Petition: Stamp duty holiday to be triggered upon exchange of contracts

davidmcn

Lavendyr said:

I've yet to see one good reason for not allowing the stamp duty exremption to taper in this way based on exchange.

Because it would be entirely inconsistent with every previous change of stamp duty rates? It's always based on the completion date. The only concession usually made is that if you have already exchanged before you know about an increase in the amount due (i.e. before the Chancellor starts his Budget speech), you'll be allowed to use the old rates. But here, everybody has known for months exactly how and when the rates are changing, and can organise their transaction accordingly, even if that means renegotiating when their last minute efforts to complete in time have failed.

NameUnavailable

I was waiting to see something like this - kicking the SDLT holiday down the road it was inevitable there'd be another uproar from those who are in the process of buying and might lose out. 

Personally, the sooner it ends the better, it's just causing mayhem and taxpayers are giving money away to people who really don't need it as much as others who have been affected by Covid impact. 

Lavendyr

Thank you for all of your replies. i respectfully disagree with your views. 

It's fascinating that people think it is so easy to arrange the transaction so as to complete before the stamp duty holiday deadline. How many of those of you who have said so have actually been in a property transaction in the last few months? You can "organise" all you like but if there is not capacity for your transaction, then it will not happen in time. As I said - several removals firms would not even quote for us until we had exchanged. 

That in turn leads to people pulling out of sales because they hit a hard stop. 

@davidmcn - "doing the same as we always have" is a poor argument for anything. If there is an opportunity to do something more sensible which acknowledges the current state of the market and the situation in which buyers and vendors currently find themselves and allows a gentle tapering of relief rather than a hard cutoff to assist with the situation - why would that be a bad thing? Why does it bother you personally?

I reiterate - I have seen not one single good argument to support the hard cutoff. I don't want to "kick the SDLT holiday down the road" - but I would support a gentle tapering to ensure that the market transitions smoothly. 

Wish you all well.

Slithery

The government has already done far more than taper the relief.....

The SDLT holiday was due to end on the 31st March. To help out the people that were close to completion but couldn't quite make it in time they extended the holiday for another 3 months in full.

Anyone who didn't have an offer accepted by the end of last year should have already budgeted to pay the full amount of SDLT.

SpiderLegs

I’ll give you six off the top of my head.

1. Time and effort required to produce and pass the legislation.
2. The need to build systems and processes to support the change to a different method of collecting SDLT.
3. Placing additional undue pressure on the existing systems and encouraging less robust compliance with legal requirements.
4. Harder to police and therefore more open to fraud.
5. Unnecessary given that all parties are currently working to a clear, known position.
6. Impacting on a relatively small set of people.

MaryNB

I'm still at a loss of how changing it to apply at exchange helps avoids a hard cut off. It's not tapering. It's still a deadline. Most of the conveyancing, financing and survey work is needed before exchange. Instead of the panic rush to complete there's a panic rush to exchange. It's only really takes pressure of arranging movers.  

As Slithery has said the 3 month extension has been significantly better than if the gov decided to taper it or switch it to apply at exchange. I'm not sure anybody was optimistic enough to expect that kind of extension. For anybody who was in danger of completing in early April it was way better than moving the SDLT to apply from exchange.

The SDLT holiday wasn't introduced as a sign of goodwill. It was to get the housing market going after the slump during the first lockdown. We had a mini boom as a result so safe to say it's done its job. 

davilown

Lavendyr said:

Thank you for all of your replies. i respectfully disagree with your views. 

It's fascinating that people think it is so easy to arrange the transaction so as to complete before the stamp duty holiday deadline. How many of those of you who have said so have actually been in a property transaction in the last few months? You can "organise" all you like but if there is not capacity for your transaction, then it will not happen in time. As I said - several removals firms would not even quote for us until we had exchanged. 

That in turn leads to people pulling out of sales because they hit a hard stop. 

@davidmcn - "doing the same as we always have" is a poor argument for anything. If there is an opportunity to do something more sensible which acknowledges the current state of the market and the situation in which buyers and vendors currently find themselves and allows a gentle tapering of relief rather than a hard cutoff to assist with the situation - why would that be a bad thing? Why does it bother you personally?

I reiterate - I have seen not one single good argument to support the hard cutoff. I don't want to "kick the SDLT holiday down the road" - but I would support a gentle tapering to ensure that the market transitions smoothly. 

Wish you all well.

It’s not a hard cutoff - you’ve had 3 months notice in addition to knowing about the original date.

They don’t need an argument, the country’s in enough debt without supplementing your house purchase.

You’re right, transactions take differing times. Unlucky, s!¥e happens. Get over it and more on.

princeofpounds

Moar sweeties... MOAR!!!!!!

saajan_12

Lavendyr said:

Thank you for all of your replies. i respectfully disagree with your views. 

It's fascinating that people think it is so easy to arrange the transaction so as to complete before the stamp duty holiday deadline. How many of those of you who have said so have actually been in a property transaction in the last few months? You can "organise" all you like but if there is not capacity for your transaction, then it will not happen in time. As I said - several removals firms would not even quote for us until we had exchanged. 

That in turn leads to people pulling out of sales because they hit a hard stop. 

But it's so easy to arrange the transaction so as to exchange before the deadline? What if there's just a few kinks, a final search to get back.. as they approach a hard stop, people will pull out of sales that are a week behind yours. At the point of exchange, yes you'll enter into a contract, but you know you're doing that, know the completion date, know the stamp duty.. its not a surcharge that suddenly hits. So you can renegotiate or pull out before exchanging.. you know, exactly what you're expecting people a week behind you to do. 

Lavendyr said:

@davidmcn - "doing the same as we always have" is a poor argument for anything. If there is an opportunity to do something more sensible which acknowledges the current state of the market and the situation in which buyers and vendors currently find themselves and allows a gentle tapering of relief rather than a hard cutoff to assist with the situation - why would that be a bad thing? Why does it bother you personally?

I reiterate - I have seen not one single good argument to support the hard cutoff. I don't want to "kick the SDLT holiday down the road" - but I would support a gentle tapering to ensure that the market transitions smoothly. 

Wish you all well.

Because we already did taper..  we gave another 3 months of relief upto 500, another 6 months upto 250k.. so anyone who was facing the HARD deadline at 31st March and just missed it could complete their purchases gently, with plenty of time. People who tried to start in Feb/March or in anticipation of the June deadline, never should have expected to finish in time, so that's a risk they knowingly took. 

So at this stage why is it sensible to give people who knew the risk, a discount? Maybe the aim isn't what you think it is - before the point of the holiday was to keep the housing market afloat while no one was viewing, etc.. its done that job. Now the point of ending the holiday is to start getting some income back, so the aim should be to MINIMISE the people who get the discount. It would be unfair to change the rules and end it before 30th June, but should be taken away asap in line with that. 

TBagpuss

The thing is, what you ware suggesting isn't a taper, it's just moving the hard deadline. You shouldn't normally exchange unless everything you need in order to complete is in place, and if you changed the deadline to exchange not completion then it becomes more complex to administer - I'm not sure that date of exchange is even one of the pieces of information which appears on the SDLT return.