Category Archives: Stamp duty

Tory plan to abolish stamp duty ‘will benefit London and the wealthiest the most’ – as it happened

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Voting in the Labour deputy leadership election opens today. Lucy Powell, the former Commons leader, is seen as the favourite and, as Jessica Elgot reports, Powell told supporters yesterday that, if she is elected, she will use the post to argue for changes in the way the government is operating. “We can’t sugarcoat the fact that things aren’t going well,” she said.

Powell is no longer a government minister and, if she is elected deputy leader, she will do the job from the backbenches. In an interview on Newsnight last night, Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary standing against Powell, said a Powell victory would be “destabilising” for the party. She said:

[Electing Powell] risks destabilising the party … we best achieve what we need to do together when we have those fierce conversations, including disagreements, behind closed doors.

Members need to understand that there’s a potential challenge around all of that – that if you’re not inside when the big decisions are being made, you’re not at that table, you’re not in those conversations.

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Nigel Farage urged to clarify whether he saved tax on Essex constituency home

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Labour and Lib Dems say Reform leader has questions to answer on who paid for £885,000 property owned by his partner

Labour and the Liberal Democrats have called for Nigel Farage to clarify whether he saved tax on a house in his constituency, after a BBC investigation questioned whether his partner did, as Farage has said, buy the home with her own money.

The Guardian first reported in May that the house in Clacton, which Farage initially said he had bought himself, is in fact wholly owned by Laure Ferrari, his long-term partner.

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Damage to Labour from Rayner’s resignation is only just beginning

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Deputy leader election campaign will distract from Starmer’s reset and winner may well come from left of party

At 9.30am on Monday morning, as MPs made their way back to Westminster, Keir Starmer gathered the entire staff of No 10 in the Pillared Room of Downing Street to tell them they were about to enter the next, delivery, stage of government.

“We go into phase two in good spirits, confident and with conviction,” he told them, as some of those gathered shuffled awkwardly. His remarks, after all, followed a difficult summer during which Labour vacated the pitch to Reform UK and ahead of what is likely to be an even more turbulent autumn.

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Average UK house asking price registers steepest monthly drop for 20 years

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Rightmove blames the 1.2% fall in new sellers’ prices on the end of stamp duty discounts and more homes coming on to the market

The average price of homes coming up for sale dropped by the largest monthly amount in more than 20 years in July, according to a property website, after the end of temporary cuts to stamp duty, and recent increases in council tax on second homes.

The average price being asked by new sellers fell by 1.2%, or £4,531, in July compared with a month earlier, to £373,709.

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UK house prices fall unexpectedly, says Halifax

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Average property price dips to £298,602 in February despite analysts expecting rush before stamp duty rises

UK house prices unexpectedly fell last month as concerns over the sluggish economy outweighed an anticipated rush of people trying to complete purchases before stamp duty increases in April.

The average property price dipped by 0.1% in February to £298,602, having hit a record high in January, according to Halifax.

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Keir Starmer tells Brussels press conference it was ‘right’ for him to repay £6,000 worth of gifts – as it happened

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Announcement that PM is returning gifts comes after news Labour peer Lord Alli is under investigation by Lords commissioner

Richard Fuller, the Tory chair, is on the conference platform now introducing the morning session.

He starts with thanks to various people who have helped with the conference.

After a frenetic Conference for Kemi Badenoch, James Cleverly, Tom Tugendhat and Robert Jenrick the tiredness will be kicking in, but also for the teams of advisers who want, and maybe need, their principal to take another go at delivering the twenty-minute speech of their career.

It’s a four hoarse race.

The problem for the party, and for me, is that none of this gossipy chatter has taken the conference attendees much further forward – nor has any of the four taken conference by storm.

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Former Sunak adviser urges Labour to introduce wealth tax on housing

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The economist behind the Covid furlough scheme has called for ‘unfair’ council tax and stamp duty to be axed

Council tax and stamp duty are “unfair and unpopular” taxes that should be abolished, says the economist who devised the Covid furlough scheme.

Tim Leunig, who has advised a series of cabinet ministers, including Rishi Sunak during his prime ministership, said it was time for a new and radical approach that would axe the two taxes and replace them with proportional levies.

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Sunak pledges to keep stamp duty threshold at £425k for first-time buyers

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Pledge comes as parties prepare to launch their manifestos, with Labour to offer support for small businesses

The Conservatives would permanently scrap stamp duty on homes up to £425,000 for first-time buyers, Rishi Sunak is expected to pledge in the party’s election manifesto, in a move that would affect 200,000 households annually.

The threshold was raised from £300,000 to £425,000 in the September 2022 mini-budget as a temporary relief measure that is due to expire next March.

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Stamp duty: would Victoria be better off with a land tax instead?

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As the state government considers reforming its contentious stamp duty, here are the benefits and pitfalls of replacing it with an annual tax

The Victorian government has given its strongest indicator yet it is open to reforming stamp duty – one of the state’s most contentious taxes.

The government this week released its response to a parliamentary inquiry that urged the state to investigate options to scrap stamp duty and replace it with a broad-based land tax.

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NSW stamp duty refunds expected to attract 2,500 applications as land tax scheme launches

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Coalition’s program allowing choice of annual tax over stamp duty could exceed projection of 6,000 applicants

About 2,500 people are expected to retrospectively apply for refunds to stamp duty paid on new homes bought since the middle of November when the New South Wales government’s land tax scheme officially begins.

New estimates from Revenue NSW suggest almost half of the 6,000 new owners who were expected to apply to have their stamp duty payments waived in favour of a land tax in the scheme’s first year will come within days of its introduction on Monday.

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NSW stamp duty overhaul ‘vanilla’ but could help first home buyers cut costs

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Annual tax could be paid for almost 20 years before it equalled the value of a stamp duty payment in parts of western Sydney, calculator suggests

First home buyers could save tens of thousands of dollars under the New South Wales government’s proposal for an optional land tax but housing experts say the “vanilla” plan falls well short of the “revolution” it had initially promised.

On Monday the government said it would introduce its plans for an overhaul of stamp duty into the state’s parliament this week.

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Mini-budget 2022: pound crashes as chancellor cuts stamp duty and top rate of income tax – live

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Tax cuts to cost Treasury around £37bn in 2023-24, official figures reveal

There are no urgent questions in the morning, and so Kwasi Kwarteng, the chancellor, will be delivering his statement soon after 9.30am.

The Commons starts sitting at 9.30am, but they always begin with prayers in private, and so Kwarteng will be up a few minutes later.

The last time they did it one third of the beneficiaries were people buying second homes or buy to let, so we are sceptical that this is the magic bullet to increase homeownership. What we really need to do is to build more houses and to help get people onto the property ladder by increasing the supply of housing.

When this has been done before, it has often fuelled an already hot market and many of the beneficiaries have been people buying a second or third home, rather than the first time buyers that we really want to help who are often trapped in private rented accommodation where they’re paying as much in rent every month as they would in a mortgage.

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House asking prices hit record levels across Great Britain

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Rightmove data shows largest June increase since 2015 but economists suggest Covid boom may be fading

House asking prices have hit record levels across every region of Great Britain, according to latest figures, although some experts have questioned whether the pandemic boom is finally starting to wane.

The price of properties coming to market rose by 0.8% month on month in June to a third consecutive record of £336,073, according to data from Rightmove, a property listings website.

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