Tories vow to slash stamp duty
FIRST-TIME buyers could be exempt from stamp duty on houses worth up to £250,000 under Tory proposals to be detailed today.
Shadow Chancellor Oliver Letwin will publish details of five options for handing back cash to property owners who feel they are being unfairly clobbered by the Treasury when they move.
His package offers the prospect of the tax on purchases being slashed or scrapped altogether for new homeowners.
It will be seen as a clear signal that the Tories are serious about winning over younger voters.
Under the Tory scheme the biggest winners could be those trying to get on the property ladder for the first time.
Letwin's most eyecatching idea would be to exempt them from stamp duty on houses worth up to £250,000. With the average price about £160,000, the threshold would cover most properties in Britain, but cost the Treasury just £400m a year.
Another idea is to double the starting threshold for the duty to £120,000, at a cost of £300m. This would exempt hundreds of thousands of buyers.
The most expensive option - costing £2b - would exempt sales worth less than £125,000 and introduce new marginal rates of 2% for houses above £ 125,000 and 4% for those above £250,000.
This would mean, for example, a stamp duty bill of £4,500 on a £300,000 house. The current charge is £9,000.
Letwin said : 'Stamp duty is a classic Labour stealth tax. Since coming to power they have failed to raise the threshold of £60,000, despite massive increases in house prices.
'As a result the amount of money raised from stamp duty on residential property since 1997 has risen from £675m to £3.8bn.'
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