This is likely to have an impact, with more transactions for properties on which the stamp duty bill has fallen—some 98% or so—and slightly fewer transactions when a larger stamp duty bill will apply. Although there will be an element of behavioural change as a consequence of the measure, property transaction numbers and house prices will be affected by a whole range of factors, so it can be difficult to ascribe any particular changes to one particular reason. However, it is likely that there will be more transactions, and that has certain advantages, such as for labour market mobility, and if it means that people are living in the homes that they want to live in as opposed to feeling trapped in their property to a certain extent. I think that the measure will have a beneficial impact on the housing market.
Each new SDLT rate is now payable only on the portion of the property value that falls within each band. That is in contrast to the old system, under which tax was due at one rate for the entire property value. Moving from a slab to a slice arrangement is right in terms of fairness and economic efficiency. The new arrangement will cut SDLT for 98% of people who pay the tax, and no one who is buying a home worth up to £937,500 will pay more.
This Government believe in aspiration. The aspiration to own our own house is one of the elements of human nature. It is something that, for generations, has been totemic for people in this country. This is a Government who will help people to achieve that ambition, and do so in a fair and equitable way.
The previous stamp duty system was flawed. It had been criticised by hon. Members on both sides of the House, industry and think-tanks. It was
“one of the worst designed and most damaging of all taxes”,
according to the director of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, and “unfair” according to the Building Societies Association. According to the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, it did not
“work as it stands and creates large distortions”.
The problem with the previous system was simple. The slab approach created an enormous hike in taxes at certain thresholds. If someone paid £250,000 for a house, they would pay £2,500 in stamp duty. If they paid £250,001, however, they would pay £7,500—three times as much. In reality, of course, nobody did; they would have been crazy to. What happened was that there were dead zones—in this case a little above £250,000—in which almost no transactions actually took place.
To return to the intervention made by my hon. Friend the Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma), this change is likely to result in a substantial increase in the number of transactions in those dead zones because of the ending of the bunching effect, which should help us to have a more efficient market. Let me again give an example that I cited in last week’s debate: in 2013-14, there were over 30 times as many sales between £245,000 and £250,000 as there were between £250,000 and £255,000. Given that the average UK house price is around £275,000, this was a big distortion affecting a significant number of properties.
What also happened was that people owning properties a little under the threshold were reluctant to improve them for fear that that would be money thrown away if they came to put the property on the market. Also, people wishing to move up the property ladder as their families grew, but who found themselves on the wrong side of the step upwards, had to find a significant—and arbitrarily imposed—lump sum precisely at a time when there are hundreds of other one-off expenses to worry about. We have got rid of the inefficient and distortive old system, and replaced it with a fairer new system that cuts SDLT for 98% of people who pay it.
Under the new structure, no buyer purchasing a property will pay anything at all up to the first £125,000. Buyers will be charged 2% for the portion from £125,000 to £250,000, and 3% for the portion from £250,000 to £925,000. Those individuals buying a house worth more than £925,000 will be charged 10% for the portion of the price between £925,000 and £1.5 million, and buyers will pay 12% tax for any portion of the price above the £1.5 million threshold.
I stress that the tax will be paid once, and once only, at the point when the purchaser has the cash to do so. Once it has been paid, that is it, because we do not believe in introducing a system that would require homes to be revalued every year, or in imposing a large liability on people who may be asset-rich but cash-poor.