Stamp duty receipts total £12.3bn during holiday period

The final phase of the stamp duty holiday – with the threshold having being decreased from £500,000 to £250,000 on 30th June – is due to end on 30th September. Stamp duty receipts for August were £910m, taking the total receipts for the first eight months of the year to £7.6bn.

Jonathan Stinton, head of intermediary relationships at Coventry Building Society, said: “Stamp duty has continued to be a very lucrative source of income for the taxman, even with a large proportion of property purchases being exempt from it for over a year. Clearly, there’s still a very healthy market for higher value homes, second homes and rental properties.

“There’s still momentum in the property market with lots of people still looking to buy and the current starting point of £250,000, introduced in July, means people buying an average-priced home will now trigger a tax bill. The size of those bills and the number of people paying them will only increase once the holiday ends in full on 30 September.

“With the Budget just a few weeks after the holiday ends, it could be the right time to look at a higher stamp duty threshold to ease the burden from average home owners, which wouldn’t make much of a dent in revenue for HMRC.”