Stamp duty payments hit new high
The research, which is based on figures from the Land Registry, has revealed that homeowners paid almost £60m in additional stamp duty in the nine months following the 2005 Budget, when the nil-rate threshold was increased from £60,000 to £120,000.
In total, homeowners paid £2.55bn in stamp duty between March and December 2005, representing an increase of £57.2m on the previous nine months.
This is despite the fact that the number of properties sold fell from 782,730 to 737,134.
The average householder now pays £3,459 in stamp duty, compared with £3,184 in the previous nine months.
The average price of a UK property was £185,788 in December, with first time buyers spending on average more than £150,000 on their first home.
Matthew Wyles of the Portman Building Society described the raising of the stamp duty threshold as 'a purely cosmetic exercise', and argued that making sellers liable to pay the tax would help to ease the financial burden for many first time buyers.
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Date: 16-03-2006