David Davis
The stalinists currently sitting and drinking in Westminster the Government are trying to look like they “care about the children” by proposing a 12 month “Stamp duty holiday”, whereby HM Land Registry will not only not charge people for buying a house up to £150,000, but now by not charging them an impost for one up to £175,000.
Of course! I was forgetting! The extra £25,000 over £150,000 allows you to find houses with large indoor swimming pools included, as opposed to not. I’m not sure most people round here, be we all yokels who say “urrrrrrhhhhhhh” when asked the way, could tell the difference even here between a £149,999 house and a £174,999 house, without careful scrutiny for the proximity of bureaucrats’ offices and the like.
Either “Stamp Duty” is a registration fee for the recording of the legal transfer of a piece of Landed Property, in which case in 2008 the fee is about £12 (and that’s generous – that’s what your credit card charges you for being late) or else it’s a progressive taxation.
The work involved is a few keystrokes.
I think we ought to be told either way.
Stamp Duty, or nowadays “Stamp Duty Land Tax” , is paid to HM Revenue and Customs, not to the Land Registry. (You have to pay the Land Regsitry a separate fee for the privilege of having your right to a piece of land recorded on the government database. Houses up to £175,000 attract a fee of up to £150.00 at present. Oh, and you can’t register without evidence that any Stamp Duty due has been paid.) SDLT is a straightforward tax which Brown as Chancellor increase by up to 400%, so anything he claims to be giving back now is a drop in the ocean compared to what he has squeezed out of house purchasers over the last few years. All these measures will have minimal effect in kick starting the market. although no doubt we will shortly be told by the delusional characters that dreamed up this scheme that all is rosy again as a rersult of it.