Sol Campbell may join Tories in battle against Labour’s mansion tax
Sol Campbell may join the Tories to fight against Labour's mansion tax. The former England football player recently made his opposition to the tax known via Twitter but has gone into even further detail about the problems with the policy advocated by both the Labour and the Liberal Democrats.
Speaking to the Telegraph, he slammed Labour's policy as "madness" considering the amount of money that is already raised through stamp duty.
"Labour have had this brainwave and are unable to think outside the box. They say it’s a fair tax, but it isn’t because some people are not working anymore and won’t have the income to pay this tax each year", he added.
The policy has not received a universal welcome within Labour's own ranks, with MPs Glenda Jackson, Margaret Hodge, David Lammy criticising the mansion tax.
Campbell thought the policy so absurd he contemplated offering his services to Labour's chief rival:
All I can do is pray it won’t happen. They have gone too far now. A hell of a lot of people are worried about it. I might have to think about working for the Tories. This has to be nipped in the bud.
Research from property consultancy Savills recently concluded a mansion tax would pose severe problems for the London property market. Zoopla has even gone so far as to label the policy a "London tax", with homeowners in the capital set to pay just over £1bn of the £1.2bn expected to be raised.
Critics of the mansion tax have recommended the addition of council tax bands to high-value properties as a less damaging an alternative.
Savills' head of residential research, Lucian Cook, said it would seem "broadly fair that all properties worth between £2m and £5m should pay £5,000 per annum, those between £5m and £10m, £7,500 per annum and those worth over say £10m, £10,000".
In the wake of Ed Miliband's speech to the Labour party conference last week, the Adam Smith Institute's head of policy Ben Southwood said:
Labour’s proposal to tax expensive houses and hypothecate the funds for the NHS is bizarre. Although property value taxes are among the least inefficient taxes, and shifting the burden from costlier taxes like stamp duty land tax, corporation tax and income tax is a good idea, we already have a perfectly good property tax system: council tax.