Do I pay stamp duty?

FireWyrm

Hello all.

As you may know, I'm buying a house. I've been told by various people that inshouldnt have to pay stamp duty, but my mortgage advisor says that I do. Here are the facts.

My parents owned a shared ownership house which had a 30% mortgage. After 25 years, for reasons I wont go into, they gave me this 30% which I owned free and clear having paid off the mortgage. In due course, I applied to buy the remaining shares of 70% which I could do and found to my surprise that the council pulled a fast one on my dad back in 1983 because he paid stamp duty on the whole value of the house when he purchased the 30%. So, I didn't have to pay stamp duty on the 70% when I bought it because he already had.

Ok, fast forward and I'm buying my own house now. My financial advisor claims that I should pay stamp duty on this purchase because I once owned the house in Milton Keynes. I don't think I should because I thought first time buyers are entitled to a free pass on stamp duty for their first purchase.

Can anyone tell me the proper rules, who's right and how I prove my case if I am correct.

timmyt

FireWyrm wrote: »

Hello all.

As you may know, I'm buying a house. I've been told by various people that inshouldnt have to pay stamp duty, but my mortgage advisor says that I do. Here are the facts.

My parents owned a shared ownership house which had a 30% mortgage. After 25 years, for reasons I wont go into, they gave me this 30% which I owned free and clear having paid off the mortgage. In due course, I applied to buy the remaining shares of 70% which I could do and found to my surprise that the council pulled a fast one on my dad back in 1983 because he paid stamp duty on the whole value of the house when he purchased the 30%. So, I didn't have to pay stamp duty on the 70% when I bought it because he already had.

Ok, fast forward and I'm buying my own house now. My financial advisor claims that I should pay stamp duty on this purchase because I once owned the house in Milton Keynes. I don't think I should because I thought first time buyers are entitled to a free pass on stamp duty for their first purchase.

Can anyone tell me the proper rules, who's right and how I prove my case if I am correct.

sorry, you have to pay. The Government are helping people own their first property, you already had one and were on the property ladder

googler

The SDLT rules are at www.hmrc.gov.uk. You don't qualify.

You may not have bought your share of a previous house (it may have been gifted to you) but HMRC says you don't qualify if you have previously had an 'interest' in property.

Your part share or whole share counts as an interest, if I'm not mistaken.

neverdespairgirl

It doesn't matter if you've bought before, it matters if you've ever owned an interest in property anywhere in the world. So you don't qualify.

FireWyrm

!!?!***$!!

Thanks for the information. Well I suppose I should be happy I didn't pay stamp duty on the first purchase because the council pulled a fast one on Dad. He only paid £210 anyway.

theartfullodger

Surely it's the patriotic thing to pay all taxes due promptly & with good humour??

FireWyrm

theartfullodger wrote: »

Surely it's the patriotic thing to pay all taxes due promptly & with good humour??

I think I must have some Greek blood.

jjlandlord

theartfullodger wrote: »

Surely it's the patriotic thing to pay all taxes due promptly & with good humour??

Legal duty? yes. Patriotic? Yes as long as you accept that the interest of the State always comes first...

Anyway, imo this SDLT relief whereby you must never have owned interest in a property anywhere in the world to qualify works largely on honesty as I'm very doubtful regarding the actual checks HMRC can do.
I would not risk it if the previous property was in the UK, though.

harryhound

So the government can fritter it away buying votes and bombing foreigners who have some oil?

I don't want to sound like a "Tea" party member, but somehow it now takes approaching 50% of our GDP (don't' forget the EU and all the stealth taxes and the "non taxes" such as climate change levies) just to run the country.

Back in the "swinging 60's" the government managed to run the country with a tax take of 27% of a much smaller GDP.
At least in those days the government managed to produce some more of the GDP such as the coal and electricity.
Now everything seems to have been flogged off to foreigners and the future of our children mortgaged from birth.
There are no more lucky breaks to squander, such as that once in 8 million years opportunity to pump the North Sea dry.

The overpopulated world of nearing 7,000,000,000 people seems to be facing a mixture of raw material push and printed money ("quantitative easing") inflation as too much money chases too few goods.

In a global economy we are in direct competition with many of the other 6,940,000,000 souls, do you think we are winning this competitive race, where saving and investing yields typically -3% after inflation in 25% devalued currency and then that gets taxed at rates up to 50%?

I wonder what the government take is in say a former colony such as Hong Kong?

If you think the long term patriotic thing to do is give half the country's wealth to politicians - do carry on trying to maximise your taxes.

Harry.

I wonder how much the Roman Empire was trying to raise in taxes, (or taxation by inflation) before it failed and collapsed.

Come to think of it historically the church used to run a lot of services that the government now tries to run and it only took a
tithe:

World English Dictionary
tithe (taɪð) — n 1. ( often plural ) Christianity a tenth part of agricultural or other produce, personal income, or profits, contributed either voluntarily or as a tax for the support of the church or clergy or for charitable purposes 2. any levy, esp of one tenth 3. a tenth or very small part of anything.

martindow

harryhound wrote: »

Back in the "swinging 60's" the government managed to run the country with a tax take of 27% of a much smaller GDP.

I'm not sure if a smaller proportion was paid then. Thatcher made great play of reducing taxes in the 70s, but she only counted income tax while adding to indirect taxes.

Looking at the graph on page 7 of this

http://www.ifs.org.uk/bns/bn25.pdf

it hasn't changed much since 1948

Twinmummy_3

We are just buying our first property too but have to pay stamp duty as DH inherited a property from his Gran which we sold to raise a deposit (and then paid capital gains tax on the profit)
It doesnt seem fair but its the rules Im afraid