Stamp Duty Reclaiming

Jack1959

Stamp Duty Reclaiming

This is an area not on your pages and I would like to highlight to Martin and others that people like my 86 year old mother are getting ripped off by the Tax Office.  I believe she was wrongly deducted £10k in stamp duty and not told she could claim it back.

She purchased a bungalow near me on 31st Oct 2018.  It needed a lot of work to change it to assisted living which she paid for herself.  

She remained in her small bungalow 40 miles away until the work was completed and then sold that property about a year later.

When she bought the new bungalow she was quoted stamp duty of £16000.  The property was £325000.  We were told this was because she had two properties, the solicitor knew the new property was to be her main residence, but she was still charged the stamp duty.  She was not told she could claim it back when she sold the bungalow she was living in whilst the repairs were done on the new main residence.

The old bungalow had been built incorrectly and there was a problem with a fire certificate which meant she could not sell it until that was sorted out which took until mid 2019.

I discovered recently after checking your page on stamp duty that my mother should have paid about £6k in stamp duty.  When I looked into this further I found that she was entitled to claim stamp duty back in her circumstances.  The problem was there was a deadline of 1 year which she has missed as the first property was sold in August 2019.

Should stamp duty have been charged in the first place, is there any way she can claim it back now the deadline has passed. The tax office would have see that she had sold the house as the buyers would have paid stamp duty on it.  So why wasn’t that money refunded? It seems very unfair that she’s had to pay this when the property was always going to be her main residence.

I accept that there will not be two many people in the position of being able to buy a house before they sold the one they were living in, but I do feel this is an area that Martin should look into as there may be others out there who have had similar experiences or were not aware they could claim stamp duty back. £10k is a lot of money for a inform women of her years to lose, but others may have lost far more.

[Deleted User]

Martin doesn't read the forums or run the site, he contributes as a consultant 
Tweet him is probably best bet to raise this topic

Jack1959

Thank you for this, I have tried. 
I think there may be many people in the same boat as my mum.  She was not informed she could claim her stamp duty back, I'm not sure it is down to her solicitor to have informed her, although they were negligent in not doing so, I feel the Inland Revenue should have informed her she was due this back when she sold her previous house.  They would have been aware that she did not let it and that she has no other income apart from her pension.  I have seen a post that says 
"If you had bought the new property as your new main residence, and sold the previous one within three years, then you could claim a refund".  This is not actually true you can claim a refund, but you have to do so within one year of selling the previous house.  The three years seems to confuse everyone, especially the elderly.  The Inland Revenue must make a fortune out of this, charging people tax and relying on the fact that some people are are not aware that they can claim it back.   I feel this is a national disgrace, there are sometimes vast amounts involved, my mother who is now 87 and on a pension lost £10k, and this is something that needs highlighting so others don't fall into the same trap.  Interestingly enough, if we lived in Scotland we would be able to claim it back.