SDLT penalty

blueparsnip

Hi, just wondered what your thoughts are. Solicitor has asked for £100 because inland revenue have imposed a penalty for late return of the stamp duty land tax form. No stamp duty to pay but have to fill in form apparently.They needed the national insurance number.This was given to them at the start of proceedings with ID etc. They have also been given a mobile number on two occasions, so this information could have been acquired but along with national insurance number,this has obviously been lost. Reluctantly a cheque for this amount has been given to the solicitor in order for everything to be finalised,followed up by a complaint to the relevant person in the company. To no avail. Now what do you think? Should the solicitor have stumped up the £100 or the buyer?

G_M

Did your contract with the solicitor include them submitting the SDLT Return on your behalf?


If yes, and they had no valid reason to delay, they are responsibe for the late submission and the fine.


It reads like they delayed because they did not have/could not find your NI number yes?


If as you say you had already provided it, then they had no excuse and you should follow their complaints procedure.


If they had some justifiable reason for the delay, then the fine is down to you.

blueparsnip

Thanks for your reply.To be honest I didn't know that a SDLT form had to be filed with HMRC as there was no stamp duty to be paid. It wasn't until we received a letter from solicitor asking for £100 that we became aware. So obviously it is something that the solicitor does as part of the job. If they weren't obliged to do it then I don't suppose they would. No solicitor does work they don't have to do they? My understanding now is that if you don't advise them that you'll see to stamp duty yourself then they do it on your behalf,and charge you for it of course.

GDB2222

I’m not convinced that you can register the transfer at Land Registry without submitting the SDLT form at the same time.

I’d either pay the £100 and forget it, or pay the £100 and complain, but I’d agree with your assessment that you should pay it so your property is dealt with fully. That’s obviously the priority.

davidmcn

I would say that even if their remit didn't explicitly include dealing with SDLT, I'd expect the solicitors to be doing it. I can't see why you ought to be paying the penalty unless it was clear that you had delayed in providing necessary information - but really they should have clarified everything in the SDLT return before completion.

G_M

The terms of business of some conveyancing /solicitors firms exclude SDLT submission and treat it as an optional, chargeable, extra. They do this so that their quote is cheaper and they appear competitive.


Yes, any decent firm does it "as part of the job", but the conveyancing world has become cut-throat!


As GBD2222 says, the TR1 cannot be lodged with the Land Registry till SDLT has been dealt with.


Pay it for now, get thr TR1 submitted and the property registered in your name, then follow the firm's complaints process and request a refund

Richard_Webster

Is it reasonable for the average buyer to know that completion of an SDLT form is part of the process, especially when no tax is payable? No.

Therefore the solicitor either:
(a) Should explain that the form has to be completed and that he will charge an additional fee for this or give you the option of completing it yourself with a warning of the consequences of not doing so in time; or
(b) Complete the form as part of the conveyancing process with no extra charge. I’m a bit rusty having been retired for 6 years, but it was good practice for the solicitor to send a copy of the form to the client to check that all the questions have been answered correctly – in a few cases the normal answers to some more obscure questions won’t apply and so the solicitor will need to check they have made the right assumptions.

A good conveyancing practice will not charge extra for this rather than some who lure people in with an apparently low conveyancing charge on to which they will normally add a lot of extras such as completing this form

Unless you were clearly told it was your responsibility and warned of the consequences of not completing it then it is down to the solicitor to do so. If he lost your NI number and mobile number he should have contacted you to ask for them again with a warning they were needed to complete the form.

If you never had any explanation as to why the form had to be completed in a particular timescale then the £100 is down to the solicitor and not you and you can quite legitimately complain and ask for your money back and a small additional amount to cover your trouble in being hassled by the solicitor.

I would add that in practice if you are getting a mortgage then the solicitor will have a duty to the mortgage lender make sure that the Land Registry application is submitted quickly and therefore he cannot really allow his client to take the form away and delay completion of it. Its completion is necessary for the LR application to go through.