Stamp duty tipped for Autumn Statement shakeup

grizzly1911

George Osborne could use the Autumn Statement to reveal a shake-up of stamp duty that would see the unpopular property tax move to a fairer system



Campaigners have argued for stamp duty to look more like income tax, where the increased tax is paid on amounts over the threshold, not the full amount. So a £250,001 property would attract a 1% charge on the first £250,000 and a 3% charge on the extra £1.
Scotland has said it will introduce this system in 2015 and mortgage expert Ray Boulger of John Charcol expected chancellor George Osborne to follow suit.
‘I think [Osborne] will move on it…because he will look stupid if he lets Scotland do it [and doesn’t change if for the rest of the UK},’ said Boulger.
‘He will be shamed in to changing it and I think there will be an announcement in the Autumn Statement.’


http://citywire.co.uk/money/stamp-duty-tipped-for-autumn-statement-shakeup/a705299?ref=citywire-money-latest-news-list


Will he or won't he?


Long overdue?


Would it fuel HPI?

Mallotum_X

I dont think there woul dbe any significant impact on house prices, except maybe those near the boundary. Houses may actually sell for £255k in the future

movilogo

Might do only if they win the election in 2015.:cool:

chucknorris

grizzly1911 wrote: »

George Osborne could use the Autumn Statement to reveal a shake-up of stamp duty that would see the unpopular property tax move to a fairer system



Campaigners have argued for stamp duty to look more like income tax, where the increased tax is paid on amounts over the threshold, not the full amount. So a £250,001 property would attract a 1% charge on the first £250,000 and a 3% charge on the extra £1.
Scotland has said it will introduce this system in 2015 and mortgage expert Ray Boulger of John Charcol expected chancellor George Osborne to follow suit.
‘I think [Osborne] will move on it…because he will look stupid if he lets Scotland do it [and doesn’t change if for the rest of the UK},’ said Boulger.
‘He will be shamed in to changing it and I think there will be an announcement in the Autumn Statement.’


http://citywire.co.uk/money/stamp-duty-tipped-for-autumn-statement-shakeup/a705299?ref=citywire-money-latest-news-list


Will he or won't he?


Long overdue?


Would it fuel HPI?

That would be sensible and fairer but whatever tax that they gave up on stamp duty would have to be clawed back elsewhere.

Thrugelmir

‘I think [Osborne] will move on it…because he will look stupid if he lets Scotland do it [and doesn’t change if for the rest of the UK},’ said Boulger.

Scotland is proposing to do many things. Like the Labour party's policies, how it will be funded is another matter. As at the moment there's still a budget to balance. Tinkering with policies to win votes is so easy. Far harder to sell the bad news.

MacMickster

Stamp Duty is one of the simplest and most cost-effective taxes to administer and collect.

I can't imagine any government giving up any of this revenue. In fact they are more likely to increase the revenue in the guise of making it fairer - eg abolish the exempt threshold and charge 1% on the first £100K, 2% on the second £100K etc.

michaels

I think we discussed it before - it can be made more sensible in a revenue neutral manner.

the_flying_pig

MacMickster wrote: »

Stamp Duty is one of the simplest and most cost-effective taxes to administer and collect.

I can't imagine any government giving up any of this revenue. In fact they are more likely to increase the revenue in the guise of making it fairer - eg abolish the exempt threshold and charge 1% on the first £100K, 2% on the second £100K etc.

yup.

i think it's a fairly awful tax in terms of the behaviours it incentivises [why fair to tax moving?] but as you say it's a doddle to collect & actually nowadays raises a fair bit of cash.

there's historically [well, starting from about a decade or so back] been a fair bit of evasion, especially in the £1m+ bracket. at one point when i was looking at houses in Surrey an estate agent told me that they went as far as routinely refering buyers to someone who knew about these schemes, including for houses in the price bracket below £1m.

but i believe that government has been at least modestly good at going after evaders [i know a banker who used one of these schemes for a £1.5m house in about 2009 & who eventually got hauled in & forced to cough up] and, more recently, closing loopholes.

so if govt does away with the 'average rate always equals marginal rate' issue i'm sure that they'll do somethign like tweak the thresholds so as not to lose money.

Loughton_Monkey

michaels wrote: »

I think we discussed it before - it can be made more sensible in a revenue neutral manner.

More sensible? I didn't have you down as a raving communist!

If he's forced to drop HTB, the boy has got to do something else for house buyers. Stamp Duty holiday maybe. Paid for by taxing all benefits at 20%, or a new tax on non-mortgage interest (say 30%), forcing Wonga to charge 7,000%.

Surely Osborne is supposed to be a 'Conservative' isn't he?

MFW_ASAP

They have been reading my posts again. First I suggest getting rid of Child Benefit for high earners, then I suggested capping benefits so that they are not above UK national average wages and then I suggest using stamp duty to dampen down HPI hot spots, rather than the crude use of interest rates.

I'm practically a policy maker for the libcons!

michaels

Loughton_Monkey wrote: »

More sensible? I didn't have you down as a raving communist!

Me? I'd remove scrap stamp duty but also remove CGT excemption on PPRs which seems too radical for most. I'd probably make the CGT deferrable until death though to prevent it from strangling the market.