House swap stamp duty query

[Lex]

I am about to engage to the purchase of another property & sale of my own. What is unique here is that effectively it is a house swap, I am buying their house & they are buying mine.

My question is around stamp duty. My property is selling for £129K. The property I am buying is selling for £262K. My question is that because this is a house swap situation, am I entitled, if agreed by the other party, to reduce the price of both houses i.e. £117K & £250K respectively thus I would be in a position to have to pay only 1% stamp duty on my purchase ? Thought ?

[markingram@cta.org.u]

There does not appear to be any reason why you should not make the price adjustment to the two properties you described as at the end of the day house valuation is a very subjective area and it would not be unheard of to accept an offer on a house 5% below the asking price.

Be careful though, because under the new Stamp Duty Land Tax regime the Revenue do look quite carefully at transactions where the property price is just under the threshhold between two stamp duty rates. I would make certain that it was not documented anywhere that you were just doing this to reduce your stamp duty burden.

If you would like more information e-mail me.

Mark Ingram
AMI Tax Consultants

markingram@cta.org.uk

[Steve H]

Can you tell me what the Stamp Duty implication is if I literally swap one house for another?