Halifax Seeks Increase In Stamp Duty Threshold

The Halifax has asked the government to look at raising the threshold on stamp duty to take rising house prices into account. With the last few years seeing dramatic rises in housing some buyers have had to pay stamp duty worth around a fifth of their annual gross income.

Compared with only five years ago this is an extra fifteen percent of that gross income, making the whole buying process an ever more costly one, especially for those trying to get onto the property ladder says the Halifax. The current threshold for stamp duty is GBP250,000, which seemed a lot of money a few years ago. In 1997 for example there were around 1.8 million properties that qualified, though last year that number had expanded to a sizeable 5.5 million.

Calculating a corrected stamp duty threshold were house price rises to be taken into account the Halifax state that the current GBP250,000 limit should go up to GBP720,000 and the GBP500,000 limit increased to GBP1.44 million.