Completing your own SDLT form??

Gareth83

Just had a quote for all the legalities and I'm trying to reduce the cost of our house purchase.

The quote:

Legal fees £350
VAT on fees £61.25
Local Authority Search £51
Official Searches £12
LR Fees £150
Transfer Fee (inc VAT) £20
Land Transactin Return (inc VAT) £47

Total £691.25

I'm thinking I can do the SDLT form (land transaction return form) myself. Is this easy to do??

Is there anything else I can do myself or is there anything missing??

Cheers

pknottm

It depends on the type of purchase!
If it's a standard freehold, then it's pretty straightforward.

I filled my own in to save the £35+VAT that I was going to be charged!
It's like a typical Revenue & Customs Form, but they do have a step by step guide on how to fill it in, with examples.

The form basically asks for the vendors name address, names and addresses of all people responsible for the purchase (your name), both name of solicitors (if applicable), purchase price, etc;

I found it very straight forward and it took approx half an hour to fill in!

Gareth83

where do I get it from?

pknottm

My solicitor sent me mine (and they had already filled in their details), I completed it and sent it back to my solicitor!

They can also be requested from HM Revenue & Customs.

My solicitor didn't send me the accompanying notes to go with the form, but they can be downloaded as a pdf from:-
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/so/sdlt_website.htm

A sample SDLT1 is here:-
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/so/sdlt1-sample.pdf

Hope this helps!

craignattress

nice one this helps, gonna be charged £50 for it. And they didnt send the guidance notes to help. unhelpful gits!

olly300

craignattress wrote: »

nice one this helps, gonna be charged £50 for it. And they didnt send the guidance notes to help. unhelpful gits!

Why would any business do themselves out of a revenue stream?

I completed my own and the only information I was given by the solicitor was to contact HM Customs and Revenue to get the form and guidance notes.

However the solicitor did basically write out the information I needed in one letter and the EA had given me other information i.e. vendor's solicitor in another letter so between the 2 letters I could complete the form.

HM Customer and Revenue actually sent me the guidance notes and 2 copies of the form as you are suppose to retain one for your own notes in case it's completed in correctly or they want to investigate later.

Gareth83

Is there anyway to get the actual form SDLT1 in a downloadable format??

lotto-dreamer

This what they look like
http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/so/sdlt1-sample.pdf

As far as I'm aware, you can't download them because each form has a unique barcode number on it.

You need the guidance notes because there are certain codes which have to be used for some of the questions.

For example -the local authority (each LA has its own reference number which is listed in the guidance notes), code for what type of transaction (freehold, leasehold etc), code for how payment is being made (for example cash which includes a mortgage has a code of 30 I think). The rest of the information is straightforward such as vendors names addresses, purchasers names addresses etc - but you will need guidance notes.

If it's leasehold it gets a bit more complicated.

lotto-dreamer

Found guidance notes (I think they are up to date ones). They give guidance on all the forms (SDLT1, SDLT60 etc) but the SDLT1 form is the one most commonly used. You just need to go through all questions for SDLT1.

http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/so/sdlt6.pdf