It seems the government has decided that landlords are profiteering greedy individuals that don't deserve to make a profit. In fact they're doing their damnedest to make sure they don't. Under the new 'Clause 24' tax proposal first announced last summer, some landlords will not make any profit at all, pushing them further and further into debt. We're already seeing some frightening and shocking reactions to the new system and I do wonder where it's going to lead.

What the government doesn't seem to have accounted for in this new system is that many landlords are small, part-time landlords or even landlords by accident. For example, they've just moved in with their partner and have a 'spare' property. In this situation, they may already be mortgaged to the hilt and this new tax change could make renting completely unviable for the homeowner.
The result? Literally tens of thousands of properties could be taken off the rental market.

But the biggest burden will probably affect the small property investor/landlord whose rental income is higher as they have spent the last decade re-mortgaging to build up a portfolio of properties. Often they have a high debt to asset ratio, but not large enough to have considered putting everything into a limited company and they probably couldn't do so, as they wouldn't be able to organise corporate mortgages to replace existing debt.