Morning, you hardworking taxpayers still scraping by, dodging those trivial £50 brown envelopes, waiting years for refunds, or getting hung up on when you dare ring the helpline. While HMRC's own compliance officer walks free after laundering £3.3m, and Angela Rayner's £40k stamp duty "oops" drags on like a bad hangover, Rachel Reeves has found the cash to hire 1,000 fresh valuation officers – that's right, an army of clipboard-wielding snoopers – to prepare for her shiny new "mansion tax" raid on homes worth £2 million or more.
Announced in last year's Budget, this High Value Council Tax Surcharge (fancy name for "soak the rich") kicks in from April 2028. Properties £2m–£2.5m? £2,500 extra slapped on your council tax bill every year. £2.5m–£3.5m? £3,500. Up to £5m+? A cool £7,500 on top. And guess who's doing the dirty work? HMRC, absorbing the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) from April this year, beefing up with 1,000 new hires to revalue up to 200,000 homes (mostly in London, naturally) using sales data, aerial maps, planning apps – and yes, the odd in-person poke-around if your pile looks suspicious.
Reeves spins it as "fairness" – making the wealthy pay their share while protecting working people. Bollocks. This is classic Labour class-war envy dressed up as policy: punish aspiration, scare off investment, and watch the housing market seize up as owners sit tight rather than move. Meanwhile, the same Chancellor freezes thresholds, drags pensioners into tax via fiscal drag, and lets HMRC chase grannies for peanuts while their staff swan off on sickies.
And the hypocrisy? Off the scale. Reeves preaches closing the tax gap, yet HMRC – the outfit that can't answer phones on deadline day or process refunds in under two years – gets another 1,000 bodies to play property police. These valuation vultures will decide if your extension, garage, or period features push you over £2m. Disputes? Good luck appealing when the system's already creaking and the backlog's biblical.
This isn't about the ultra-rich dodging tax; it's about creeping state overreach into your home. Start with £2m mansions, watch the threshold creep down (remember those whispers of £500k CGT or sales taxes?), and soon enough middle-class family homes get the treatment. All while HMRC's digital disasters (MTD hell, portal crashes) continue unabated.
Tax does have to be taxing.
But hiring an army to raid family homes while the department itself is a shambles? That's not taxing – that's outright theft by bureaucracy, courtesy of Reeves and her incompetent empire.
Amazon "Mansion Tax Defence Kit" Suggestions
(affiliate links – because if they're coming for your house, at least kit out in style)
- Measuring Tape (Laser) – check your square footage before the snoopers do
- "Keep Off My Lawn" Sign – ironic barrier for valuation officers
- Binoculars – spot the clipboard brigade from afar
- "Aspiration Taxed Here" Mug – for your morning coffee of righteous anger
- Heavy-Duty Shredder – for any dodgy planning docs (kidding... mostly)
HMRC Is Shite (www.hmrcisshite.com), also available via the domain www.hmrconline.com, is brought to you by www.kenfrost.com "The Living Brand"
Where are these 1000 coming from? Off the street? A Level in Sociology.
ReplyDeleteA fortnight of CBT at a desk and Google Maps, then the appeals will be thrown in the second that a brown envelope hits the plush carpet.
Millionaires tend to afford top accountants. Appeals that will take a year to reply to and no answer on the blower, which won't look good on HMRC when they're taken to court.
Mecca Bingo Maureen will be hiding her kettle under the stairs in case the goon squad want to put it on an auction site.