What was claimed
Rachel Reeves is going to tax privately owned homes a monthly window tax of £3.70 per window per house from August 2025.
Our verdict
We could find no evidence of any such tax being introduced in August. The Treasury has said there are no plans for a window tax and that the claim is “fake”.
A claim that the Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves is introducing a window tax of just under £4 per window is circulating on social media.
An image shared on TikTok and X (formerly Twitter) features a photo of Ms Reeves with overlaid text saying: “BREAKING Absurd!’ Rachel Reeves to tax’ privately owned homes ‘window tax’ Which will be added to council tax payments . £3.70 per window per house, per month . This will take action as from the August 2025 [sic].”
Posts claiming Ms Reeves is going to introduce a “window tax” have also been shared on Facebook.
But Full Fact could not find any evidence that this is going to happen, and the Treasury has confirmed there are no plans for any such policy.
It told PA Media: “This is fake news and misinformation being shared on social media. We are not going to introduce a window tax.”
We have contacted the Treasury for comment and will update this article if we receive a response.
There is no record of Ms Reeves saying the word “window” in Parliament since becoming Chancellor in July 2024, and there were no mentions of a “window tax” in the Autumn budget last October or the Spring statement in March. We could also find no credible media reports of a window tax being introduced or coming into effect in August.
The last time “window tax” was mentioned in Parliament was in a July 2020 debate about stamp duty.
A window tax was first imposed in England in 1696. Initially, houses with more than ten, and later seven, windows were liable for additional taxes that increased depending on the number of windows they had. The tax was repealed in 1851 following a campaign against it.
We’ve debunked other false claims about politicians circulating on social media, including a fake BBC article falsely claiming Rachel Reeves pledged to share ‘income from taxes’, and social media posts wrongly claiming a photo showed Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner gifting a portrait of herself to the Deputy Prime Minister of Vietnam.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because the Treasury has said there are no plans for a window tax and that the claim is “fake”.
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