Solicitors Fees

becky25

Evening All,

We are currently in the process of buying a property. There is no stamp duty on it but in our solicitors fees there is an SDLT administration fee of £50.00 and a SDLT online submission fee of £7.05.

Does anyone know if these fees should be charged as there is no stamp duty?

Thanks in advance for any advice.
Becky

Incisor

Think of it this way: You DO pay stamp duty on ALL property transactions, but in your case, the rate is 0%. Hence the fees. Anyone who knows different, please shout up, but AFAICS, the solicitor has to do all of the same administration, regardless of the rate charged.

hostman

Incisor wrote: »

Think of it this way: You DO pay stamp duty on ALL property transactions, but in your case, the rate is 0%. Hence the fees. Anyone who knows different, please shout up, but AFAICS, the solicitor has to do all of the same administration, regardless of the rate charged.

Our stamp duty rate is 0% with nothing due, house under £125k (offered accepted before Government reduced the threshold), but we've still needed to sign forms relating to stamp duty.

Keith

Unless the transaction is for under £40,000 then the forms either paper or online still need to be completed an submitted or you can't proceed to register at HMLR.

I'm the person who does them at the firm I work for!

Richard_Webster

The situation is that even if there is no SDLT actually payable if the price is over £40K you still have to have the form completed and signed or if the submission to HMRC is on line at least the solicitor has to get a consent to submit form signed by the client. There is more work in filling in these forms so some extra charge is justified.

Personally I think it is preferable to include the work in the overall charge, which is then slightly more than it would have been in the days of Stamp Duty (when the equivalent form was a lot simpler). I think it is confusing to have the extra SDLT completion charge as a separate one because not everybody looks at the small print and it then becomes a surprise later for some.