Category Archives: viewpoint

Emergency Budget July 2015: Mixed blessings – good for some not so good for others

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It is very good news indeed that the UK is growing at one of the fastest rates of the advanced economies of the world i.e. 3% last year and 2.4% predicted this year. Also, in the last five years creating two million jobs and a further one million in the next Electoral term is quite an accomplishment.

The ‘Banana Republic’ Budget Deficit that our ‘esteemed’ former Prime Minister, Gordon Brown left us with, of 11%, is now 5.5% and falling to 3.7% this year with a surplus at the end of the Electoral term – a major accomplishment for any government in the western world these days. Continue reading →

Should Stamp Duty in the UK be paid by the seller or split 50/50 with the purchaser?

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Stamp Duty (SDLT), first called ‘The Land Tax’, was introduced in 1692 during the reign of William & Mary and was designed to raise money to fund a war against France (if you are Euro-skeptic you may think it was a worthwhile investment!).

The slab-sided Stamp Duty Tax had various tiers from 0-5% and these levels remained for many years. At the time, under pressure from the coalition government to help reduce the Deficit in the Budget of 2012, the higher levels of the Tax were raised to 7% and 15% dependent on whether the purchase was personal or corporate. There was a lot of ‘white noise’ about international buyers escaping Stamp Duty by purchasing shares in the corporate entity that owned the property rather than purchasing the asset itself. A further ‘quasi Mansion Tax’ was also applied to corporate purchasers by way of ATED which could impose another Tax of £150,000 per annum. Continue reading →

Are mortgages taking too long to process and are sales suffering as a result?

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With all the new red tape that the government has imposed on the financial regulatory bodies mortgages are taking an interminable amount of time to process and, sometimes, an offer can take eight weeks to procure.

This is causing no end of difficulties to purchasers. As the market ‘hots up’ sellers will simply not wait for an extended period and will inevitably gazump buyers with cash purchasers who can move faster ‘off the blocks’. Continue reading →