Stamp Duty Holiday Extended 3 Months to June 21

According to a recent 'leaked' reports, Rishi Sunak will announce in next week’s budget an extension to the Stamp Duty holiday by another 3 months taking it up to the end of June.

This is to enable people that are purchasing or selling a property time to complete their transaction.

According to Rightmove an estimated 100,000 people could face unexpected stamp duty costs due to delays in the home buying and selling process caused by illness, distancing measures and home-schooling.

The extension to the Stamp Duty holiday is expected to cost the Treasury around £1 billion, a spokesperson for the Treasury said they cannot speculate on tax ahead of fiscal events.

Comment

We suggest this is a little like 'kicking the ball down the road'.  We appreciate it will help buyers and conveyancers currently stuck in the backlog of mortgage applications, surveys and completions trying to beat the current deadline but it is merely postponing the inevitable. 

We suggest the Chancellor's approach should be to set a cut off date e.g. Budget Day for no more new mortgage offers/acceptances or mortgage applications to qualify for the stamp duty offer. 

We believe that if your offer was accepted and your conveyancing has started before Budget Day or indeed any other set date, then irrespective of how long it takes to complete, the stamp duty holiday should be honoured.  A simple online registration and certification of the agreed sale/purchase with estate agent, buyer, seller and legal adviser's details as well as the specific property should be registered with HMRC to qualify.  This is not difficult to code or write an online registration scheme in fact it would take us no more than 2 days to write such as programme.