Written on 13 August 2013 by Alistair Boscawen in Property News
Property prices in London mean that we are paying a massive proportion of UK stamp duty
Research has revealed that Londoners are paying half of the country’s stamp duty tax bill, making a staggering £1.8bn contribution from its 93,000 sales last year.
Due to the capital’s higher-than-average property values, the stamp duty bill has been bolstered as more and more properties have been valued and sold at the higher end of the tax thresholds.
The fact that London now pays almost half of the entire country’s tax bill has led to fresh demands by the TaxPayers Alliance pressure group that the controversial tax is reformed.
In London alone, fewer than 3,000 of the 93,000 homes sold fell below the first stamp duty threshold of £125,000. Only 29,000 fell into the one percent band (homes between £125,000 and £250,000), while two thirds of Londoners fell into the three percent bracket for homes over £250,000, equating to a charge of at least £7,500.
Unsurprisingly, the highest paying borough was Westminster which contributed £296m in the tax, £189m of which was raised from homes worth more than £2m which pay a staggering seven percent rate of stamp duty.
At Best Gapp, we weren’t surprised to see that the borough of Kensington and Chelsea was also in the top five highest stamp duty payers, contributing almost £286m. The more exclusive an area the higher the asking price and inevitably the higher the rate of stamp duty. And in an area which is awash with millionaires looking for their next luxury home or property investment, we can’t see many other areas of the capital catching up anytime soon.
Check out our earlier blog post on the great stamp duty debate.
Source: London Evening Standard
Image from www.freedigitalphotos.net
