Stamp Duty over payment

snowdon19

I have just found out that I paid 10% stamp duty on a property I bought in 2014. The purchase price was £250,000 and the stamp duty on the completion document from the solicitor shows the stamp duty I paid was £25,000. It was my only property, only residence.  I know I should have noticed, but at the time it was very complicated, a 28day deadline for the purchase and a complicated sale of my first property too. I just went with what I was told by the conveyancer and rushed to get a mortgage agreed, single mum etc...no excuse (I know). But I'm in a better place mentally now and have been sorting old paperwork, when I found this completion statement and thought gosh that was an expensive purchase and then... gosh why was it so expensive? I researched stamp duty rates for 2014 and I should have paid 3% which would have been £7500. That's a huge overpayment, can I get my money back?

davidmcn

Are you sure that's actually the amount you paid and not just e.g. a typo on the statement you're looking at? I expect HMRC should be able to confirm how much SDLT was stated as payable on your SDLT return (and how much actually paid).

SDLT_Geek

10% is the usual amount for a deposit, perhaps a misunderstanding has crept in here?

davidmcn

Have you checked that you actually paid it, or are you just assuming you did because that's what the solicitor's statement says?

It would be a spectacularly large amount for the solicitors to have accidentally asked you for and then kept on their client account for six years. I mean, if they have, yes of course you can get it back, but I doubt that's what's happened.

snowdon19

Update: complete idiot, found another document acknowledging and correcting the error, so serves me right for not destroying the incorrect one. Sorry for wasting everyone's time... and getting myself over-excited about a lovely lockdown windfall! What a fool