To think that surely Rayner has to go.

[Blankscreen]

Well well well.

So now it emerges that Rayner rearranged her property affairs and declared to HMRC that her new flat in Brighton is her main residence and saved £40k on the SDLT bill as a result.

She has then apparently declared to the local councils the complete opposite.

I'm sure slimeball Kier will defend and say it was perfectly legal blah blah blah.

Not to mention she has a grace and favour house funded by tax payers in London as her constituency office is so far away. Yet she 'lives' in Brighton - surely she could just commute that distance like may others do every day.

Surely she has to go.

'Surely they could have asked for HMRC advice on HMRC matters, given the ‘complexity’ and importance.'

This! Surely the DPM has a hotline to the tax office or could at least have asked the chancellor or whomever to ask on her behalf. They must be surrounded by tax and finance experts.

If she the DPM doesn't know who to ask, if as housing minister cannot seek the correct expert advice on housing then what on else doesn't she know.

Err all Govt ministers jet round the world at public expense....

Yes, but Labour bitterly accused the Tories of being profligate with their use of publicly funded flights around the world. And lo, once in office…Labour are just as bad.

Yet again, it’s Labour’s hypocrisy that makes the gorge rise.

Hypocrisy and nastiness. Go on relentless attack dog mode until found out then cry. Live by the sword etc

It is so deeply ironic that she is The Secretary of State for Housing and yet was supposedly unable to get accurate information regarding the correct taxation on her relevant property tax.

One would have thought she had a wealth of expertise at her disposal given her position, albeit with a Trust for her son involved as well. After all if you cannot get straight answers from the ministry responsible for housing affairs, plus HMRC when you are Secretary of State and DPM then god help us all.

Poor Ange floundering around trying to get accurate answers for her complex property arrangements when she has a wealth of knowledgeable bods in both departments that could have been approached for answers.

I loathe how her 'complex' family life keeps getting brought up. Lots of people are divorced and share the care of dc including dc with disabilities.

Most however do not have the luxury of a house in trust for a dc whilst also having an 800k property. I wonder what her others kids thinks of it.

Also, is it true that she used her ds's nhs compensation towards the 800k flat in Hove. Surely not.

The party line seems to be keep mentioning the complicated family life and disabled child. And interviewers seem keen to push the sympathy aspect. I'm sure that this Trust will now be scrutinised and more will come out. She did admit that she had done something similar with a portion of the home previously. So she's more or less sold some of her family home to her Son's trust and then withdrew this to pay the deposit on her Brighton holiday flat. How convenient.

'The party line seems to be keep mentioning the complicated family life and disabled child. And interviewers seem keen to push the sympathy aspect'

It is crazy how soft the msm are being with her because of her sob story to Sky.

Cameron had a disabled dc and i dont recall him ever using his dc's disability to excuse his poor tax decision making.

@Alexandra2001

As i said in another thread, all comes down to the type of advice and what she told them but i find it incredulous that a simple search of the trust property wasn't done by who ever did the conveyancing.... if it was and she isn't on the deeds, then what?

It's ALL about what questions SHE asked of her advisors and what information SHE gave them. Professionals such as solicitors and tax advisers just work with the information they're given. It's not their job to go digging to check whether they've been told the truth (full truth, i.e. all relevant facts) nor answers questions they've not been asked. There's a wonderful old saying that was drummed into us when I was training to be an accountant - it's purpose was for auditors, but it was widely used for tax and law exams too - "An auditor is a watchdog not a blood hound" - meaning the professional is there to over-see/supervise and comment/check on the obvious etc and not go digging for mud (i.e. deliberately nor accidentally "hidden" matters unless something was obviously wrong). Or put another way "trust, but verify". If Raynor didn't specifically tell her "adviser" that she had a home in trust, then no court would have expected that adviser to go digging around checking whether she had a home in trust or not! There's literally hundreds/thousands of court cases where a professional has been sued by a client and found not liable because the client didn't give all relevant information or the professional's terms of engagement didn't cover the specific matter being sued for!

No one is falling for that rubbish. If her family life is so complicated, she can't be focusing on her job properly so she needs to step down. She's been a liability for the Labour party for the last 12 months.

I suspect the conveyancer asked her whether she owned any other property and she answered “no”. Sounds like she didn’t understand the implications of the trust.

I’d be very surprised if all the essential implications on them and the children were not fully explained to the trustees when the trust was created.

Anyone who’s used a reputable firm to do any inheritance tax planning, creation of wills, LPA’s will know that every detail and implication is explained before signing

I agree, in all the trusts I've been involved with, there've been numerous meetings with all affected parties, explaining the Trust in great detail, followed by written confirmation of all the pros and cons, and all parties concerned having to sign agreements confirming they've been told all the facts and understand them.

I can't believe anyone such as Raynor who is supposed to be clever enough to be deputy PM and a senior minister, and who will be dealing with complicated/legal paperwork as part of her day job, wouldn't have taken on board what the Trust actually meant, warts n all.

If she didn't understand what was going on when the Trust was being set up, she shouldn't have agreed to it, shouldn't have signed the agreements, and should have asked for clarifications/explanations etc.

She can't play the "it's complicated" card to avoid HER responsibilities!

No it doesn't. It smacks of calling out a rampant socialist determined to screw everyone else for as much tax as they can while feathering their own nest with tax dodging schemes cooked up by a team of expert advisors. But oh dear they got it wrong.

A trust was undoubtedly necessary to protect the child’s interests now and once his parents have died. I don’t think there’s anything unusual about that; though for someone of her apparent net worth to need to extract cash in exchange for the property might be.

The problem arose because Rayner wasn’t transparent about the arrangements to whoever handled her property transaction, and either misrepresented or omitted to tell her conveyancer she had an interest in another property. I very much doubt she personally has received any written advice on the matter.

Yes the trust was absolutely necessary to manage the compensation payment. But there would be no necessity for the family home to be transferred to the Trust at this stage. It's not a case that the parents have given up responsibility for the care of the child and the trust have taken over the maintenance of the family home?

Your posts are useful thanks. I’d say you are right and no one is there to back up her claims.

.

On the other hand, the following is a quote from him before taking power. It didn’t stop him taking an axe to all those services.

"I'm sure it's a significant influence in my life. And significant impact in terms of just bringing you into contact with a whole world – not just the NHS but also social services, community nurses, social workers, special schools, therapists, speech and language, hydrotherapy, statementing. You know you become quite an expert in some of these things."

Cameron wasn't under investigation for tax evasion as you well know.

Atm neither is Rayner... HMRC haven't yet decided on that...

However, Cameron talked about his son plenty of times, inc claiming DLA, despite being a multi millionaire and talking up the NHS, whilst cutting funding.

I thought we were talking about hypocrisy.

A Trust is used also to avoid inheritance tax later down the line. That is the main reason that most people do it.

I am not aware of compensation for her son.
My understanding is he was born at 23 weeks and has some disabilities because of this.

Why did they get compensation?

Irrespective of the HMRC, the perception of a large proportion of the public is that Rayner has evaded a significant amount of tax. She will no doubt now be spending a considerable amount of time attempting to 'create' a palatable story that allows her to keep her job - time she should be spending focusing on the job of housing minister. Despicable.

Irrespective of the HMRC, the perception of a large proportion of the public is that Rayner has evaded a significant amount of tax.

I don't know if she is bright enough to try to avoid tax.

More likely she didn't give her lawyers the full info they needed.

If we're talking about hypocrisy, Angela Rayner and the rest of her revolting Labour cronies cannot be beaten.