John Bercow to repay £6,500 capital gains tax

1.10.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Sat 23rd May 2009

John Bercow to repay £6,500 capital gains tax

This story appeared in The Telegraph, Saturday May 23rd.

John Bercow, the Buckingham Conservative MP who has declared himself a candidate in the race to become the next speaker, is to pay more than £6,500 to HM Revenue & Customs after he confirmed that he had not paid capital gains tax when he sold two properties in 2003.

By Gordon Rayner, Chief Reporter

Mr Bercow, the MP for Buckingham, "flipped" the designation of his main and second homes between London and his constituency so that he could designate each as his main home at the time he sold it. It meant he paid no capital gains tax on either sale.

While he insisted that he had done nothing wrong, Mr Bercow said he had decided to "voluntarily" pay tax on the profit from the sale of one of the houses. "From 1997 until early 2003, I designated my constituency home as my second home," he said. "I did make changes in the designation of my homes during the course of 2003 as a result of which CGT was not payable."

He said he followed the advice of an accountant but would now retrospectively abide by the terms of a change in parliamentary rules that meant tax must be paid on the sale of second homes. "My accountant has calculated that I would have paid £6,508.40 in CGT had I been liable for it at the time, so I will therefore be repaying this amount, plus interest," said Mr Bercow.