Stamp Duty first time buyer, help please!

TheLeonC

I got home today to a letter from HMRC saying we claimed £0 tax on our property, but we owe £5000.. we are first time buyers so should not have to pay this, looking over our SDLT form, our solicitors has entered the correct relief code but ticked No to claiming tax relief. At the time we were unaware of this as we are first time buyers and haven’t been through the process before so trusted our solicitors to do this right for us.. which is what we paid them for. I’m planning on calling HMRC tomorrow but was after some advice, will I be let off this charge as we do not have £5000 to spare as we aren’t first time buyers and did not budget for this.

cooltt

TheLeonC wrote: »

I got home today to a letter from HMRC saying we claimed £0 tax on our property, but we owe £5000.. we are first time buyers so should not have to pay this, looking over our SDLT form, our solicitors has entered the correct relief code but ticked No to claiming tax relief. At the time we were unaware of this as we are first time buyers and haven’t been through the process before so trusted our solicitors to do this right for us.. which is what we paid them for. I’m planning on calling HMRC tomorrow but was after some advice, will I be let off this charge as we do not have £5000 to spare as we aren’t first time buyers and did not budget for this.

Stamp duty for first time buyers is only payable over 300K, it's easy to find out on line if you should pay or not. If your house was over 300k you pay 1% upto x amount ect then 2% between this amount and that amount and so forth.


If your purchase was below 300K then get your solicitor to sort it out.


https://www.stampdutycalculator.org.uk/stamp-duty-first-time-buyers.htm

davidmcn

There is a process for submitting a corrected return, but I would get your solicitors to do the legwork.

TheLeonC

Thank you, can this still be done after completion? As we completed 2-3 weeks ago? We have paid our solicitors already so if this is the case I hope they won’t want more money for correcting their mistake

00ec25

I note you have not confirmed you are eligible for FTB relied per the thresholds explained in post #2....

however, assuming you are, you contact HMRC and tell them there has been an error - since you say the code is there but a box was not ticked, that sounds like a simple error they should be able able to check over the phone by looking at their copy of the return

see section at the bottom called "how to amend a return " ...(which I assume you have already found via google?). You have 12 months from the date of the return in which to amend it....

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/stamp-duty-land-tax-online-and-paper-returns

TheLeonC

Thank you for your reply, yes we are eligible we bought our property for 225,000. The No box was ticked next to claiming tax relief, hopefully as you say this may be something they can correct over the phone as the code for first time buyer has been placed in the tax relief reason box.
I will call them tomorrow morning, but was just worried a bit
Thank you again

SDLT_Geek

Good luck calling them. The HMRC SDLT helpline on 0300 200 3510 appears overwhelmed, with calls now often being cut off after a long introductory message.

TheLeonC

Thank you for your help everyone, I have called today and it seemed that our solicitors had put the wrong values in the wrong boxes, so they have changed them so now I shouldn’t have to fork out £5715.
Thank you for your help everyone.

hb2

Thank you for coming back to update the thread.

TheLeonC

Also, not sure if it will help people in the future, I had a nightmare trying to get through to the stamp duty helpline so I called a different department and got them to put me in the queue for stamp duty! Saves you listening to the long winded recorded message at the beginning before you get cut off!

SDLT_Geek

TheLeonC wrote: »

Also, not sure if it will help people in the future, I had a nightmare trying to get through to the stamp duty helpline so I called a different department and got them to put me in the queue for stamp duty! Saves you listening to the long winded recorded message at the beginning before you get cut off!

Can you give the number you called which worked? The official number 03002003510 often disconnects after taking the caller through a number of options and giving long messages!