Government refuses landlord tax debate demands

The Government have put paid to plans by a group of buy-to-let landlords to force a one-off parliamentary debate on plans to restrict tax relief available to individual landlords, stating the issue is already under discussion as part of the Finance Bill.

The ‘Say No to George’ campaign unveiled its online petition just over a week ago and has since secured more than 27,000 signatures for a motion asking the Chancellor to reverse proposals announced in the Summer Budget to restrict the tax relief landlords can claim on property finance costs to the basic rate of income tax.

The online petition stated: “We operate as sole traders and incur costs in the course of running our business.

“The planned restriction will unfairly target us by preventing us from offsetting costs in the same manner as other sole traders.

“We ask that the planned restriction be reconsidered as it has unfair implications.”

Online petitions require 100,000-plus signatures to be considered for a parliamentary debate. Nevertheless, the recently-formed petitions committee has now said it will not recommend that the buy-to-let petition goes further.

The committee discussed a range of petitions at its inaugural meeting on 8^th September and noted that the issue of the buy-to-let petition was in the Finance Bill and is already being debated in the House of Commons.

Petitioners will be written to directly to explain how they could send their views to the Public Bill Committee and how they could follow Finance Bill debates within the House of Commons.

Anyone signing the ‘Say No to George’ petition is receiving an email which states: “The planned tax relief restriction is part of the Finance Bill currently being debated in the House of Commons.

“Because the issue is currently being looked at in Parliament, the petitions committee decided not to take any further action on this petition.

“This Bill will be looked at by a Public Bill Committee – a group of MPs who go through a draft law in detail and debate it. The Public Bill Committee can receive views from the public now.”

Autumn Statement 2015 announced

The Commons will be packed to the rafters on Wednesday 25^th November after it was officially announced by Chancellor, George Osborne that there will be an Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) forecast alongside the Spending Review.

The Government will therefore be publishing a joint Autumn Statement and Spending Review on this date.

Date published 11 Sep 2015 | Last updated 11 Sep 2015