Stamp Duty refund

MikeyJA

We bought a freehold house in July and have just received a letter from a firm called Stamp Duty Advisory Services Ltd saying we may be able to claim a refund of £10000 for paying too much stamp duty (SDLT) on fittings or chattels.  Seems to be too good too be true?

We paid SDLT based on the agreed purchase price (including chattels). Reading the official guidance on stamp duty chattels should not be taxed so in theory we may reclaim some tax by reducing the purchase price value to reflect this.

Has anyone tried this and have they been successful?

user1977

How much were the "chattels" worth?

GDB2222

What do you mean by fittings and chattels? You can apportion the purchase price between the house and chattels, but most fittings are part of the house. 

GDB2222

Do any of the staff have professional qualifications?

They have a lot of 5 star reviews on Trustpilot. But, bear in mind that HMRC may automatically refund the tax but later review these cases. There’s then the possibility of having to repay the tax plus penalties/interest.

A generic warning from the Chartered  Institute of Taxation- well worth a read:

https://www.tax.org.uk/stamp-duty-refunds-too-good-to-be-true

sheramber

Did you buy chattels for a cost that required paying £10, 000  as 3% of the cost?

MikeyJA

sheramber said:

Did you buy chattels for a cost that required paying £10, 000  as 3% of the cost?

No I reckon any chattels -carpets, curtains, summer house etc are only worth around £500 as they are all more than 10 years old

theartfullodger

So the offer from that "firm" sounds like many might describe it as fraudulent.. 

mexican_dave

No such thing as a free lunch. I don't know how much STLD you paid, but the sales pitch here is trying to imply you will get a massive payout, reckon that's a fantasy with its own risks as covered by fellow Forumites.

YoungBlueEyes

MikeyJA said:

We bought a freehold house in July and have just received a letter from a firm called Stamp Duty Advisory Services Ltd saying we may be able to claim a refund of £10000 for paying too much stamp duty (SDLT) on fittings or chattels.  Seems to be too good too be true?

We paid SDLT based on the agreed purchase price (including chattels). Reading the official guidance on stamp duty chattels should not be taxed so in theory we may reclaim some tax by reducing the purchase price value to reflect this.

Has anyone tried this and have they been successful?

How do you “reduce the purchase price value”? 

Or are the company offering to do too? 

GDB2222

MikeyJA said:

sheramber said:

Did you buy chattels for a cost that required paying £10, 000  as 3% of the cost?

No I reckon any chattels -carpets, curtains, summer house etc are only worth around £500 as they are all more than 10 years old

As an example, if you paid say £500k for the house, you would have paid SDLT of £12,500.

So, let's say you (or this company) fill in the forms to claim back the overpaid SDLT, on the £500 of chattels. You should have paid SDLT on the house value of £499,500, so you should have paid SDLT of £12,475. A refund of £25.  

In order to save £10,000 in SDLT, you will need to say that the chattels were worth £200,000, and the house was only worth £300,000. That would clearly be fraud. Are you prepared to do that?

user1977

It made more sense in ye olden days when there was a massive cliff - and a property at say £60k was free of stamp duty, but one at £61k had £610 stamp duty - so you'd declare £1000 as being for the chattels and £60k for the real property. But you couldn't get away with claiming, say, £65k with £5k of it being for some knackered old carpets and curtains.

Not sure what the scheme the OP is talking about is doing though.