Plumbing tycoon Charlie Mullins joins fury at Rachel Reeves as he accuses Labour of 'ROBBING' hardworking Brits with property tax raid

Daily Mail​

16 hours ago

Plumbing tycoon Charlie Mullins has joined the backlash at Rachel Reeves over a possible and highly controversial shake-up of property levies.
The millionaire hit out at the Chancellor's 'atrocious' tax plans and claimed she was 'robbing' working class Brits.
Mr Mullins fled Britain to move to Spain after Labour won power at last year's general election, due to his fears of a tax raid by Ms Reeves.
The 72-year-old has now urged those who are also thinking of moving abroad to 'sell your house now' amid concerns the Chancellor might hammer property owners.
Ms Reeves has been warned that proposals to replace stamp duty with an annual charge on homes worth more than £500,000 would damage the market.
There is also outrage that such a move would punish people who have worked hard to own their houses.
As part of her efforts to fill the Government's coffers, Ms Reeves is understood to have asked officials to look at a potential overhaul of property taxes.
She has already been called on by economists to scrap the current system, in which buyers have to pay thousands of pounds in stamp duty on house sales, which they say deters people from moving.
The Guardian reported that owners of houses worth more than £500,000 could have to pay a 'proportional property tax' based on the value of their properties when they sell up.
However, sources played down the claims that Treasury officials are looking at this proposal or threshold.
Responding to Ms Reeves' reported plans, Mr Mullins told Talk: 'What she's doing now is atrocious, she is robbing working class people again.
'She's talking about someone with a £500,000 house, which is nothing in London - it's like a one-bedroom apartment.
'How does she think these people got them? They're working class people, they purchased the property.
'Now they're going to tax you on buying the property, tax you on selling the people. What it will do, it will freeze the property market up - it will freeze it up completely.
'It will stop people wanting to buy a property and it will also, people like me and many others, it will drive or force us out the UK even more.'
Mr Mullins is a former Tory donor who switched to bankrolling the Liberal Democrats due to the party's anti-Brexit stance but now backs Nigel Farage's Reform UK.
He explained that he left the UK 'because of Labour and all their robbing everybody'.
'I'm in Marbella, absolutely loving it - wish I'd done it years ago and not allowed Labour governments to keep robbing people and working class people,' he added.
'My advice to anybody, if you're thinking of leaving the UK, is sell your house now before she [Ms Reeves] brings it in.
'Because she will bring this in very quickly, it's another way of robbing working class people.'
Treasury sources moved away from suggestions that civil servants are drawing on the findings of a report published last year by think-tank Onward.
This proposed that only future owners could pay an annual tax based on the value of the property instead of stamp duty.
Under the plan put forward by economist Professor Tim Leunig, current homeowners would not be hit by the charge.
But if they do sell up in future their buyers would pay the levy each year instead of stamp duty at the point of purchase.
It is intended to open up the property market by making it less expensive to move and encouraging those in large homes to downsize.
Meanwhile, it has separately been reported that Ms Reeves is eyeing a 'mansion tax' on the owners of high-value properties.
According to The Times, the Chancellor is drawing up plans to end the current exemption from capital gains tax when some people sell their main home.
This would see those on the higher rate of income tax pay 24 per cent of the value of any 'gain' they make from the increase in the value of their property.
And those on the basic rate of income tax would pay 18 per cent.
Ms Reeves' reported plans would see the 'private residence relief' from capital gains currently enjoyed by homeowners scrapped for some properties.
The threshold at which the relief would end is currently being discussed within the Treasury, the newspaper added.
It is estimated a threshold of £1.5million would hit around 120,000 homeowners who are higher-rate taxpayers with capital gains tax bills of £199,973.
TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp has warned the Chancellor not to risk destabilising the market by 'flying kites' about potential new property taxes.
She told Times Radio: 'It's not Rachel's to go after because it's their homes.
'It's the roof over their head. And this Government seems to want to punish people for making the sacrifices they've made to buy their own homes.'
James Browne, senior economic policy adviser at the Tony Blair Institute, said: 'While replacing stamp duty with a new annual property levy on homes worth more than £500,000 is economically sensible, it would be politically challenging.
'Either long-standing homeowners who are asset-rich but cash-poor would be hit with much larger bills or, if it only applied after a property changed hands, would discourage moving just as much as stamp duty does at the moment.'
Treasury minister Torsten Bell told broadcasters this morning: 'Working people and people's living standards is what this Government is all about.
'We've seen wages rise more in the first 10 months of this Government than the first 10 years of the last Conservative government.
'But of course, as you know, questions for tax are for the budget and they're for chancellors.'
A Treasury spokesman said: 'As set out in the plan for change, the best way to strengthen public finances is by growing the economy - which is our focus.
'Changes to tax and spend policy are not the only ways of doing this, as seen with our planning reforms, which are expected to grow the economy by £6.8billion and cut borrowing by £3.4billion.
'We are committed to keeping taxes for working people as low as possible, which is why at last autumn's Budget, we protected working people's payslips and kept our promise not to raise the basic, higher or additional rates of income tax, employee national insurance, or VAT.'