Lawyers call for stamp duty freeze

Published on Thursday 21 August 2008 21:41

A QUINTET of leading Scottish property law firms has called on Alistair Darling, the Chancellor, to freeze stamp duty in an effort to boost the flagging housing market.

The ELPG group – which is made up of firms Warners, the Lints Partnership, Neilsons, Drummond Miller and Leslie Deans – has handed in a petition to Darling at his constituency office in Edinburgh urging him to consider either freezing all payments or dropping the first 125,000 tier of stamp duty.

Leslie Deans, senior partner of Leslie Deans & Co, said that it was vital that the Chancellor of the Exchequer considered a complete stamp duty freeze to help revitalise Scotland's property market.

He said: "Compared to the rest of the UK, Scotland's property market is remaining resilient but we cannot just count on that continuing for the foreseeable future.

"First-time buyers are becoming increasingly reluctant to purchase a property and we have far more people selling than buying at the moment."

The last time a stamp duty freeze was implemented was in 1992 during a dramatic slow-down in the UK property market.

The tax is currently charged at 1 per cent on homes between 125,000 and 250,000, 3 per cent between 250,000 and 500,000 and 4 per cent over 500,000.

In a separate move, upmarket estate agent Savills called on the government to either exempt first-time buyers or levy the tax on the seller rather than the buyer.

It said: "We recommend the latter, although it could be seen as politically dangerous, opening the back door to tax on capital gains from property as it were."