Angela Rayner has trimmed her tax bill nicely – but yours is about to rocket

The deputy PM appears to be operating by the mantra that “only the little people pay tax”, while the big boys and girls make their own arrangements. Under Labour, the little people – you and me – pay more, while Rayner quietly sorts herself out.

In decades as a personal finance journalist, I’ve written umpteen articles advising readers how to cut their tax bills, legally. Careful gifting to trim inheritance tax, wrapping savings in an ISA, claiming relief on pension contributions, that type of thing.

One thing I’ve never recommended is switching the designation of your main home to escape the stamp duty surcharge on a second one.

Yet by juggling her residence status, Rayner reportedly cut the bill on her £800,000 Hove flat from £70,000 to £30,000. That’s a tidy £40,000 saving.

Rachel Reeves must be fuming. The Chancellor needs every penny she can get right now, and while £40,000 won’t plug her black hole, it leaves even more for the little people to cough up.

Worse, the Treasury is rumoured said to be toying with taxing people's main homes in the same week as a senior cabinet minister is caught playing the cup-and-ball trick with her three pads. Good luck selling property tax hikes to voters now, Chancellor.

There’s something else I've never advised readers do. Hire tax experts peddling complicated schemes that promise to slash your bill.

They’re typically fee-ridden, legally sketchy and liable to collapse the moment HMRC sniffs around. Even if you get away with it, the time and stress isn’t worth it.

I've rarely felt the need to spell this out. Most readers have the sense not to dabble. Sadly, that can’t be said of our deputy PM.

Her decision, reported in today’s Mail on Sunday, to enlist "wealth protection" firm Shoosmiths for elaborate trust arrangements in 2023 looks spectacularly ill-judged.

Didn't she ever consider the danger that this might end up in a politically embarrassing sleaze investigation?

Did Rayner not notice she was on course for high office if Labour won in 2024? Did it escape her attention that her party was miles ahead in the polls as the Tories imploded? Or that she might she might be in line for a top cabinet post if they won. Something juicy like Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government?

The UK is in a housing crisis, and second-home hoarding hardly screams left-wing solidarity.

The optics worsen when you recall that Rayner recently handed Reeves a list of eight punitive tax demands, including one on stamp duty, having first taken steps to minimise her own exposure.

Especially at a time when Reeves has just appointed a man to write her Budget who has called for 20 brutal tax hikes, most of which will hit the little people.

It will be interesting to see whether Reeves offers tax breaks for vapes this autumn. Or glasses of rosé wine. If so, we’ll know the reason why

Rayner has saved a chunk of tax, but in doing so has bought herself a mountain of grief.

Her spokesperson insists she paid in full and did nothing wrong. That may be true if Shoosmiths delivered what she paid them for.

But as I said, it’s not a strategy I’d advise readers to pursue.

So what was Angela Rayner thinking? Or is she clueless, crooked, arrogant or all three? I’ll leave that to the sleaze investigation but one thing is certain. She’s definitely a blathering Labour Party hypocrite. As she hires fancy wealth advisers to wrestle her tax bill down, the rest of us will helplessly pay up.