Would this get round stamp duty?

Samtheman1k

Samtheman1k

Samtheman1k

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Just a thought, but I've seen people advertising England T-shirts on fleabay that come with a 'free' England match ticket. The t-shirt thus sells for £100s.

Could you apply the same principle to selling a house? Could you sell, say, a 4-bed detached house worth £400k for £100k, and then, as a condition of purchase, sell the lawnmower for £300k? Would that get round having to pay stamp duty?

Just out of interest. I don't even own a house! :p
 
That is one of the tactics if you are a couple of grand over the stamp duty limit, of selling the house for say £250,000 then selling the furnishings & fittings (which you were planning on doing anyway) for say, £10,000 on top to get the house value below the stamp duty threshold.

Pretty sure there'd be something against selling a £300k lawnmower though, unless it was massively blinged up :D
 
but they will not get a mortgage on a 300K lawnmower ,so would have to pay cash for it.That's why it works if you are only just over the stamp duty barrier.
 
I think Mr Taxman is wise to the fixtures and fittings method too these days. I suppose it probably works half the time but I was reading the other day that they are getting more canny.

I wondered about paying your buyers fees, generally with estate agents charging what they do plus removals and mortgage fees, you could offer a fee paid sale thus bypassing higher rate duty by up to £5-6k.

Just a thought. Can't sell our house at the mo so it's pointless me even considering it :(
 
Funnily enough Mr. Taxman is indeed wise to any such tactics.
Basically you have to be able to justify the purchases and the prices charged/paid.
There is not really anything secret about a house purchase - the prices paid etc are public knowledge.

If a house went through £5k below a stamp duty threshhold but with >£5k of fixtures and fittings you need to be ready to show that those £5k worth of fittings were indeed worth the money paid.

I've seen and heard about people doing it for a couple of grand, but if the asking price is over that threshhold by around £5k then don't expect to be able to get around it - too much of a risk then what you are in effect is commiting fraud/tax evasion.
 
Samtheman1k said:
Just a thought, but I've seen people advertising England T-shirts on fleabay that come with a 'free' England match ticket. The t-shirt thus sells for £100s.

Could you apply the same principle to selling a house? Could you sell, say, a 4-bed detached house worth £400k for £100k, and then, as a condition of purchase, sell the lawnmower for £300k? Would that get round having to pay stamp duty?

Just out of interest. I don't even own a house! :p
Click to expand...

Ill have the house but you can keep the lawnmower :D
 
Think gordon brown has made sure its pretty difficult to circumvent paying stamp duty, as being the socialist he seems to be, he loves making sure he gets as much money from people as possible, god help us if he ever gets into number 10.

Its another farcical tax in my opinion, as by moving house your strengthening the economy by generally paying increased council tax/utility bills, larger mortgage payments that make banks stronger and improve the economy as a whole, but they still feel the need to tax you for the privelege. But seeing as it brings in about £9bn a year (iirc) for messrs brown and blair to **** up the wall on some rubbish policy i can't see it ever being got rid of.
 
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