Housing greed has reached new heights. Look at the Newham tax racket | Faiza Shaheen

Thirty years of bad policy have encouraged house hoarding, avarice and the massive accumulation of wealth – to the detriment of the rest of societyAnother housing scam has been uncovered. Up to 13,000 landlords, almost half of a total of 27,000 in the London borough of Newham alone have failed to declare their rental income. Scaling this figure up to the London level, unpaid tax is costing the public purse nearly £200m. Who’s surprised? From the global elite leaving properties empty to rogue landlords and the hideous Grenfell Tower fire – our housing system has come to represent all that is wrong with free-market capitalism. But we shouldn’t kid ourselves that this new finding is a simple reminder that our housing system is flawed. It’s far worse – levels of house hoarding alongside this added reluctance to pay tax shows that housing greed has reached new heights. Related: Half of landlords in one London borough fail to declare rental income Continue reading…
Via: Housing greed has reached new heights. Look at the Newham tax racket | Faiza Shaheen