Stamp Duty

Stamp duty continues to be an important and growing revenue raiser for the Treasury despite static sales volumes and the abolition of stamp duty for the majority of first-time buyers in the autumn budget in November 2017. People buying a new main home before selling their previous home, effectively owning an additional home for a short period, are entitled to a refund. However, there were only such 15,700 refunds over the course of 2017, just 6.4 percent of all transactions attracting the surcharge. Perhaps most interestingly, the latest figures show the impact of the abolition of stamp duty for first-time buyers (up to £300,000 in the UK as a whole, £500,000 in London), announced in the November Budget, with a huge increase in the number of people claiming relief in the last quarter of 2017.