The matter of Angela Rayner's house sale isn't going away.....

Germanshepherdsmum

It is alleged that she broke electoral law and may have been guilty of tax evasion Lizzie.

The statement about police involvement doesn't mention tax evasion - that's been added in to smear the dirt a bit further.

Primrose53

Germanshepherdsmum

I must look up the definition of ‘asset’ …

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

What on earth does that mean?

I've now discovered that candidates do have to give their current home address.

www.electoralcommission.org.uk/guidance-candidates-and-agents-uk-parliamentary-general-elections-great-britain/nominations/completing-your-nomination-papers/home-address-form

For all I know (and I stress that I don't know), Rayner could have been spending most of her time in the house she still owned. I have no idea what the state of her marriage was. It could have been turbulent and maybe she decided to leave her husband and live elsewhere. Maybe she doesn't want the public to know about relationships with her husband. I honestly don't know why she gave the address of the house she owned, but I dislike the speculation of people who don't really know either.

It is alleged that she broke electoral law and may have been guilty of tax evasion Lizzie.

LizzieDrip

Perhaps Germanshepherdsmum can enlighten us at to exactly what law(s) Angela Raynor is alleged to have broken?

The police involvement isn't about tax - it's about electoral law.

I don't know whether people have to give the address where they live most of the time when they register as a candidate. In any case, the investigation is "out of time".

Thanks TinSoldier.

Perhaps Germanshepherdsmum can enlighten us at to exactly what law(s) Angela Raynor is alleged to have broken?

growstuff I don't know what she's alleged to have done wrong - maybe somebody on GN knows exactly which law she's broken and can enlighten us.

Exactly, Wyllow

From what I read on the Electoral Commission website, I don’t believe she has broken electoral law. Nor do I believe she has broken tax law. I know what I am talking about in that regard as it was my profession albeit that I can only go on what information is in the public domain about this. To be guilty of tax evasion, there has to have been a clear decision to wilfully commit a criminal offence to evade taxes. I see no evidence of that yet.

James Daly is another of the 2019 Tory intake and now deputy chair since Lee Anderson’s departure so working under Richard Holden - who is gunning for Rayner as he was for Starmer and Rayner is the Beergate fiasco. Daly seems to be writing letters to Greater Manchester Police and Stockport council over Rayner’s tax and electoral registration. Quite what he is alleging in unclear.

www.theguardian.com/politics/2024/mar/27/police-review-decision-not-to-investigate-angela-rayner-after-tory-complaint

Note Daly’s declared members interests include a lot of sporting hospitality including two tickets and hospitality at last year’s FA Cup Final, value £3,348 (i.e. more than Rayner’s alleged tax mistake) … paid for by the The Betting and Gaming Council. Why was a backbencher being courted by that particular body? I think Ian Hislop would have something to say about this.

Surely morally the key question is whether she knowingly defrauded. If the advice she sought at the time was inaccurate no doubt it will come out but proportionality needs to then be applied as to outcomes.

Issues around expenses and second home costs are not unusual in the labyrinthine rules for MP's as we know historically. John Gummer claimed £9.000 for gardening illegally and was later rewarded with a seat in the Lords.

Dan Neidle, a highly respected tax lawyer, was one of the people Zahawi threatened to sue, in an effort to silence him, if he told the truth about Zahawi’s nefarious tax affairs. I wonder if Zahawi apologised (to Neidle) after he had to pay £5million, tax and penalties, to HRMC???

PS. Which less salubrious events in her life?

Angela Rayner has made no secret of getting pregnant as a teenager, her background and the fact she likes to party - she's human, just like most of the voting public.

eazybee

All Rayner supporters can offer in her support is to cite examples of Tory fraud. No-one is disputing or defending them but they are quite rightly questioning Rayner's lack of judgement and her verisimilitude.
Kettle, pot, black?
If she had admitted she had erred when first questioned, apologised and set the matter straight, none of this media interest would have happened. But she lied about receiving tax advice and consequently the less salubrious events in her life would have been exposed.
A role model?
I don't think so.

That's not true! I haven't once mentioned any Tory fraud.

What if she didn't err? I bet you don't even know which law was broken. What you have done is prove that once any so-called dirt is in the public domain, people come up with all sorts of other stuff, whether or not it's true.

Maybe somebody could explain why the fact that the house is a former council house is even relevant to a story about breaking electoral law. It isn't, but it's what happens when the smear and gossip mongers get going.

"He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her."

All Rayner supporters can offer in her support is to cite examples of Tory fraud. No-one is disputing or defending them but they are quite rightly questioning Rayner's lack of judgement and her verisimilitude.
Kettle, pot, black?
If she had admitted she had erred when first questioned, apologised and set the matter straight, none of this media interest would have happened. But she lied about receiving tax advice and consequently the less salubrious events in her life would have been exposed.
A role model?
I don't think so.

LizzieDrip

GSM:

Hunt has admitted breaching money-laundering rules brought in by his government, having failed to declare his 50% interest in the property firm to Companies House. Guardian, June 2018

That is not a crime.

TinSoldier

growstuff I posted about the electoral registration on page three of this discussion. There's more there but in essence:

If you split your time between two homes, you may be able to register to vote at both addresses. For example, you might own two properties and split your time between them, or you might spend time at different family addresses.

What is she alleged to have done wrong?

I don't know what she's alleged to have done wrong - maybe somebody on GN knows exactly which law she's broken and can enlighten us.

I'm not even sure this is about where she registered to vote or which address she gave when she was a candidate to be an MP. Does the great British public know?

Time now to wait for the results of enquiries and that's what Starmer is saying.
No one at present knows whether it's actually a clear cut matter or mired in confusion and contradictions. Or intentionality.

Personally I agree with todays Guardian
www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/apr/12/angela-rayner-tories-targeting-labour-deputy-tax-class-shaming

The twitterati are busy sniffing out instances of politicians 'breaking electoral law'. Including John Major in 1968 (😱) registering his address at a house he never ever lived in in order to qualify to be a candidate for the local council (apparently this was featured in a later Panorama programme). Also a more recent tory councillor registered as living at an allotment (you know, a vegetable garden!) To me this indicates the sheer absurdity of the whole affair.

Though judging by the number of ignoramuses on twitter who are claiming the Johnson was ousted for eating a piece of cake I expect some of the mud being slung at Rayner will stick.

growstuff I posted about the electoral registration on page three of this discussion. There's more there but in essence:

If you split your time between two homes, you may be able to register to vote at both addresses. For example, you might own two properties and split your time between them, or you might spend time at different family addresses.

What is she alleged to have done wrong?

MaizieD

If it's any help, Dan Neidle, a tax expert, wrote an article about the capital gains tax element. It seems it could be a grey area..

taxpolicy.org.uk/2024/02/29/rayner/

Thanks for posting that. It confirmed what I thought. In the worst case scenario, Rayner owes between £1.5k and £3.5k, which is tiny compared with the amounts some other MPs have "forgotten" to pay.

Nevertheless, the current police involvement isn't about tax. It's about her alleged electoral fraud, which should have been investigated within 12 months of the fraud taking place. Unless there's something none of us knows about, it will be thrown out.

Meanwhile, police time has been wasted, but the media smear machine has had an opportunity to go into overdrive.

Many people assume that if they only own one property and live in it at some point then they can take any capital gain on it tax free. That isn't the case in a number of circumstances e.g. if you marry someone who also owns a property. That seems to be the crux of this “controversy”.

I wonder how many property-owing grans here have married someone who also owned a property and knew that they needed to make a CGT declaration within two years as to which was to be their principle private residence for tax purposes.

It may be that the Rayners didn’t know either and assumed that each would be tax exempt on the one property each of them owned - or were badly advised by someone.

Let’s get this into perspective.

Rayner’s unpaid capital gains tax - at most £3,000 (if anything at all) pales into insignificance beside Nadhim Zahawi’s £5 million tax settlement over his You Gov/ Balshore Investments.

The settlement, made in December 2022 was reported to be £3.7 million in tax plus a 30% penalty of over £1 million. That level of penalty is the top end for carelessness (where HMRC only go back a maximum of six years) and bottom end for deliberate and concealed. The settlement relates to transactions going back to 2006. As I said above, in serious cases, HMRC can go back 20 years so the 30% must have been considered deliberate and concealed rather than careless.

Just to be clear, Zahawi had concealed capital gains of £27 million.

To quote Michael Gove, when he was doing the media round defending Zahawi:

My firm understanding is HMRC have no quibble with Nadhim. He’s paid everything that he should, and, people paying their taxes, that’s not a story – people not paying their taxes, yeah that is a problem.

Really? HMRC’s “quibble” was that Zahawi deliberately concealed capital gains of £27 million.

Note that Zahawi was under investigation for this not just by HMRC but by the National Crime Agency and the Serious Fraud Office. The Cabinet Office had raised a “red flag” about Zahawi’s tax affairs before his appointment as Chancellor on 5 July 2022. He was already under investigation for deliberate and concealed capital gains of £27 million but Johnson still put him in charge of the country’s finances.

In the great scheme of things, whatever Rayner is alleged to have done, it’s gnat’s piddle compared to this. Glass houses and stones come to mind and shows just how desperate the Tory party and right wing media are.

amp.theguardian.com/politics/2018/jun/26/firm-co-founded-by-jeremy-hunt-broke-law

Makes interesting reading!

Germanshepherdsmum

I must look up the definition of ‘asset’ …

🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

btw I've just looked on rightmove at 3 bed ex authority houses in Stockport, they start as little as 90k, just in case anyone is wondering

GSM:

Hunt has admitted breaching money-laundering rules brought in by his government, having failed to declare his 50% interest in the property firm to Companies House. Guardian, June 2018