Discussion
I have had 3 different opinions on this so far from a solicitor, tax man and mortgage guy, so trying to find the real answer!
We are remortgaging. property and mortgage are currently in my wifes name but the remortgage will be in both names. Is there any stamp duty payable because I am effectively a new purchaser and if so, is it half or all?
Cheers
We are remortgaging. property and mortgage are currently in my wifes name but the remortgage will be in both names. Is there any stamp duty payable because I am effectively a new purchaser and if so, is it half or all?
Cheers
Ripped:-
"...the Revenue confirmed that in our situation, i.e. remortgaging and adding a spouse to the deeds at the same time means stamp duty is due on half of the amount of the outstanding mortgage.
Given that the outstanding mortgage was just under £400k, this meant that 50% of this would be over the £175k stamp duty threshold, so I was expected to pay around £2k, despite no money changing hands or changes to our living arrangements, relationship, etc. This just seems like pure greed by the Revenue, as we have already paid stamp duty on the purchase.
We had in fact proceeded with the remortage on the understanding that no SDLT was payable and it was only when I received the completion statement from the solicitors that it became evident that this £2k had in fact been taken from our account!! It amazes me that we were left in the dark as to whether we were liable to pay this amount or not, until the mortgage transaction had actually taken place.
Fortunately I had a Eureka moment and came up with a way around this before the solicitor sent the cheque to the Revenue. By scrapping the joint tenant (50/50) idea and transferring the property into both names as tenants in common in unequal shares, i.e. 60/40, my share in the property fell short of the stamp duty threshold. I'd run this idea by the Revenue over the phone and they explained that the 'consideration' in this case was the act of my taking on half of my husband's mortgage debt!?!? surprisingly they were quite supportive of my suggestion to avoid this payment!!
When I challenged the solicitor who had drawn up the papers to transfer the property into joint names, he advised that we could roll back the whole transaction and get the mortgage company to revise the offer into my husbands sole name.....he had clearly not been watching the news for a while as mortgage tracker rates were creeping up daily and were substantially different from when our initial offer was made.
This was on top of the fact that the solicitors had basically sat on our papers for the best part of a month and only when I called to chase did they tell me that we had some redemption fees to pay on our old mortage - it seems that they had copied someone else's completion statement onto our file!!! - and couldn't proceed until these had been paid. I'm not quite sure when they were planning to update me with this info if I hadn't called myself. So, several months down the line, we are out of pocket in terms of the additional interest we have paid on our mortgage whilst the solicitors sat on their hands and our fixed rate reverted to standard variable, but happily we have saved £2k in stamp duty."
I would guess that if 'your' value is under £250K and before 24 March 2012, you'd be exempt as a 1st time buyer?
"...the Revenue confirmed that in our situation, i.e. remortgaging and adding a spouse to the deeds at the same time means stamp duty is due on half of the amount of the outstanding mortgage.
Given that the outstanding mortgage was just under £400k, this meant that 50% of this would be over the £175k stamp duty threshold, so I was expected to pay around £2k, despite no money changing hands or changes to our living arrangements, relationship, etc. This just seems like pure greed by the Revenue, as we have already paid stamp duty on the purchase.
We had in fact proceeded with the remortage on the understanding that no SDLT was payable and it was only when I received the completion statement from the solicitors that it became evident that this £2k had in fact been taken from our account!! It amazes me that we were left in the dark as to whether we were liable to pay this amount or not, until the mortgage transaction had actually taken place.
Fortunately I had a Eureka moment and came up with a way around this before the solicitor sent the cheque to the Revenue. By scrapping the joint tenant (50/50) idea and transferring the property into both names as tenants in common in unequal shares, i.e. 60/40, my share in the property fell short of the stamp duty threshold. I'd run this idea by the Revenue over the phone and they explained that the 'consideration' in this case was the act of my taking on half of my husband's mortgage debt!?!? surprisingly they were quite supportive of my suggestion to avoid this payment!!
When I challenged the solicitor who had drawn up the papers to transfer the property into joint names, he advised that we could roll back the whole transaction and get the mortgage company to revise the offer into my husbands sole name.....he had clearly not been watching the news for a while as mortgage tracker rates were creeping up daily and were substantially different from when our initial offer was made.
This was on top of the fact that the solicitors had basically sat on our papers for the best part of a month and only when I called to chase did they tell me that we had some redemption fees to pay on our old mortage - it seems that they had copied someone else's completion statement onto our file!!! - and couldn't proceed until these had been paid. I'm not quite sure when they were planning to update me with this info if I hadn't called myself. So, several months down the line, we are out of pocket in terms of the additional interest we have paid on our mortgage whilst the solicitors sat on their hands and our fixed rate reverted to standard variable, but happily we have saved £2k in stamp duty."
I would guess that if 'your' value is under £250K and before 24 March 2012, you'd be exempt as a 1st time buyer?
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