New green tax for buy-to-letters

Hundreds of thousands of buy-to-let landlords may soon have to pay up to £5,000 to upgrade the energy efficiency of their properties. Sarah Moore reports.

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Landlords have some state-enforced DIY to do

Hundreds of thousands of buy-to-let landlords may soon have to pay up to £5,000 to upgrade the energy efficiency of their properties, writes Steven Swinford in The Daily Telegraph. Until July 2015, landlords could apply for loans to cover the cost of energy-saving measures such as insulation, cavity wall filling and new boilers through the government's "Green Deal" scheme. The intention was that tenants, who benefited from lower energy bills, would repay these loans. Yet only 1% of households took out loans under the scheme, according to the National Audit Office.

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Sarah is MoneyWeek's investment editor. She graduated from the University of Southampton with a BA in English and History, before going on to complete a graduate diploma in law at the College of Law in Guildford. She joined MoneyWeek in 2014 and writes on funds, personal finance, pensions and property.