Neil W

Anyone know what the % brackets are for stamp duty.

I thought it was 1% up to £250k then 3%

Also if I buy a property for say £300k would my stamp duty be 1% for the first £250k and then 3% on £50k or would it be 3% on the whole £300k?

Advise much appreciated.

Cheers.

scoob_babe

3% on the whole lot which is why sales around the £249 995 mark are under the microscope

PPPMAT

some areas are exempt (not many)
1% up to 250K
3% up to 500K
4% of anything over 500K

You pay the % amount for whichever band your house ends up in i.e. 350k house = 3% which would be £10500

Matt

Dracoro

It's daft really. Instead of spending (read wasting) time investigating the £249,999 sales, why don't they just make it like normal income tax. e.g. 1% up to £250k, 3% from £250k to £500k etc. Govt have only theirselves to blame for people trying to get the price to just under £250k (+ extra for fixtures and fittings ).

For a £249,999 property the stamp duty would be £2,499.99
For a £250,000 propery the stamp duty would be £7,500.00

Neil W

Cheers Guys,

I thought as much. Typical rip off UK as usual!!

Atom290

Sorry to be pedantic, but you actually get inclusive of the amount.

So

0-250,000.00 1%
250,000.01 – 500,000.00 3%
500,000.01 + 5%

And yes it is a rip off, as the average house is now well over £120k, so unless you plan to live in an old mining town, or in the heart of wales you will always have to pay a bucket load of tax.

lightning101

its not 0 - 250,000

its 60,000 - 250,000

Faire D'Income

Neil, the Stamp Duty we pay in the UK is amongst the lowest in Europe and probably the world. In Spain, you pay 7% of the purchase cost and there are no breaks depending on value.

SD

Yes, but we also have the amongst the most expensive housing in Europe, and probably the world. So overall I'd wager we pay a comparable amount for like-for-like properties.

Simon.

ChrisB

http://www.inlandrevenue.gov.uk/so/pcode_search.htm to see if your property (up to a value of £150k) is in an exempt area. My house was

Tiggs

bunch of moaners as usual...stamp in the UK is low and on top of that house prices have risen so you are paying stamp on an increasing asset.

ProperCharlie

maybe. personally, i don't really GAS about stamp duty as i have no intention of moving in the foreseeable future, but you'd have to agree that the stamp duty value bands haven't really increased in line with house prices, have they?

imlach

No, they have not.

....but then, a lot of taxes have NOT gone up to cover other things. So, this is just one way a chancellor will use to balance his books. Nothing in life is fair for everyone, most of all taxation

People are living longer. The NHS are using increasingly expensive drugs, treatments, and therapies. People generally expect a much higher standard of living. This all has an increasing cost to the goverment.

No matter what party the chancellor belongs to, this money has to be found from somewhere. For now, given rising house prices, he has obviously made a choice to leave stamp duty "as is". He could be nice and change it, but then he'd probably claw it back elsewhere by lumping a sales tax or similar on house sales as well....

...or even HORRORS of HORRORS, impose CGT on your primary property We don't want to go down that route!

ProperCharlie

imlach - i absolutely agree. in the end of the day, overall taxation per £ of GDP in the uk is fairly low compared to other european countries.

like i said, stamp duty isn't a big issue for me. i would like to see reforms in the way tax revenue is spent, but i don't fundamentally disagree with it being collected.

Faire D'Income

If you read my reply in conjunction with Neil's comment about this being another example of "rip off Britain" then you'd realise that your comment is irrelevant as I have pointed out it's clearly not a rip off when compared to other countries.

As for property prices, that merely moves the argument on to other issues and if you really want to have that debate then I suggest that you do a little research and you'll find that house price inflation in the UK is no worse (or better depending on how you look at it) than other countries such as the US, Australia, New Zealand, Norway, Finland or parts of Spain, France and Italy.

It annoys me when people assume that everything is more expensive in the UK when clearly it isn't. Many things are, but this attitude of Rip Off Britain is self perpetuating because people repeat it ad nauseam until they believe it implicitly.

Neil W

So do you also think that the price of fuel in UK is fair ?

I dont mind paying Stamp but personally feel that it should be banded similar to income tax as mentioned previously above.

Faire D'Income

Strewth, some people are unbelievable! You stated that Stamp Duty was another example of Rip off UK, which I refuted with good examples. We were not talking about prices in the UK in general but specifically about Stamp Duty, nothing more, nothing less.

If you feel that Stamp Duty is still an example of Rip Off UK, then just wait until after the General Election (assuming Labour are re-elected) and see how you adjust to CGT being implemented on property sales. Imlach may have been joking but I guarantee that this is being looked at closely at will be implemented - or something similar.

bloke

Apart from the annoying whinging about rip off Britain etc the naivety just astounds me...

Do you not realise that external factors such as taxes are capitalised in the cost of your property. So it doesn't really matter if stamp is 0% or 4% orwhatever.

Get rid of stamp and house prices jump to match...guaranteed.

What is annoying is the banding which causes odd pockets around the banding limits...all comes out in the wash though.

darlodge

Does the 1% stamp duty limit not start at £120,000 rising to £249,999?

I though the goverment increased the figure from £60,000 to assits first time buyers (not that a first time buyer can buy property for under £120,000 where I live)

Darren

GCollier

In today's job market people need to be flexible and mobile as to where they live and work. Stamp duty is a deterrent to such flexibility and as such I believe it's an inappropriate tax to be levying today.