Stamp Duty Holiday Set to Extended in the UK for Extra Three-Months

Stamp Duty Holiday Set to Extended in the UK for Extra Three-Months.

ACCORDING to The Times, Chancellor Rishi Sunak is planning to introduce a three-month extension to the stamp duty land tax (SDLT) holiday – moving it to the end of June.

The holiday has been well-recieved in the UK as it has enabled people to save up to £15,000 (€17,000) in tax since being introduced in July last year – with the government exempting most buyers from the levy if they completed their purchase before March 31, 2021.

The chancellor has faced pressure to extend the deadline amid concerns that it would create a “cliff-edge”, jeopardising hundreds of thousands of sales and if rumours of the announcement are true, it will aid in the prevention of property sales falling through as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

It is believe that Sunak will use the Budget announcement next week to move the deadline and it will be interesting to see whether he sticks with the proposed threshold fallback due on April 1. The threshold for paying stamp duty on residential properties in England and Northern Ireland is set to fall back to £125,000 (€145,000) from the temporary £500,000 (€580,000).

The Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) recently reported that the tax break had prompted an increase in house sales to their highest level since the 2007 financial crisis with the think tank stating an increase in the number of transactions from 132,090 in Q2 last year to 225,870 in Q3 and 316,300 by the end of Q4. These figures also show that 87 per cent of people buying a primary home have no SDLT to pay thanks to the holiday.

The CPS has called on the Government to either permanently raise the threshold, or abolish SDLT altogether.

Jethro Elsden, data analyst at the CPS, said: “The introduction of the stamp duty holiday last July did not just rescue the housing market and construction sector, but proved conclusively that high stamp duty rates have become a damaging drag on the economy, the housing market and people’s aspirations.”

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