Angela Rayner has admitted underpaying stamp duty on the £800,000 Hove apartment she bought this spring after using funds from a trust established for her disabled son as the deposit.
The Deputy Prime Minister and housing chief sold a 25% share of her Ashton-under-Lyne home to the trust for £162,500 in January, money that was then channelled into the seaside flat on which she holds a £650,000 mortgage.
The trust, created in 2020 after a long-running legal case against the NHS, is intended to safeguard her son’s future care and now controls 75 % of the Ashton property.
But on completion of the Hove purchase, Rayner paid only £30,000 in stamp duty rather than the £70,000 that should have been levied on a second home.
INCORRECT LEGAL ADVICE
The Telegraph reports that she had previously maintained she owed nothing beyond the standard rate, citing legal advice, but has since admitted that was incorrect.
After consulting a senior tax barrister she has accepted that the higher rate should have applied and is now in discussions with HMRC to settle the liability.
The episode raises awkward questions for Rayner, not least because she is Secretary of State for Housing and has direct oversight of the very rules she breached.
TRUST COMPLEX
It also highlights the complexities that trusts and shared ownership arrangements can create when calculating stamp duty liabilities – a recurring issue for advisers and conveyancers in the market.
Rayner insists her Ashton property remains her primary residence, pointing out that her children continue to live there full-time and that it is where she is registered for official purposes.
Nevertheless, she has referred herself to the Independent Adviser on Ministerial Standards, conceding she “deeply regrets the error”.
