The UK towns most at risk if Rachel Reeves unleashes brutal new tax chaos

Pensioners in seaside towns would be hit hardest if Rachel Reeves carries out a “tax blitz” which Express economic expert Harvey Jones she may well be weighing up.

Since taking office in the summer, the new Labour Chancellor has sparked outrage with a range of controversial measures designed to boost the Treasury’s coffers – from cutting the winter fuel allowance to increasing National Insurance contributions for businesses.

Pensions and inheritance are two areas where further tax changes have been tipped, and both are amongst the likely targets Jones believes the Chancellor will home in on in her Spring Statement.

The financial guru said he had a “sneaky feeling” pension tax relief was on her list even though “no chancellor has dared yet” go after it.

“The Treasury spends a staggering £50billion a year on it, and it disproportionately benefits higher earners, who can claim 40% or 45% relief, while basic-rate taxpayers get just 20%,“ Jones pointed out.

The Express writer believes Labour’s “war on wealth” could continue in March with changes to the cash gifts elderly relatives can pass to relatives before they die and alterations to how properties are included in inheritance tax.

By combining information on the number of pensioners and the level of home ownership, data firm Suffrago has generated a list of the areas in Britain that will be hardest hit if Reeves does act as Jones predicts.

The estimates show rural seaside areas, already reeling from previous tax measures, will be disproportionately affected.

Top of the pile is North Norfolk, which perhaps shouldn’t be a huge surprise given a third of the residents in the coastal region which includes Cromer and Wells-next-the-Sea are above 65 – the largest proportion anywhere in the country.

It would nevertheless be a further blow to a region already leading the resistance against inheritance tax changes on farms that Reeves laid out in the Autumn.

The bigger local authority that covers the district, Norfolk County Council, has officially called for the Chancellor to perform a U-turn on her controversial inheritance tax policies describing them as “an assault on the countryside”.

Conservative Brian Long’s December motion made a plea to Westminister on behalf of “Norfolk’s family farms and rural businesses to keep the cost of food down, keep rural jobs and protect the environment by formally rejecting the government’s proposed ‘family farm tax’.”

Another seaside area, Rother in Sussex, was second on the list of districts that will be hit hardest. Situated in the rolling hills around Bexhill and Rye, it’s best known for having the site of the 1066 Battle of Hastings within its borders.

Again it is a location caught up in the fight against the Chancellor’s previous inheritance tax measures.

Following the large-scale demonstration by farmers in London in November against the proposed Family Farm Tax, Kieran Mullan, MP for the area, met farmers who’d travelled up to protest.

“Labour’s ideological decision to target family farmers – despite promising not to do so – has the potential to wreck farmers’ lives and the whole industry,” he told the .

“Not only have they underestimated and undervalued the farms affected by this harsh new tax, but the knock-on effects for the whole country could be disastrous.”

Suffrago ranked the equally rural coastal area of East Devon, which is home to the likes of Exmouth, Seaton and Sidmouth, third where, last month, nearly 60 people from the area met at a pub in Upottery to discuss the potential impact of inheritance tax rises.

They were joined at the meeting by local paper the whose report quoted former MP Neil Parish’s speech to the crowd.

“This government is obsessed with punishing those involved in agriculture, farming and the land,” the former representative of Tiverton and Honiton told the farmers.

“They do not understand the countryside. It is not full of landed gentry as they would have everybody believe.”