Boris May Make Stamp Duty Payable By Seller

In an interview with Boris Johnson, the Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) claim that Mr Johnson may make some changes to Stamp Duty, if the UK leaves the EU with a ‘No Deal’ Brexit.

If elected Mr Johnson wants to see:

• Sellers paying Stamp Duty Land Tax rather than purchasers.
• No Stamp Duty to be paid for house sales under £500,000.
• The higher rate threshold hold go back down from 12% to 7%.

For second home purchasers and buy to let investments, the seller would pay the normal Stamp Duty rate but the additional, 3% surcharge would still be paid by the buyer.

Overseas investor purchases would stay the same with the buyer still having to pay the Stamp Duty.

Comment

We think this is the first step towards a property wealth tax or residential capital gains tax for homeowners, when currently there is not one.  It may make things easier for trying to get on the property market but we simply believe that property prices will increase to absorb those costs with ultimately people paying more and indeed actually borrowing more on mortgage. Indeed, does Mr Johnson does want to encourage price rises for additional duties as well as increased government profits from the Help to Buy scheme?