Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves has refused to rule out increasing capital gains tax for landlords who sell their rental properties during an interview with a US business TV channel.

She is in Amercia and later Canada to drum up support for investment in the UK and, while in New York, was interviewed by Bloomberg TV.

Reeves was asked about rumours that she intends to being capital gains tax rates in line with personal income tax rates.

Landlords making a gain after selling a rental property currently pay 18% CGT as a basic-rate taxpayer, or 24% if you pay a higher rate of tax. But aligning CGT to personal income tax levels would raise this to 20% and 40% respectively.

This is based on an average gain by landlords when selling a property of £74,000 although in some areas this is much higher – for example in London the average gain is £137,000.

Balance

Asked directly about capital gains changes by the TV station’s news anchor, Reeve did not reject such a move but said that, within her 30th October Autumn budget, she wanted to “strike the right balance”.

“Of course you need to bring in the revenue to fund the vital public services but we’ve also got to grow the economy and I won’t do anything that makes it harder to achieve that economic growth and prosperity,” she said.

Reeves had earlier said during the interview that the wealthy should pay their ‘fair share’ of the tax burden and that she wanted to reduce the amount of tax paid by working people.