Well to some anyway......As the temporary stamp duty holiday on properties worth between £125,000 and £175,000 ended on 1 January 2010.
It means buyers will again have to pay 1% tax on the value of homes worth more than £125,000.
The tax was lifted temporarily in September 2008, and the concession later extended, to help stem the rapid slump in the property market.
In the past year, sales and prices have started to rise again, although the market is still relatively subdued.
When the temporary tax break was first announced, the government estimated that it would forgo £615m in tax from stamp duty.
The Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) estimates that even though the suspension was extended by a further three months to the end of this year, the cost to the government will still eventually be only about £500m, as the number of home sales has been far lower than the government was expecting.
Last month, the CML calculated that 132,500 house sales, funded with a mortgage, had escaped stamp duty in the past year.
That meant 27% of all the house purchases agreed since the policy began had escaped the 1% tax that would otherwise have been paid.
That, in turn, means that just over half of all sales have gone through without stamp duty being levied.
HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) is likely to raise about £3bn from stamp duty on residential and commercial property sales in the current tax year, compared with £4.8bn in the last tax year and just over £10bn in 2007-08.
That downward trend directly reflects the slump in home sales.
In the first 11 months of 2009, 761,000 residential properties were sold in the UK, compared with 900,000 in the whole of 2008 and 1,614,000 the year before
Looks like I may not be the only one losing a few pounds this year....
Lets hope 2010 is a good one for you all.
Until next time,
Mr Jackson.
Posts
