Ed Miliband, pictured here with his wife Justine, has been challenged by MPs to prove that he did not try to avoid tax in relation to his property dealings . Ed Miliband faced calls last night to publish full details of his tax affairs. The Labour leader’s family affairs have come under the spotlight after he spent much of last week condemning ‘tax dodgers’. The Daily Mail told yesterday how he and his family used a ‘deed of variation’ to divide ownership of their family home – which experts say is used almost exclusively to reduce death duty bills. It has now emerged that Mr Miliband and his partner Justine Thornton – his wife since 2011 – both sold separate flats they owned in upmarket North London in 2008 and 2009 without paying capital gains tax. Mr Miliband sold his £740,000 apartment five months after the purchase of their family home for £1.6million and six months after the couple had their first son. But he claimed that the flat was his ‘primary residence’. Saying the flats were their primary homes enabled them both to save tens of thousands of pounds in capital gains tax. Labour yesterday insisted any suggestion of tax avoidance is a ‘straightforward lie’. And today Mr Miliband is expected to say he is ‘not backing down’ in his campaign against tax avoidance, despite the controversy about his own affairs. In a speech to the Welsh Labour conference he will accuse ministers of ‘turning a blind eye’ to tax avoidance. But the Conservatives last night stepped up pressure on him to publish the details of his tax affairs. Mr Miliband managed to avoid paying capital gains tax on the sale of the flat he owned before moving into the townhouse where his family now live. Mr Miliband met Miss Thornton in 2002. In the following years, they owned separate flats. He originally had an apartment on Chalcot Square but sold this for £342,000 in 2005, before buying a flat on nearby Chalcot Road about a year later for £648,500. It is not known where Mr Miliband, then 36, lived in the intervening months. But Miss Thornton owned a flat in Maida Vale. This was sold for £680,000 in March 2008, with Miss Thornton paying no capital gains tax. A Labour spokesman has said this is because it was her primary residence. Yet when Mr Miliband sold his flat on Chalcot Road for £740,000 in December 2009, he did not pay capital gains tax either, as he claimed this was his primary residence. This is despite the fact that five months earlier Miss Thornton – an environmental law expert on around £200,000 a year – had bought for £1.6 million the family home near Hampstead Heath where they now live. She had also given birth to their first son Daniel earlier that year, in June 2009. They were able to avoid the tax in part because they were unmarried. Mr Miliband and Miss Thornton became engaged in 2010 and married a year later. Miss Thornton, however, is still registered as the sole owner of their four-bedroom Victorian property for reasons that are unclear. Tory MP Andrew Bridgen said Mr Miliband’s family’s deed of variation was clearly designed to cut inheritance tax and condemned the Labour leader’s denial of this. He added: ‘Ed Miliband should now publish this deed of variation that he is currently hiding away and be as open about his own tax affairs as he demands others to be. The public can then judge for themselves.’ The former Director of Public Prosecutions Sir Keir Starmer, now a Labour parliamentary candidate, added: ‘People will take different views on deeds of variation and all forms of tax relief is, in one sense, intended to reduce tax. People have a strong feeling that sophisticated tax avoidance is morally wrong.’ MPs want to know if Mr Miliband and his family used tax avoidance strategies when trading houses . Mr Miliband has spent the week lambasting tax dodgers in the wake of allegations that HSBC’s Swiss private bank helped clients evade tax. He had gone on the attack over allegations of tax avoidance activities linked to some wealthy supporters of the Conservative Party, telling the House of Commons that David Cameron was ‘a dodgy Prime Minister surrounded by dodgy donors’. Mr Miliband was subsequently forced to defend his own tax affairs. Asked by BBC political editor Nick Robinson if he thought it was ‘dodgy’ to use a deed of variation and leave your house to your children to avoid tax, the Labour leader said: ‘The deed of variation... is something my mother did 20 years ago. I paid tax as a result of that transaction, I’ve avoided no tax in that.’ Mr Miliband’s father’s will was changed by deed of variation after his death in 1994 so Ed, David and their mother Marion all became part-owners of their £2.4million family home. This meant that if she then died, the sons would already own part of the property so inheritance tax would be applicable to less of the home than were she to have owned it outright. Mr Miliband has, however, since sold his share to his brother, who bought the remainder from his mother, who is still alive. He also claims to have paid capital gains tax at 40 per cent on the sale and denied he used the arrangement to avoid tax. A spokesman said: ‘It can’t be tax avoidance if no tax was avoided.’ Last night a spokesman for Mr Miliband insisted the couple only moved in together in 2008 – six years into their relationship and when Mr Miliband was 38 and Miss Thornton 37. ‘As HMRC guidance makes clear, primary residence relief continues for three years after you leave your home. The final 36 months of ownership always qualify for relief as long as the dwelling house has been your only or main residence at some point.’ BY JAMES CONEY, MONEY MAIL EDITOR . Why did the family change Ralph Miliband’s will? Changing someone’s will using a deed of variation is a relatively rare event and requires the agreement of all the beneficiaries – so why did the Miliband family do it? Was it because their father had forgotten something, or was it simply for tax planning reasons? If Mrs Miliband wanted to give some of the house to her sons she could have done that without changing her husband’s will – but this would have given her a tax liability when she continued living in the property. By altering the will and essentially making Ralph Miliband give a share of the house to his sons as a gift, Mrs Miliband was allowed to remain living there tax free. It also meant that when Ed and David came to inherit the house their tax liabilities would have been reduced. Figures produced for the Mail suggest this could have saved them £160,000 if they had inherited in 2004. George Bull, senior tax partner at accountancy firm Baker Tilly said: ‘A deed of variation is an established part of tax planning but it is not that common. Generally in the event of someone’s death the beneficiaries of the estate usually accept what is written in the will and shrug their shoulders and say that is that.’ What did Ed Miliband class as his main home from 1995 until 2004? In 1995 Ed Miliband owned 20 per cent of the family home in Edis Street, but also bought a second-floor flat in nearby Chalcot Square for around £100,000. Then in 2004 David bought the Edis Street property outright from Ed and their mother. You do not pay capital gains tax when you sell your main home, but you do have to pay tax on any gains you make above a certain level on a second home. In 2004, this was charged at a person’s highest income tax rate on gains of more than £8,200. Ed says he paid tax of 40 per cent on the sale of his stake of Edis Street to David. But exactly how much was the bill? Second-home owners have to notify HM Revenue & Customs which property is their main home. But they can switch this at any time. Every time they do this, the previous three years of house price gains are discounted (as the rules stand today, it is only 18 months). This allows second-home owners to reduce their tax liability when prices are rising fast. If Edis Street was not classed as his main home, it is estimated Ed’s captial gains tax bill could have been up to £56,000, depending on other gains he cashed in at that time. So which property was Ed living in from 1995, and which did he tell HMRC was his main home? Was it ever switched? Where did Ed and Justine live ? Ed Miliband first met Justine Thornton in 2002 and they married in 2011. For most of this time up until 2009 they each owned their own property. Last night a Labour Party spokesman insisted that they only moved in together in 2008. However, there are questions about where Ed lived between selling his home in 2005 and buying in Chalcot Road the following year. Up until 2008 Justine owned her own apartment in nearby Maida Vale. Had the couple been married and living together only one property would have been able to be classed as a primary residence – the other would have been a second home and as such any gains made on it would have incurred capital gains tax after a period. But because they were not married and apparently not living together there would have been no tax to pay. The Maida Vale home was sold in March 2008. It was only at this point that the couple apparently moved in together, into Mr Miliband’s Chalcot Road home. They eventually moved into a home bought by Justine in July 2009. Ed sold his Chalcot Road flat in 2009, five months after Justine bought their current home. He would have had 18 months to do this before capital gains tax applies.
MPs want Ed Miliband to explain his family's complicated  property history . Mr Miliband and his now wife both sold their separate flats in 2008/9 . Mr Miliband and Justine did not pay any capital gains tax on either deal . He sold his flat five months after they bought their £1.6m family home .