h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I was just discussing the fact that Gordon Brown raised the threshold for stamp duty with kea.

kea found it strange that it's people buying a house that pay stamp duty, rather than those that are selling.

Does anyone know why it's this way around, rather than the other? And why does stamp duty exist in the first place anyhow?


Geggs

as far as I can tell, Stamp Duty is actually a tax on legally 'stamped' documents pertaining to transactions. It is just that most people only ever encounter it in the form of house transactions.
USAians should know all about it, they even threw a party (amoung other things) in its honour.

http://www.inlandrevenue.gov.uk/so/so6.htm

Interesting that they haven't updated their pages yet...

oh, and I imagine the duty is on those buying, not those selling, since commerce has big links with politics and to eat into the profits of the sellers would have been even less favourable in the places that mattered than the other way around.

Stamp duty is just another way for the Government to raise taxes. It is in fact a duty on the legal documents involved, in the case of house purchase the deeds. In the case of property purchase, new deeds have to be drawn up for the buyer, so the buyer pays.

There used to be a whole raft of legal documents that attracted stamp duty but most of them have been abolished. You used to have to pay stamp duty on Birth, Death and Marriage Certificates. Only a few pence but nevertheless a lot of money when you consider how many people are born, die and get married in a year.

As far as I am aware the only transactions that attract stamp duty now are those involving property, land and share dealings.

Donald

Stamp duty is an anachronism that has been ruthlessly exploited by the current Chancellor as a "stealth tax" on property purchases.

RF

Having recently bought a house, I can confidently state there was nothing even remotely stealthy about it

Stamp Duty actually originates from the Netherlands. Stamp Duty or 'Stómpe Dooten' to use the orignal Dutch term, came about when a local farmer sold his windmill to a local businessman and was underpaid by a good forty per cent of the propertys worth. He was not actually paid in money, but in kind, in rolls of cheese, but it was still shrt of the agreed poundage. By means of retribution for not receiving the full sum, the windmill vendor stood outside his former property jumping up and down angrily and shoting dutch obscenities for several hours, until the businessman inside eventually had enough and paid up the shortfall of cheese in order to get rid of the angry ex miller outside his front door and to avoid any further stamping type conflict. This is also the reason why, to this day, many estate agents still wear clogs.

>>Having recently bought a house, I can confidently state there was nothing even remotely stealthy about it.

I absolutely agree on that score. I bought a house for £100,000 just a few months ago. If Gordon had done his threshold doubling trick last year I wouldn't have had to pay £1,000 in stamp duty.

Where can I go to complain?


Geggs

>> Where can I go to complain? <<

At your polling station in May.

RF

Am I misunderstanding this (probably, my grasp of politics is tenuous at the best of times) - hasn't the threshhold of stamp duty been raised rather than the actual tax itself? So when you buy a house you can now spend more before you have to pay it?

Deb

That's what Geggs is complaining about, the threshold has moved to a level which would have exempted the purchase from being liable for it.

Oops

Dumb Bomb post 10!

Can I dumb bomb myself

Deb