A petition to oppose the proposed change in buy to let landlords’ tax breaks is nearing the 14,000-signature mark - but still has some way to go to force the government to consider a debate on the subject.
By passing the 10,000-signature threshold, as it did last week, the petition will now receive a formal response from the government, likely to take the form of an open letter.
But 100,000 signatures are required for the government to consider a debate on the issue. Even then there is no guarantee that a debate would happen, nor that it would have some form of vote which could see the measure overturned.
In any case, the measure - which if implemented would limit tax relief to the basic rate of income tax of 20 per cent even if a landlord pays a higher rate of tax - will be debated when MPs return from their summer recess in October, as it forms part of the emergency Budget which has to be voted on in both the Commons and the Lords.
The petition, which is entitled 'Reverse the planned tax relief restriction on individual landlords', was set up by London-based landlord Ruhal Uddin. You can see it here.
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Good luck with that guys, but really you've got more chance of changing the weather than you have of having any impact with a petition.
This has been a long time coming. As everyone knows, you have to build up a market before you can milk it for tax and that's just what's happened.
Still, the impact is being very much overstated. Firstly, there are and will continue to be tax breaks in future; just not quite as generous as they were. Secondly, higher and top rate taxpayers are obviously taxed at higher levels on all legitimate investments already. The changes are highly unlikely to cause someone to bail out of a property investment and dash off to cash or equities.
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