UK Labour Party Promises to Cut Stamp Duty for First Time Buyers

Labour has promised to cut stamp duty for first-time buyers on homes costing up to £300,000. The pledge is one of a number concerning access to the housing market, with the party also promising to give new buyers first call on half of the homes being built in their area, and to make it harder for foreign investors to snap up properties.

For the first three years of a Labour government anyone buying their first home will not have to pay stamp duty – a tax that is paid by homebuyers when they complete on a property.

This isn’t the first time that new buyers have had their duty waived: in 2010 the then Labour chancellor, Alistair Darling, brought in a two-year break on the tax for first-timers on homes costing up to £250,000.

Prior to that, Darling also waived the duty on properties costing up to £175,000 for 15 months – that applied to all buyers, but as first-timers were most likely to be buying the cheapest homes, they were most likely to benefit.

Changes to the duty made in December 2014 also helped buyers across the market. George Osborne scrapped the previous slab structure, meaning buyers were no longer clobbered with the same tax rate on the whole of the purchase price, as well as reducing the cost for anyone buying a home costing less than £937,500.

via The Guardian

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Alfonso Esparza

Alfonso Esparza

Senior Currency Analyst at Market Pulse
Alfonso Esparza specializes in macro forex strategies for North American and major currency pairs. Upon joining OANDA in 2007, Alfonso Esparza established the MarketPulseFX blog and he has since written extensively about central banks and global economic and political trends. Alfonso has also worked as a professional currency trader focused on North America and emerging markets. He has been published by The MarketWatch, Reuters, the Wall Street Journal and The Globe and Mail, and he also appears regularly as a guest commentator on networks including Bloomberg and BNN. He holds a finance degree from the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education (ITESM) and an MBA with a specialization on financial engineering and marketing from the University of Toronto.
Alfonso Esparza