Paid stamp Duty - Should I have done so?

RyeBread

I am after some advice regarding my house purchase several years ago. Years ago when you paid 3% stamp duty on anything over £250k.
Historically, there was a parcel of land at the back of mine and some neighbours houses. Everyone clubbed together and bought the land from the land owner and it was split accordingly. I have been told by a neighbour that an estate agent said it had instanly added over £15k to his house price.
When I bought my house years later for £270K, there were two deeds. The house one which is freehold and one for the land (extended garden as it is now) that is leasehold. The lease has no cost, lasts hundreds of years and just means we can't build on it - fine.

My question is - should my solicitor have split the sale up so we pay, (to keep it simple) £249,999 for the property and £20,000 for the land. It would have to have been valued by a surveyor of course.
That way we would only have had to pay a much smaller amount of stamp duty. After all, I could sell that land to my next-door-neighbour with little fuss.

Appreciate any help from any Conveyancing Solicitor out there.

p.s. I don't want to approach my solicitors just yet incase they see it as an attack on their integrity and become closed off to me.

davidmcn

No, you pay on the total amount for the transaction (or linked transactions), you can't artificially split it up into different bits and pretend it's pure coincidence that you're buying these bits of land at the same time.

RyeBread

It's not artificially splitting them up - they are separate. Separate deeds. One can be bought without the other.

davidmcn

Yes, but anybody could split up their house into separate plots if your logic worked! You paid the correct amount of stamp duty.

Aylesbury_Duck

I remember the good old days when you could split things. In 1996 I paid £60,000 for my house and £1,000 for an oven and a shed. Stamp duty at 1% kicked in at anything over £60k.

G_M

Aylesbury_Duck wrote: »

I remember the good old days when you could split things. In 1996 I paid £60,000 for my house and £1,000 for an oven and a shed. Stamp duty at 1% kicked in at anything over £60k.

I remember those days.

I split my house so that each room had seperate Deeds. Sold each one seperately to the same buyer and as no single Title exceeded the Stamp Duty threshold, me &the buyer split the tax he would have paid....

HouseBuyer77

gov.uk has some information here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/sdlt-linked-purchases-or-transfers

RyeBread

Yes, I have a new solicitor - he wasn't helpful.
Splitting the rooms up - get real.
Buying the shed and oven for a grand to reduce the value of the house is tax evasion.

Thank you Housebuyer77 for the helpful link.

Doozergirl

Your new solicitor probably was not helpful because they did not say what you wanted to hear either.

Good luck with the the third one.