A visiting professor and accountancy academic claims landlords are not carrying their fair share of the financial burden caused by the Coronavirus crisis.
Earlier this year Richard Murphy, a chartered accountant and political economist who works as Professor of Practice in International Political Economy at the University of London, urged private tenants to be given “statutory rent holidays” for at least the rest of 2020.
At the time he wrote on a blog for Tax Research UK – which undertakes work on taxation policy for aid agencies, unions, NGOs and others in the UK and abroad – that after such a rent holiday ended: “Thereafter rents should be reduced, drastically, and by law, and right across the board. Eighty per cent cuts may be appropriate. It may be more. Whatever is necessary to ensure business can survive must be done.”
Murphy also forecast earlier this year about owner occupiers “who I predict will see the value of their houses crash in the near future.”
Now he has returned to the Coronavirus theme, again on the Tax Research UK website, saying that: “Nothing has changed. Except we now know I was right. We were facing a massive economic risk at that time the scale of which the government was not appreciating.”
He continues: “And it is still the case that bankers and landlords are not taking their share of the burden in this crisis … [L:andlords] should not be reaping the rewards. This is not a moment to bail out landlords, in particular. This is a moment for people, employers and jobs to take priority. And I still struggle to believe that the government has really taken that message on board.”
