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Purely in the interests of curiosity, is there any way of avoiding paying the extra stamp duty on a house of a value over £250k?
Is it in a Guernsey Property Unit Trust?
If not, then, no, not any more.
You could buy it for £249,999 and then pay the vendor the balance in cash. This of course would be tax avoidance and highly illegal.
as above sadly.
Its amazing how many deals go through at 255k, or 257k etc, the extra sale price over the threshold goes to the govt - a very needy cause (not).
You'd think the sofas/carpets/white goods can be valued at 2-3k.
Used to be that the house was worth £249,999 but the Laura Ashley paisley print curtains and matching wall paper were worth £48,659. The days when tax avoidance was as socially acceptable as dodging duty on bike parts from Hong Kong 🙂
Does the separate sale of carpets/curtain/white goods not work any more? I know HMRC were getting more picky about the value that they could be sold for but, like Poolman says, you'd have thought that 2-3k would be reasonable.
You can still do the sale of chattels separately but there's a lot more scrutiny about it. The value allocations need to be realistic second hand values and if it brings you across an SDLT rate threshold you'll quite possibly need to demonstrate independent valuations to justify the prices allocated.
I believe you are still allowed to pay a maximum of £10k on chattels.
Any more than that has to be off the books. Apparently you can Google around some DIY legal papers to formalise things a little.
My brother is about to pay £265k for a house and is doing the above. (The seller *is* leaving loads as they are emigrating and they did have all the furniture custom made so it seems reasonable to pay £10k for them)
Saying that, it is early days so it might not actually work out...