Is stamp duty fair in the UK?

Hi, the property market in the UK has had a roller coaster of prices over the last 4 decades and continues to fluctuate no matter what political party is in power.

Each successive government continued to benefit from using the property market as a way to bring some sort of confidence to the financial institutions to build stock and secure funding for the new entrant and those who used property as a source of income.

In addition the government in the past under various colourful media strategies and pension allowances gave away tax benefits to those who want to secure a better pension pot, advising pensioners to consider other means to increase their pension privately, which paved the way forward to invest into properties rather than saving, which we know after the global financial crash in 2008, making it undesirable to save and worrying for some after witnessing the ‘Black Rock Bank’ saga.

Meanwhile, government finance where the main beneficiary of all this, as slowly stamp duty started to creep up and up and developed at a higher rate to secure more revenue, while those who believed that the property market was going up, seemed to have missed the point, where the additional cost of buying and selling a property would go up due to two costs one stamp duty and the other is embedded in the cost of estate agents. These are the main two factor for the price increase and most of us who could not afford such high cost of property unavoidably moved to bank finance which was another reason why banks see such policy of benefit.

In the midst of all this, the stamp duty itself needs to be addressed as a tax to create benefit to the general public, though this wealth may be unfair for some, on the other hand, this revenue should benefit other sectors in society who are unable to own their dwellings, by building affordable housing according to government policymakers, but is it true and if so, the question is more housing stock lead to lower prices.
All these increases lead to doubts that such policies are workable, or sustainable for the future of the housing and property market.

The high cost of stamp duty needs to researched carefully and the financial burden needs to create a balance between what is the cost of buying or owning and how the pot disrupted, those in the driving seat in government policy played the trial and error strategy and continue to use this method, which will inevitably become a disaster in the future.

Unless this policy is revoked we will witness a crash in the property market that will lead to banking repossessions as it happened in the previous decades during the 1990’s.

What do others think of this?

Thanks,

Faris

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