Angela Rayner has told the BBC she is the victim of a 'smear' and has received professional advice that she owes no tax on the sale of her home. Labour's deputy leader was speaking in her first broadcast interview since claims emerged that she may have owed capital gains tax on the 2015 sale of a property in Stockport.
Ms Rayner told Newsnight there had been 'no wrongdoing' and 'no unlawfulness'. She continued: 'It is a non-story manufactured to try and smear me.' Claims about Ms Rayner's tax affairs first emerged in a biography by former Conservative Party treasurer Lord Ashcroft.
Ms Rayner bought the former council house in Vicarage Road, Stockport for £79,000 in January 2007. In September 2010 she married Mark Rayner, who owned a separate house nearby. In March 2015, two months before she became an MP, Ms Rayner sold the Vicarage Road property for £127,500, a gain of £48,500.
Ms Rayner acknowledged that she commissioned professional tax advice recently after the claims emerged. She said: 'I was a home care worker, you know, I didn't have an accountant. I had, as most people would: you put your house on the market, you get a legal conveyancing solicitor and you get an estate agent. But since those allegations were put to me, I got expert tax advice to make sure that I hadn't done anything wrong.'
The tax expert Dan Neidle has estimated that Ms Rayner could be liable for a Capital Gains Tax bill of £1,500. However, Ms Rayner insisted she owed no tax, stating: 'I got that advice that is categoric that I do not owe any capital gains tax on that.'
