he doesn't understand politics. He just understands "rules"
And then she will have to resign anyway, or continue as a permanent wound
Yes, and unfortunately for Rayner, probably around 80% of the public who become aware of this story won’t look beyond “Angela Rayner didn’t pay £40k tax when she should’ve.”
Stuff about trusts, rules, legal advice will fly over the heads of most people because they won’t delve into the detail. Only us political obsessives and the regular followers of current affairs might look into it further, and even then there’ll be plenty who won’t understand the arrangement in question (trusts just aren’t things that many people have regular dealings with).
Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .
And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.
Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .
You really do not see just how this looks do you
Rayner's previous tweets about other politicians make her continuing in office utter hypocrisy and I doubt the public will be on her side
I know how it looks to some . If she’s cleared and it was a genuine error then she should stay as Deputy PM . Starmer clearly was given notice of what Rayner was going to do today and I’m sure will have satisfied himself that she will be exonerated. He might be dull , he might be clueless when it comes to politics but he’s not stupid and given his legal background will have a good idea of what’s likely to happen with the two investigations.
He is clueless when it comes to politics so he will probably try to cling on to her, making it all worse, because he doesn't understand politics. He just understands "rules"
And then she will have to resign anyway, or continue as a permanent wound
If she’s going to resign it will be quick . If she made a genuine mistake then she shouldn’t resign IMO.
Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .
And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.
Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .
So tax minimisation is actually OK providing you have a good enough reason to do it?
The trust was set up to look after her son , that’s it. Any good parent would do what they could to do that given he’s now disabled . The Tories who were happy to fellate Bozo and Tice who supports a traitor should STFU .
Rayner doesn’t need lectures from them .
In what way is it necessary to set up a trust to look after a child?
I feel like trusts only reason for existence is to dodge tax.
You set up a trust because it is a child who can't directly own the asset. The trustees look after the interests of the child.
Where does this situation that there was a payout from the NHs for her child come from, genuine question? I can’t find anything apart from the fact that one of her children was premature and tragically has bad health issues as a result but nowhere does it state that this was due to an NHS error that would have been compensated for, she herself praises the NHs for their work helping him, so I’m still at a loss where this money to buy the house on behalf of the trust comes from.
From her statement published in the Guardian today:
“A court-instructed trust was established in 2020 following a deeply personal and distressing incident involving my son as a premature baby. He was left with lifelong disabilities, and the trust was established to manage the award on his behalf – a standard practice in circumstances like ours.”
The new Deputy Leader of the Green Party - one Mothin Ali - looks an "interesting" character. Wonder what his take is on organic courgettes.
"Slightly closer to his ward, but on a similar theme, the now deputy leader of The Green Party called the Jewish chaplain at Leeds University, Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch, 'creep', a 'low-life' and an 'animal'. Ali also falsely claimed that Rabbi Deutsch had tried to kill women and children in Gaza. "Unsurprisingly, the Rabbi and his family were forced into hiding after this attack after receiving a large number of death threats. From those who want peace, obvs."
While Starmer can sack Rayner as a minister, her position as Deputy Leader is a different matter. If she doesn't want to resign from being DL, is the NEC able to get rid?
Stamp Duty is about ownership not where you live . Where she actually resides for council tax is irrelevant. Some of the media seem to be confused about this .
That's rather kind of you. I have no doubt much of it is deliberate; that stuff about the significance of £650K being the IHT limit (for a couple? without children?) was rather revealing.
OT - Prior to today Rayner was most likely to be the next PM and no doubt losing that is a difficult pill to swallow.
However, this is a resignation issue both as a Minister and IMHO as an MP. I understand current MPs tend to think these things don't matter but they do. Certainly she should be gone as a Minister and putting the ball in Starmer's court to sack her rather than being ready to preempt the inevitable is not the sign of either a team player or a capable politician
Not a big fan of Angela's, but I'm not convinced that voters in general care very much. I've not read every detail but gather that she misinterpreted the rules during a divorce. It's a fringe issue for most people. However, resigning to sort out her affairs may make sense, and would probably be enough to enable her to stand for the leadership in a couple of years.
I think they will care - because a lot of people are looking at the £800,000 flat and asking how can she afford that
£400k from her half of the sale of the family property into trust, paid for out of the financial settlement for her child’s future care needs & the other half from a mortgage at ~5x MP‘s salary of £80k. (Exact financial details to be determined, but it will probably turn out to be something like that.)
Sorry, how does she “sell” her property into trust for her children? Who is giving her £400k? Wasn’t the house also valued at a convenient £650k for settlement into the Trust.
I was making up the numbers. If the house was £650k, then presumably her & her husband received £325k each.
The trust that received the settlement payment from the NHS to fund care for her child is the legal entity giving her the £325k in this scenario.
Wait a minute. So she's "sold" her share of her former home to a trust in order to extract hundreds of thousands of pounds from a medical settlement awarded to her child to buy a very expensive flat somewhere else?
That sounds worse to me than making a mistake over stamp duty.
It does sound like self-dealing, but equally it seems to me that owning the family home to ensure continuity of housing in the future isn’t the worst thing to spend part of a medical settlement on. This way, the house remains the property of the child even after the death of their parents & will never have to be sold out from under them in order to pay IHT, regardless of future IHT threshold changes.
The value of the house will probably track inflation fairly closely & if circumstances require it can always be sold in the future to fund the purchase of a more suitable property.
NB. To give an idea of the size of compensation claims in these kind of cases, this consultation document from 2016 says that “The average settlement for a severe neurological birth injury case equates to a value of £6.25m, including costs paid out over the injured person's lifetime.”
We obviously don’t know anything about Raynor’s child (and nor should we) but settlement payments in the mid single digit £millions in 2025 would be plausible. Spending £650k of that to gain security of future housing might seem an entirely reasonable expense, if such a settlement had been paid out.
That might not work out so well for Rayner
I agree we neither need nor have any right to know the details here, BUT if Rayner does use this as a defence/explanation, then it becomes legitimate to ask for numbers. And if it turns out she is sitting on, say, £2m in cash then the idea she nonetheless evaded £40k tax with some clever accounting, which went wrong, looks even worse
OT - Prior to today Rayner was most likely to be the next PM and no doubt losing that is a difficult pill to swallow.
However, this is a resignation issue both as a Minister and IMHO as an MP. I understand current MPs tend to think these things don't matter but they do. Certainly she should be gone as a Minister and putting the ball in Starmer's court to sack her rather than being ready to preempt the inevitable is not the sign of either a team player or a capable politician
Not a big fan of Angela's, but I'm not convinced that voters in general care very much. I've not read every detail but gather that she misinterpreted the rules during a divorce. It's a fringe issue for most people. However, resigning to sort out her affairs may make sense, and would probably be enough to enable her to stand for the leadership in a couple of years.
I think they will care - because a lot of people are looking at the £800,000 flat and asking how can she afford that
£400k from her half of the sale of the family property into trust, paid for out of the financial settlement for her child’s future care needs & the other half from a mortgage at ~5x MP‘s salary of £80k. (Exact financial details to be determined, but it will probably turn out to be something like that.)
Sorry, how does she “sell” her property into trust for her children? Who is giving her £400k? Wasn’t the house also valued at a convenient £650k for settlement into the Trust.
I was making up the numbers. If the house was £650k, then presumably her & her husband received £325k each.
The trust that received the settlement payment from the NHS to fund care for her child is the legal entity giving her the £325k in this scenario.
Wait a minute. So she's "sold" her share of her former home to a trust in order to extract hundreds of thousands of pounds from a medical settlement awarded to her child to buy a very expensive flat somewhere else?
That sounds worse to me than making a mistake over stamp duty.
It does sound like self-dealing, but equally it seems to me that owning the family home to ensure continuity of housing in the future isn’t the worst thing to spend part of a medical settlement on. This way, the house remains the property of the child even after the death of their parents & will never have to be sold out from under them in order to pay IHT, regardless of future IHT threshold changes.
The value of the house will probably track inflation fairly closely & if circumstances require it can always be sold in the future to fund the purchase of a more suitable property.
NB. To give an idea of the size of compensation claims in these kind of cases, this consultation document from 2016 says that “The average settlement for a severe neurological birth injury case equates to a value of £6.25m, including costs paid out over the injured person's lifetime.”
We obviously don’t know anything about Raynor’s child (and nor should we) but settlement payments in the mid single digit £millions in 2025 would be plausible. Spending £650k of that to gain security of future housing might seem an entirely reasonable expense, if such a settlement had been paid out.
To which the average person is thinking well if the MP came upon such a windfall why isn’t she paying £40k in stamp duty on the fancy new flat that’s neither in her constituency nor in London where she works?
She won't be 'cleared'. She avoided 40k in tax. The only question is whether it was mendacious or moronic. The tax was avoided regardless and shes meant to be bringing in harsher taxation on housing. She is obviously not competent nor appropriate to be in charge of housing policy whether or not she clings on like a limpet to her cabinet position
Is there also not an issue with her mortgage on the Hove flat now - if she claimed it was her main home for the mortgage then she would be paying less than for a second home mortgage.
Did she tell the mortgage provider that this was her first or second home and if claiming it’s her main home not only benefited from cheaper stamp duty but also from a cheaper mortgage when now she accepts isn’t her main home.
Will the mortgage provider not care, have to rewrite the mortgage or consider it mortgage fraud?
While Starmer can sack Rayner as a minister, her position as Deputy Leader is a different matter. If she doesn't want to resign from being DL, is the NEC able to get rid?
No unless the Labour membership votes her out of it if a Labour MP challenges her for it
Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .
And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.
Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .
So tax minimisation is actually OK providing you have a good enough reason to do it?
The trust was set up to look after her son , that’s it. Any good parent would do what they could to do that given he’s now disabled . The Tories who were happy to fellate Bozo and Tice who supports a traitor should STFU .
Rayner doesn’t need lectures from them .
In what way is it necessary to set up a trust to look after a child?
I feel like trusts only reason for existence is to dodge tax.
You set up a trust because it is a child who can't directly own the asset. The trustees look after the interests of the child.
Where does this situation that there was a payout from the NHs for her child come from, genuine question? I can’t find anything apart from the fact that one of her children was premature and tragically has bad health issues as a result but nowhere does it state that this was due to an NHS error that would have been compensated for, she herself praises the NHs for their work helping him, so I’m still at a loss where this money to buy the house on behalf of the trust comes from.
From her statement published in the Guardian today:
“A court-instructed trust was established in 2020 following a deeply personal and distressing incident involving my son as a premature baby. He was left with lifelong disabilities, and the trust was established to manage the award on his behalf – a standard practice in circumstances like ours.”
Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .
And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.
Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .
You really do not see just how this looks do you
Rayner's previous tweets about other politicians make her continuing in office utter hypocrisy and I doubt the public will be on her side
I know how it looks to some . If she’s cleared and it was a genuine error then she should stay as Deputy PM . Starmer clearly was given notice of what Rayner was going to do today and I’m sure will have satisfied himself that she will be exonerated. He might be dull , he might be clueless when it comes to politics but he’s not stupid and given his legal background will have a good idea of what’s likely to happen with the two investigations.
He is clueless when it comes to politics so he will probably try to cling on to her, making it all worse, because he doesn't understand politics. He just understands "rules"
And then she will have to resign anyway, or continue as a permanent wound
If she’s going to resign it will be quick . If she made a genuine mistake then she shouldn’t resign IMO.
As @numbertwelve notes, all the public will see is that a rich minister dodged £40k in tax that she should have paid, for a house deal. On top of that, she is housing minister. On top of that. she is known for brutally attacking "scum Tory" tax dodgers. On top of all THAT, her government is about to load us all down with new taxes, possibly taxes on housing! On top of all that once more, the public is in a particularly unforgiving mood, and Labour are one of the most unpopular governments in British history: 11% approval
The politics of this are merciless. She has to resign as minister, at least, And the sooner it happens the sooner the bleeding stops and maybe she could return in future
And recall, just yesterday I was saying she would make a better leader than Skyr. I quite like her, she has a bit of oomph, even if I abjure her politics. But this is not something she can shrug off. Better to take the hit, do the decent thing, have a second go later
Setting up a trust for for a child or adult with disabilities means that the money will not affect their eligibility for benefits since the money technically does not belong to them, but the trustees have responsibility for it.
"She said in her statement: “Ashton remains my family home, as it has been for over a decade. It contains the majority of my possessions and it is where I am registered for most official and financial purposes ranging from credit cards to the dentist to the electoral roll. But most importantly, it is where my children live and have gone to school and now college, and where I regularly live while caring for them.”
Rayner has another property she spends time in, too – a grace-and-favour apartment in Admiralty House on Whitehall. She neither owns this nor pays council tax on it.
This is one reason some have accused her of hypocrisy. For almost everything, Rayner counts the Ashton home as her main property. For stamp duty reasons only, the Hove flat took precedence"
It already looked dodgy af. Where did she get the money?! But now there is potential fraud, to add to the dodginess
And she's housing minister
This is surely not survivable
It depends whether she engaged in tax evasion or not. And we don't know.
My problem is the optics. Basic principle in our modern democracy surely has to be that you live in and around the constituency? I give a little leeway for people who find themselves removed from it by a boundary change, but in and around the constituents you represent.
She claims that she still does. But not when declaring taxes? Even when the belief was that this tax arrangement was allowable it looked politically brave.
Yes, it's the optics
Even if it turns out she has a decent excuse for underpaid tax, the optics are terminal. At the very least she bent the law to avoid tax, on a lovely new flat, by claming her real home is hundreds of miles from her constituency. And she is housing minister?!
Can't be squared away
That point can be squared away. I'll do it now.
The stamp duty payable on the Hove flat depends on whether it was the only property she owned when she bought it. She declared it was. This meant she avoided the higher rate of stamp duty that's applicable to second (and third etc) properties.
This is not tantamount to her claiming it as her 'real home'. Main residence is a separate matter which isn't relevant to the stamp duty calculation.
In which case, there would be no underpayment. However, she says that there was an underpayment. So, the Return was incorrect.
That might be an innocent, or negligent mistakr, rather than fraudulent, in fact, it most likely was.
Yes exactly. The issue would appear to be the trust which owns the family house. That constitutes an interest in it (for her) such that the flat becomes not her only owned property and thus liable for the higher rate of stamp duty.
They must now ascertain whether the error was an innocent one. If it was perhaps she survives (and deserves to). If not she surely doesn't.
My view is that she should resign as a minister, if HMRC impose a penalty. But, not otherwise.
Essentially, penalties are imposed depending on whether the underpayment was innocent, negligent, or deliberate; and whether the disclosure of the underpayment was voluntary or prompted. On a few occasions, as a professional executor, I've discovered that I have underpaid Inheritance Tax, because more assets of the estate have come to light. I've faced no penalty, because the underpayment was innocent, and I disclosed it without any prompting. All I had to do was pay the balance with interest.
Rayner has voluntarily disclosed the underpayment, and it is most unlikely that she was deliberately filing a false return (if she did, she would be made to resign as an MP). So, the issue is likely to be innocence v negligence.
All of this is just another major distraction for the government, though, over something which is almost impossible to explain to the average voter, other than in the kind of tabloid headlines which are giving her such grief.
Is it fair ? I really don't have much of an idea either way.
But she might have been far better off to have resigned and made her case away from the tabloid barrage, after the Revenue judgment came out.
That might have ended up enhancing both her and the government's reputations. As it is, that outcome now seems unlikely.
I am not sure Labour realise they are under more scrutiny than the Tories and scrutiny is not an issue at all for Reform. Rayner is particularly despised for who she is, so she should have behaved with scrupulous propriety- she didn't.
Rayner short changing the exchequer either with malice or by negligence is a ( political career) hanging offence. Shilling for Putin on the other hand, unless one is Jeremy Corbyn, is not.
OT - Prior to today Rayner was most likely to be the next PM and no doubt losing that is a difficult pill to swallow.
However, this is a resignation issue both as a Minister and IMHO as an MP. I understand current MPs tend to think these things don't matter but they do. Certainly she should be gone as a Minister and putting the ball in Starmer's court to sack her rather than being ready to preempt the inevitable is not the sign of either a team player or a capable politician
Not a big fan of Angela's, but I'm not convinced that voters in general care very much. I've not read every detail but gather that she misinterpreted the rules during a divorce. It's a fringe issue for most people. However, resigning to sort out her affairs may make sense, and would probably be enough to enable her to stand for the leadership in a couple of years.
I think they will care - because a lot of people are looking at the £800,000 flat and asking how can she afford that
£400k from her half of the sale of the family property into trust, paid for out of the financial settlement for her child’s future care needs & the other half from a mortgage at ~5x MP‘s salary of £80k. (Exact financial details to be determined, but it will probably turn out to be something like that.)
Sorry, how does she “sell” her property into trust for her children? Who is giving her £400k? Wasn’t the house also valued at a convenient £650k for settlement into the Trust.
I was making up the numbers. If the house was £650k, then presumably her & her husband received £325k each.
The trust that received the settlement payment from the NHS to fund care for her child is the legal entity giving her the £325k in this scenario.
Wait a minute. So she's "sold" her share of her former home to a trust in order to extract hundreds of thousands of pounds from a medical settlement awarded to her child to buy a very expensive flat somewhere else?
That sounds worse to me than making a mistake over stamp duty.
It does sound like self-dealing, but equally it seems to me that owning the family home to ensure continuity of housing in the future isn’t the worst thing to spend part of a medical settlement on. This way, the house remains the property of the child even after the death of their parents & will never have to be sold out from under them in order to pay IHT, regardless of future IHT threshold changes.
The value of the house will probably track inflation fairly closely & if circumstances require it can always be sold in the future to fund the purchase of a more suitable property.
NB. To give an idea of the size of compensation claims in these kind of cases, this consultation document from 2016 says that “The average settlement for a severe neurological birth injury case equates to a value of £6.25m, including costs paid out over the injured person's lifetime.”
We obviously don’t know anything about Raynor’s child (and nor should we) but settlement payments in the mid single digit £millions in 2025 would be plausible. Spending £650k of that to gain security of future housing might seem an entirely reasonable expense, if such a settlement had been paid out.
To which the average person is thinking well if the MP came upon such a windfall why isn’t she paying £40k in stamp duty on the fancy new flat that’s neither in her constituency nor in London where she works?
The money is not hers - it’s held in trust for the benefit of her child who presumably has long term care needs paid for out of the interest on the trust’s holdings.
You can get that trust to buy assets you own from you, so long as you don’t profit from the transaction to the detriment of the trust, but you can’t have that trust (say) buy you a flat in Bournemouth for your own personal use, nor can you use it to pay the stamp duty for such a purchase.
She won't be 'cleared'. She avoided 40k in tax. The only question is whether it was mendacious or moronic. The tax was avoided regardless and shes meant to be bringing in harsher taxation on housing. She is obviously not competent nor appropriate to be in charge of housing policy whether or not she clings on like a limpet to her cabinet position
Is there also not an issue with her mortgage on the Hove flat now - if she claimed it was her main home for the mortgage then she would be paying less than for a second home mortgage.
Did she tell the mortgage provider that this was her first or second home and if claiming it’s her main home not only benefited from cheaper stamp duty but also from a cheaper mortgage when now she accepts isn’t her main home.
Will the mortgage provider not care, have to rewrite the mortgage or consider it mortgage fraud?
From personal experience, the lender will put you on the SVR if they think you’re letting the property, or it’s not where you’re ordinarily living.
IMHO this would all have been explicable politically if the new house was in her constituency or in London, and not in a seaside resort where she has no other ties.
OT - Prior to today Rayner was most likely to be the next PM and no doubt losing that is a difficult pill to swallow.
However, this is a resignation issue both as a Minister and IMHO as an MP. I understand current MPs tend to think these things don't matter but they do. Certainly she should be gone as a Minister and putting the ball in Starmer's court to sack her rather than being ready to preempt the inevitable is not the sign of either a team player or a capable politician
Not a big fan of Angela's, but I'm not convinced that voters in general care very much. I've not read every detail but gather that she misinterpreted the rules during a divorce. It's a fringe issue for most people. However, resigning to sort out her affairs may make sense, and would probably be enough to enable her to stand for the leadership in a couple of years.
I think they will care - because a lot of people are looking at the £800,000 flat and asking how can she afford that
£400k from her half of the sale of the family property into trust, paid for out of the financial settlement for her child’s future care needs & the other half from a mortgage at ~5x MP‘s salary of £80k. (Exact financial details to be determined, but it will probably turn out to be something like that.)
Sorry, how does she “sell” her property into trust for her children? Who is giving her £400k? Wasn’t the house also valued at a convenient £650k for settlement into the Trust.
I was making up the numbers. If the house was £650k, then presumably her & her husband received £325k each.
The trust that received the settlement payment from the NHS to fund care for her child is the legal entity giving her the £325k in this scenario.
Wait a minute. So she's "sold" her share of her former home to a trust in order to extract hundreds of thousands of pounds from a medical settlement awarded to her child to buy a very expensive flat somewhere else?
That sounds worse to me than making a mistake over stamp duty.
It does sound like self-dealing, but equally it seems to me that owning the family home to ensure continuity of housing in the future isn’t the worst thing to spend part of a medical settlement on. This way, the house remains the property of the child even after the death of their parents & will never have to be sold out from under them in order to pay IHT, regardless of future IHT threshold changes.
The value of the house will probably track inflation fairly closely & if circumstances require it can always be sold in the future to fund the purchase of a more suitable property.
NB. To give an idea of the size of compensation claims in these kind of cases, this consultation document from 2016 says that “The average settlement for a severe neurological birth injury case equates to a value of £6.25m, including costs paid out over the injured person's lifetime.”
We obviously don’t know anything about Raynor’s child (and nor should we) but settlement payments in the mid single digit £millions in 2025 would be plausible. Spending £650k of that to gain security of future housing might seem an entirely reasonable expense, if such a settlement had been paid out.
That might not work out so well for Rayner
I agree we neither need nor have any right to know the details here, BUT if Rayner does use this as a defence/explanation, then it becomes legitimate to ask for numbers. And if it turns out she is sitting on, say, £2m in cash then the idea she nonetheless evaded £40k tax with some clever accounting, which went wrong, looks even worse
It's not her money though. It's for the child.
I agree she should have paid the stamp duty, and it was bad judgement not to have done so.
She won't be 'cleared'. She avoided 40k in tax. The only question is whether it was mendacious or moronic. The tax was avoided regardless and shes meant to be bringing in harsher taxation on housing. She is obviously not competent nor appropriate to be in charge of housing policy whether or not she clings on like a limpet to her cabinet position
Is there also not an issue with her mortgage on the Hove flat now - if she claimed it was her main home for the mortgage then she would be paying less than for a second home mortgage.
Did she tell the mortgage provider that this was her first or second home and if claiming it’s her main home not only benefited from cheaper stamp duty but also from a cheaper mortgage when now she accepts isn’t her main home.
Will the mortgage provider not care, have to rewrite the mortgage or consider it mortgage fraud?
Indeed. And the whole trust thing is irrelevant really. The tax avoidance (whether moronic or mendacious) was to her benefit on her Hove pad and nothing to do with the care of her child
Kemi and the rest of the Tories can do one . Rayner trying to support her son and ensure he’s looked after is now a crime apparently .
And Tice can also do one , supporting Farage the traitor.
Rayner should stress the good parent angle , she tried to do the right thing , was given bad advice and tell the right wing press to go fxck themselves .
You really do not see just how this looks do you
Rayner's previous tweets about other politicians make her continuing in office utter hypocrisy and I doubt the public will be on her side
I know how it looks to some . If she’s cleared and it was a genuine error then she should stay as Deputy PM . Starmer clearly was given notice of what Rayner was going to do today and I’m sure will have satisfied himself that she will be exonerated. He might be dull , he might be clueless when it comes to politics but he’s not stupid and given his legal background will have a good idea of what’s likely to happen with the two investigations.
He is clueless when it comes to politics so he will probably try to cling on to her, making it all worse, because he doesn't understand politics. He just understands "rules"
And then she will have to resign anyway, or continue as a permanent wound
If she’s going to resign it will be quick . If she made a genuine mistake then she shouldn’t resign IMO.
As @numbertwelve notes, all the public will see is that a rich minister dodged £40k in tax that she shoukd have paid, for a house deal. On top of that, she is housing minister. On top of that. she is known for brutally attacking scum Tory tax dodgers. On top of all THAT, her government is about to load us all down with new taxes, possiblty taxes on housing (that they like to evade). On top of all that once more, the public is in a particularly unforgiving mood, and Labour are one of the most unpopular governments in British history: 11% approval
The politics of this are merciless. She has to resign as minister, at least, And the sooner it happens the sooner the bleeding stops and maybe she could return in future
Which would be good news for Starmer, as she is currently his main rival amongst the PLP for the Labour leadership and was previously the great hope of the Labour left
Setting up a trust for for a child or adult with disabilities means that the money will not affect their eligibility for benefits since the money technically does not belong to them, but the trustees have responsibility for it.
Ah, so more tax avoidance then. Win £1m in compensation and then claim means-tested benefits.
Stamp Duty is about ownership not where you live . Where she actually resides for council tax is irrelevant. Some of the media seem to be confused about this .
I'm afraid that key point is doomed to be lost in the fog. Not on here though - we're high end pundits (most of us).
OT - Prior to today Rayner was most likely to be the next PM and no doubt losing that is a difficult pill to swallow.
However, this is a resignation issue both as a Minister and IMHO as an MP. I understand current MPs tend to think these things don't matter but they do. Certainly she should be gone as a Minister and putting the ball in Starmer's court to sack her rather than being ready to preempt the inevitable is not the sign of either a team player or a capable politician
Not a big fan of Angela's, but I'm not convinced that voters in general care very much. I've not read every detail but gather that she misinterpreted the rules during a divorce. It's a fringe issue for most people. However, resigning to sort out her affairs may make sense, and would probably be enough to enable her to stand for the leadership in a couple of years.
I think they will care - because a lot of people are looking at the £800,000 flat and asking how can she afford that
£400k from her half of the sale of the family property into trust, paid for out of the financial settlement for her child’s future care needs & the other half from a mortgage at ~5x MP‘s salary of £80k. (Exact financial details to be determined, but it will probably turn out to be something like that.)
Sorry, how does she “sell” her property into trust for her children? Who is giving her £400k? Wasn’t the house also valued at a convenient £650k for settlement into the Trust.
I was making up the numbers. If the house was £650k, then presumably her & her husband received £325k each.
The trust that received the settlement payment from the NHS to fund care for her child is the legal entity giving her the £325k in this scenario.
Wait a minute. So she's "sold" her share of her former home to a trust in order to extract hundreds of thousands of pounds from a medical settlement awarded to her child to buy a very expensive flat somewhere else?
That sounds worse to me than making a mistake over stamp duty.
It does sound like self-dealing, but equally it seems to me that owning the family home to ensure continuity of housing in the future isn’t the worst thing to spend part of a medical settlement on. This way, the house remains the property of the child even after the death of their parents & will never have to be sold out from under them in order to pay IHT, regardless of future IHT threshold changes.
The value of the house will probably track inflation fairly closely & if circumstances require it can always be sold in the future to fund the purchase of a more suitable property.
NB. To give an idea of the size of compensation claims in these kind of cases, this consultation document from 2016 says that “The average settlement for a severe neurological birth injury case equates to a value of £6.25m, including costs paid out over the injured person's lifetime.”
We obviously don’t know anything about Raynor’s child (and nor should we) but settlement payments in the mid single digit £millions in 2025 would be plausible. Spending £650k of that to gain security of future housing might seem an entirely reasonable expense, if such a settlement had been paid out.
To which the average person is thinking well if the MP came upon such a windfall why isn’t she paying £40k in stamp duty on the fancy new flat that’s neither in her constituency nor in London where she works?
The money is not hers - it’s held in trust for the benefit of her child who presumably has long term care needs paid for out of the interest on the trust’s holdings.
You can get that trust to buy assets you own from you, so long as you don’t profit from the transaction to the detriment of the trust, but you can’t have that trust (say) buy you a flat in Bournemouth for your own personal use, nor can you use it to pay the stamp duty for such a purchase.
But if they’ve used the trust to buy the constituency house in which she lives, and she uses that cash to pay a deposit and stamp duty on the seaside flat, that’s exactly the same.
My working theory is that she couldn’t have afford the flat if she had to pay the extended stamp duty in cash rather than adding it to the deposit.
Stamp Duty is about ownership not where you live . Where she actually resides for council tax is irrelevant. Some of the media seem to be confused about this .
I'm afraid that key point is doomed to be lost in the fog. Not on here though - we're high end pundits (most of us).
Maybe we can excuse her because she is getting all the big calls right.
On the other hand, maybe not.
My advice to Rayner is go now, return in six months.
Polanski is trailing something big being announced at 4pm - defection?
Eating meat to be illegal if the Greens form a government? All homeowners with more than 2 bedrooms required to use the rest to house asylum seekers? A 100% tax rate on anyone earning more than £100k in the private sector? Try being trans for a day to become a national holiday?
Stamp Duty is about ownership not where you live . Where she actually resides for council tax is irrelevant. Some of the media seem to be confused about this .
I'm afraid that key point is doomed to be lost in the fog. Not on here though - we're high end pundits (most of us).
Maybe we can excuse her because she is getting all the big calls right.
On the other hand, maybe not.
My advice to Rayner is go now, return in six months.
Setting up a trust for for a child or adult with disabilities means that the money will not affect their eligibility for benefits since the money technically does not belong to them, but the trustees have responsibility for it.
Ah, so more tax avoidance then. Win £1m in compensation and then claim means-tested benefits.
Setting up a trust for for a child or adult with disabilities means that the money will not affect their eligibility for benefits since the money technically does not belong to them, but the trustees have responsibility for it.
Ah, so more tax avoidance then. Win £1m in compensation and then claim means-tested benefits.
it wouldn't be for her but for the child.
Yes, but if the child has £1m in the bank or in investments they can’t claim benefits when they become adult.
Stamp Duty is about ownership not where you live . Where she actually resides for council tax is irrelevant. Some of the media seem to be confused about this .
I'm afraid that key point is doomed to be lost in the fog. Not on here though - we're high end pundits (most of us).
Maybe we can excuse her because she is getting all the big calls right.
On the other hand, maybe not.
My advice to Rayner is go now, return in six months.
Doing a Mandelson, as it should be known.
In that case she has several more scandalous falls from grace up her sleeve to return from.
Polanski is trailing something big being announced at 4pm - defection?
Eating meat to be illegal if the Greens form a government? All homeowners with more than 2 bedrooms required to use the rest to house asylum seekers? A 100% tax rate on anyone earning more than £100k in the private sector? Try being trans for a day to become a national holiday?
Stamp Duty is about ownership not where you live . Where she actually resides for council tax is irrelevant. Some of the media seem to be confused about this .
I'm afraid that key point is doomed to be lost in the fog. Not on here though - we're high end pundits (most of us).
Maybe we can excuse her because she is getting all the big calls right.
On the other hand, maybe not.
My advice to Rayner is go now, return in six months.
Doing a Mandelson, as it should be known.
In that case she has several more scandalous falls from grace up her sleeve to return from.
I would imagine at least she will know the difference between mushy peas and guacamole unlike Mandy.
I wonder who her advisers were; in her position I would be expecting recompense from them, and not just for the outstanding tax.
They might feel tge need to put out a statement saying their advice was based on the Information provided
There’s also what’s meant by the term “advice.”
“We don’t think you owe the tax but this is based on the information you provided and it is your responsibility to make sure you are comfortable accurately reflects your situation” is very different to “you do not owe any tax on this and you can submit the return on that basis.”
I wonder who her advisers were; in her position I would be expecting recompense from them, and not just for the outstanding tax.
They might feel tge need to put out a statement saying their advice was based on the Information provided
There’s also what’s meant by the term “advice.”
“We don’t think you owe the tax but this is based on the information you provided and it is your responsibility to make sure you are comfortable accurately reflects your situation” is very different to “you do not owe any tax on this and you can submit the return on that basis.”
In my experience clients do not differentiate between those two scenarios.
Setting up a trust for for a child or adult with disabilities means that the money will not affect their eligibility for benefits since the money technically does not belong to them, but the trustees have responsibility for it.
Ah, so more tax avoidance then. Win £1m in compensation and then claim means-tested benefits.
I hardly think they do it deliberately ...
The specific issue you complain about seems to be a normal principle. I discovered recently that for instance, if you have an elderly relative who is on Pension Credit, it's perfectly OK to give them money without it affecting their benefit, even if it is a regular gift. (But DYOR - it may have changed.)
Stamp Duty is about ownership not where you live . Where she actually resides for council tax is irrelevant. Some of the media seem to be confused about this .
I'm afraid that key point is doomed to be lost in the fog. Not on here though - we're high end pundits (most of us).
Maybe we can excuse her because she is getting all the big calls right.
On the other hand, maybe not.
My advice to Rayner is go now, return in six months.
Doing a Mandelson, as it should be known.
Angela Rayner and Peter Mandelson - two less similar characters you could not imagine.
"The housing secretary has admitted paying the wrong amount of tax on a house.
That is pretty much the worst headline conceivable about any housing secretary, let alone Angela Rayner, who is also the deputy prime minister and spent years as Labour's sleazehunter-in-chief.
That's the straightforward fact which makes this such a damaging, indeed career-threatening, episode for Rayner."
Comments
You cant avoid 40k in tax and be a saint. The Beatification panel have tax rules and everything
I feel like trusts only reason for existence is to dodge tax.
Essentially, penalties are imposed depending on whether the underpayment was innocent, negligent, or deliberate; and whether the disclosure of the underpayment was voluntary or prompted. On a few occasions, as a professional executor, I've discovered that I have underpaid Inheritance Tax, because more assets of the estate have come to light. I've faced no penalty, because the underpayment was innocent, and I disclosed it without any prompting. All I had to do was pay the balance with interest.
Rayner has voluntarily disclosed the underpayment, and it is most unlikely that she was deliberately filing a false return (if she did, she would be made to resign as an MP). So, the issue is likely to be innocence v negligence.
Trump has made it a real thing.
She's dumped on "scum" Tories for years for exactly this. Now she's hoist, petard, finished
That sounds worse to me than making a mistake over stamp duty.
I certainly don't (if only because I have no bets on the next Labour leader).
You should pray that you’ll never be in a situation where the creation of such a trust matters to you & yours. The circumstances that demand it are almost always awful ones.
The trustees look after the interests of the child.
Rayner's previous tweets about other politicians make her continuing in office utter hypocrisy and I doubt the public will be on her side
'Donald J. Trump
@realDonaldTrump
The big question to be answered is whether or not President Xi of China will mention the massive amount of support and “blood” that The United States of America gave to China in order to help it to secure its FREEDOM from a very unfriendly foreign invader. Many Americans died in China’s quest for Victory and Glory. I hope that they are rightfully Honored and Remembered for their Bravery and Sacrifice! May President Xi and the wonderful people of China have a great and lasting day of celebration. Please give my warmest regards to Vladimir Putin, and Kim Jong Un, as you conspire against The United States of America. PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP'
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/115137717177283585
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/appeals-court-blocks-trump-from-deporting-members-tren-de-aragua-gang
The value of the house will probably track inflation fairly closely & if circumstances require it can always be sold in the future to fund the purchase of a more suitable property.
As an aside, on the questions over council tax on second homes, it occurred to me I'd never been asked if my current residence is my only one, so I looked up the Council Tax and found to my surprise that Havering has brought in a 2nd home surcharge this year. I thought it was only something that was applied in holiday/2nd home hotspots but it must be universal now if even Havering are doing it.
The law deems a parent the “owner” of a property placed into trust for a child when calculating tax liabilities, whether they were a trustee or not.
Starmer held the Tories to account over scandalous conspiracy and cock up. Granted Tory Ministers (particularly under Johnson) weren't hounded out like Rayner will be, but Starmer still made the accusation, so what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander.
The sooner she goes the sooner she returns.
And this mantra about Tories is not shared by many commentators who are highly critical including Kevin Maguire
I think it's irrelevant to the point.
Because she sometimes lived in the house she had a beneficial interest so she couldn't claim that the Hove property was her only property.
However it would make sense for her to be a trustee to look after the interest of her child, together with her ex-husband.
Zelensky if he is clever will tell Trump how appalled he was that the US was not sufficiently honoured in the Chinese parade and that Ukraine will fly 1000 US flags in Kyiv every VE day in response
"Slightly closer to his ward, but on a similar theme, the now deputy leader of The Green Party called the Jewish chaplain at Leeds University, Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch, 'creep', a 'low-life' and an 'animal'. Ali also falsely claimed that Rabbi Deutsch had tried to kill women and children in Gaza.
"Unsurprisingly, the Rabbi and his family were forced into hiding after this attack after receiving a large number of death threats. From those who want peace, obvs."
https://x.com/jamespriceglos/status/1963163842659115379
And then she will have to resign anyway, or continue as a permanent wound
Don't rule out some nice September days though.
Is it fair ? I really don't have much of an idea either way.
But she might have been far better off to have resigned and made her case away from the tabloid barrage, after the Revenue judgment came out.
That might have ended up enhancing both her and the government's reputations.
As it is, that outcome now seems unlikely.
She is obviously not competent nor appropriate to be in charge of housing policy whether or not she clings on like a limpet to her cabinet position
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/5a817c85e5274a2e8ab5440b/RRR_consultation_A.pdf
We obviously don’t know anything about Raynor’s child (and nor should we) but settlement payments in the mid single digit £millions in 2025 would be plausible. Spending £650k of that to gain security of future housing might seem an entirely reasonable expense, if such a settlement had been paid out.
Stuff about trusts, rules, legal advice will fly over the heads of most people because they won’t delve into the detail. Only us political obsessives and the regular followers of current affairs might look into it further, and even then there’ll be plenty who won’t understand the arrangement in question (trusts just aren’t things that many people have regular dealings with).
“A court-instructed trust was established in 2020 following a deeply personal and distressing incident involving my son as a premature baby. He was left with lifelong disabilities, and the trust was established to manage the award on his behalf – a standard practice in circumstances like ours.”
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2025/sep/03/angela-rayners-full-statement-on-her-stamp-duty-underpayment
I think that’s fairly clear?
Shoossmiths say not them who advised Ange
I agree we neither need nor have any right to know the details here, BUT if Rayner does use this as a defence/explanation, then it becomes legitimate to ask for numbers. And if it turns out she is sitting on, say, £2m in cash then the idea she nonetheless evaded £40k tax with some clever accounting, which went wrong, looks even worse
To those triggered by Farage dont switch on Sky
Did she tell the mortgage provider that this was her first or second home and if claiming it’s her main home not only benefited from cheaper stamp duty but also from a cheaper mortgage when now she accepts isn’t her main home.
Will the mortgage provider not care, have to rewrite the mortgage or consider it mortgage fraud?
The politics of this are merciless. She has to resign as minister, at least, And the sooner it happens the sooner the bleeding stops and maybe she could return in future
And recall, just yesterday I was saying she would make a better leader than Skyr. I quite like her, she has a bit of oomph, even if I abjure her politics. But this is not something she can shrug off. Better to take the hit, do the decent thing, have a second go later
Rayner short changing the exchequer either with malice or by negligence is a ( political career) hanging offence. Shilling for Putin on the other hand, unless one is Jeremy Corbyn, is not.
https://news.sky.com/story/graham-linehan-arrest-government-needs-to-look-at-whether-police-getting-balance-right-says-wes-streeting-13424089
You can get that trust to buy assets you own from you, so long as you don’t profit from the transaction to the detriment of the trust, but you can’t have that trust (say) buy you a flat in Bournemouth for your own personal use, nor can you use it to pay the stamp duty for such a purchase.
IMHO this would all have been explicable politically if the new house was in her constituency or in London, and not in a seaside resort where she has no other ties.
I agree she should have paid the stamp duty, and it was bad judgement not to have done so.
And the whole trust thing is irrelevant really. The tax avoidance (whether moronic or mendacious) was to her benefit on her Hove pad and nothing to do with the care of her child
I wonder who her advisers were; in her position I would be expecting recompense from them, and not just for the outstanding tax.
My working theory is that she couldn’t have afford the flat if she had to pay the extended stamp duty in cash rather than adding it to the deposit.
On the other hand, maybe not.
My advice to Rayner is go now, return in six months.
“We don’t think you owe the tax but this is based on the information you provided and it is your responsibility to make sure you are comfortable accurately reflects your situation” is very different to “you do not owe any tax on this and you can submit the return on that basis.”
The specific issue you complain about seems to be a normal principle. I discovered recently that for instance, if you have an elderly relative who is on Pension Credit, it's perfectly OK to give them money without it affecting their benefit, even if it is a regular gift. (But DYOR - it may have changed.)
"The housing secretary has admitted paying the wrong amount of tax on a house.
That is pretty much the worst headline conceivable about any housing secretary, let alone Angela Rayner, who is also the deputy prime minister and spent years as Labour's sleazehunter-in-chief.
That's the straightforward fact which makes this such a damaging, indeed career-threatening, episode for Rayner."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c2lx1999ez8o
She's toast, unless Starmer is insane
It has at least highlighted this issue.. what is the PB tory view on this (presumably unintended) tax penalty on separation?
HYUFD could be in favour of this disincentive to separate, I'm unfairly guessing, rest of you?