Hazel Blears Blears had been claiming MPs' second home expenses relating to the flat. She had made a £45,000 profit on its sale without paying capital gains tax. On 12 May she volunteered to pay the £13,332 capital gains tax she had avoided on the sale of her second home. It was subsequently claimed that Gordon Brown had ordered her to repay the sum. In Salford she was met by a number of angry protesters and stayed in a local hotel rather than at home. Following an investigation by Sir Thomas Legg, Blears was told to repay £225 in expenses in relation
Capital gains tax gains tax if it has been held for more than ten years. The German capital gains tax is 25% plus Solidarity surcharge (add-on tax initially introduced to finance the 5 eastern states of Germany – Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, Thuringia and Brandenburg – and the cost of the reunification, but later kept in order to finance all kinds of public funded projects in all Germany), plus Kirchensteuer (church tax, voluntarily), resulting in an effective tax rate of about 28-29%. Deductions of expenses such as custodian fees, travel to annual shareholder meetings, legal and tax advice, interest paid on loans to