Confused about stamp duty land tax?

An article for community led housing groups featuring a link to HMRC's SDLT calculator and a summary of potential traps

For the August 2020 update on Stamp Duty Land Tax, please refer to our FAQs: The new Stamp Duty Land Tax holiday.

Stamp Duty Calculator

Stamp duty land tax can be a substantial cost for community led housing groups.  Once you have found a property and know how much you are going to pay for it, you can work out how much stamp duty land tax you will have to pay by using HMRC's calculator.

Stamp Duty thresholds

You can see the current thresholds for SDLT.

Summary of various reliefs

HMRC's website also contains a summary of the various reliefs available – multiple dwellings relief is a specific relief that can be useful for community led housing groups.

Potential traps

Since 1 April 2016, if you buy residential property through a company, you pay an extra 3% on the purchase price for stamp duty land tax.  The calculator automatically works this out for you, provided you select the right options. Learn more about this in Elizabeth Wilson's article, New higher SDLT rates for community housing.

If you buy a property as a group and then sell individual units to your members, the group will pay stamp duty land tax on its initial purchase and the members will also pay stamp duty land tax on their purchase of their individual units.

There may be ways of minimising this double hit of stamp duty land tax and please contact one of our team for advice.

Related articles -

New higher SDLT rates for community housing (April 2016)

Sources of finance for community-led housing (December 2016)

 

If you would like to discuss any aspect of this article further, please contact Emma Ridge on 0113 244 6100. You can also keep up to date by following Wrigleys Solicitors on LinkedIn. The information in this article is necessarily of a general nature. Specific advice should be sought for specific situations. If you have any queries or need any legal advice please feel free to contact Wrigleys Solicitors.