In Ashton-under-Lyne there is little sympathy for the deputy prime minister’s tax troubles
“I’ve got to pay my taxes and so has she, it’s as simple as that,” Andrew Davies, 57, said, a common view on the streets of Angela Rayner’s Ashton-under-Lyne constituency.
On Wednesday, the deputy prime minister acknowledged for the first time that she had mistakenly not paid the correct amount of stamp duty when she bought a flat in Hove earlier this year.
When she bought the £800,000 property in May, she paid the standard rate of stamp duty, estimated to be about £30,000, rather than the rate for second homes, which is higher, and would have amounted to as much as £70,000.
Rayner said that she had done so because she had in January put her stake in her Greater Manchester constituency home in Ashton-under-Lyne, in Tameside, into a trust for her children, with her name no longer on the deed.
