Tenants may prepare themselves for higher rents as the Chancellor today announced higher taxes for landlords from 2027 who will simply pass that onto their tenants. Despite the UK facing a chronic housing shortage and the Chancellor being warned that further tax attacks on landlords would result in yet more landlords selling up, reducing social housing availability, of course she ignored that. The 2% rise combined with freezing the income tax threshold will mean many landlords being forced to pay 42% tax whilst only receiving 22% relief on buy-to-let mortgages. A large swathe of landlords have already sold up as it just isn't economically viable for them any longer and this will drive more to sell. The Chancellor doesn't understand the basic economics of supply and demand - reduce the supply and the price goes up. To make matters worse, the government are forging ahead with their plans to make landlords submit quarterly returns at more cost to them, and ultimately tenants. We calculate that the combination of both could add £400 a year to the average rent and that is before any other rising costs are factored in.