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The Royals will not be excluded from the “mansion tax” on homes worth more than £2 million, Ed Balls revealed yesterday. The Shadow Chancellor said the party’s proposed levy on expensive homes would ‘rightly’ apply to the Queen as much as anyone else. Labour sources insisted the tax would not hit homes which were open to the public — meaning Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle would be exempt.
But the Queen’s private Balmoral and Sandringham estates would not escape the levy.
Under proposals backed by Labour and the Lib Dems, new council tax bands would be introduced to hit homes worth more than £2 million.
A Labour source said people will have to declare if they are liable for the tax – like companies which own properties have to now.
He said: “The Royal family pay council tax like everyone else.”
Balls said the tax — which will be used to fund extra doctors and nurses in the NHS — could not be applied to some people but not to others.
Speaking to Sky News’ Murnaghan programme yesterday morning, Balls said: “There has always been a cross-party consensus that we have fair and tough rules for the financing of the Royal Household but members of the Royal Household pay taxes just like everybody else and rightly so.
“There aren’t different rules for anybody. That’s the nature of our society.”
He also confirmed that home owners would have to own up to the value of their homes.
Balls’ remarks came after Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg — speaking in Glasgow at the Lib Dem conference — said he would increase taxes if the party was still in government after the next election.
Asked if the Lib Dems would raise taxes, he said: “Yes, of course. We must raise taxes.”
Clegg said the proposed “mansion tax” was among a series of tax reforms proposed by the Lib Dems that would help fill the deficit black hole.
In an interview on BBC1’s Andrew Marr Show he accused the Conservatives of announcing with “almost undisguised relish” that they would not ask the wealthiest to pay a “single penny towards completing the deficit reduction effort”.
Clegg said that trying to clear the deficit without raising taxes was economically extreme. — Daily Mail
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