Stamp Duty - Will I have to pay?

SuperBOB

We are about to make an offer on a property - its marketed at £130,000.

I am a first time buyer, but my wife has had a property before in Australia. (Which is now sold).

Where do we stand on stamp duty?

Clarification: Do we have to disclose that my wife had a mortgage in Australia - or can we pretend we are both joint first time buyers?

Thanks for the help!

Crashandburn

If you are a first-time buyer the threshold for when you start to pay SDLT is £250,000. This is only if you have never owned a house or flat in the UK or anywhere else in the world. If you are buying with someone else they must never have owned property before either. This higher threshold applies to purchases made on or after 25 March 2010 and before 25 March 2012

Sorry! Looks like its payable

GMS

Offer £124,999

SuperBOB

Does anyone know if they investigate whether or not you have owned before? Particularly outside of the EU?

Cheers

Crashandburn

So you know your wife has owned a property before but want to hide this fact to avoid paying stamp duty? I think HMRC are quite cool on tax evasion so go for it!!

Bottom line, you'll be making a false declaration on the stamp duty return in the hope they don't check.

CloudCuckooLand

Offer £125k. Its why its priced as it is, so they can make you feel you got something off...

In fact what you should do, is treat it as though be priced at £125k, and then knock off what you think appropriate for negotiating - that's what they are hoping you will not do.

noodle

CloudCuckooLand wrote: »

Offer £125k. Its why its priced as it is, so they can make you feel you got something off...

In fact what you should do, is treat it as though be priced at £125k, and then knock off what you think appropriate for negotiating - that's what they are hoping you will not do.

Absolutely right. I can't imagine anyone who genuinely expects to get more than £125k for a property marketing at much below £140k. Anything on the market within sniffing distance of the stamp duty threshold is expected to sell for something below it.

tyler80

The house we're looking at buying seem to be holding out for 130k, I'm tempted to tell them we're only ftb for mortgage purposes :-D

neverdespairgirl

Question - I want to commit tax fraud. What are my chances of getting away with it?

SuperBOB

neverdespairgirl wrote: »

Question - I want to commit tax fraud. What are my chances of getting away with it?

Yeah, exactly.

SuperBOB

CloudCuckooLand wrote: »

Offer £125k. Its why its priced as it is, so they can make you feel you got something off...

In fact what you should do, is treat it as though be priced at £125k, and then knock off what you think appropriate for negotiating - that's what they are hoping you will not do.

You guys are making me feel like an idiot. Quite rightly as well, unfortunately.

We love the place and it was new to market with plenty of viewings, so we made a rapid informal offer for 128K. They tried to negotiate to 129K, then agreed to 128K.

I suppose I can pray that the property report we are having done will tun up £3K of problems that need rectified so I can push them down to 125K and avoid duty

Though I doubt it.