The Chancellor made for higher taxes on some residential property - starting on Thursday, the stamp duty paid on UK properties sold for more than £2m rose to 7% from 5% – from £100,000 to £140,000 – the use of schemes to avoid SDLT on residential property had grown, partly because of ineffective enforcement of the rules by HMRC. HMRC has now significantly stepped up its compliance work, but it was still possible to avoid SDLT on future sales by buying a property into a company. Levying duty on company sales was harder to enforce, as there was no easy way to track share sales, but some other countries manage to do so and we will now.
Lots of people had argued that council tax was the way to go the UK has about 27 million homes, but only 154,000 fall into the top band for council tax, with a further 920,000 in the next band, there was scope for the Chancellor to raise money by increasing council tax charged in the top two bands.
A house in the top band is worth at least £1.2 million in London (where one third are located) and at least £700,000 throughout England. The top band house in Scotland is worth at least £550,000, but just £420,000 in Wales.
Enable know that property is a vital part of most portfolios our IFA’s like to help property owners to stay abreast of any change of rules.
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