Category Archives: Stamp duty

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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