News & Views Blog

But the amount collected from region to region varies enormously. The average stamp duty paid on a London property is now £12,409, more than 7x the average £1,730 levy in the North East.

Nicholas Leeming, major client director of propertyfinder.com commented: "Stamp duty has become a major earner for the Treasury. But its burden is far from evenly spread. Three London boroughs alone paid more stamp last year than Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland combined! We can expect the same pattern this tax year.”

London buyers massively underestimate how much they must fork out in stamp duty. On average, Londoners expect to have to pay £5,479 in stamp duty – the real figure is £12,409. Buyers in the south west, south east and east anglia also underestimate their liability. The midlands are almost spot on with their estimates of the stamp they must pay, whilst Wales, Yorkshire and the north think they are paying more stamp tax than they actually are.

However, almost every region in the country overestimates how much stamp duty they paid ten years ago.

Nicholas Leeming continued: “People have become so accustomed to being taxed heavily on their home – they can’t remember that this hasn’t always been the case. Taxes on our property assets - in particular through stamp tax - have rocketed over the last ten years. The average person will buy a home around four times in their lifetime – this means today’s first time buyers will pay £20.000 to the Treasury, just through stamp duty by the time they retire. Those towards the south of the country will pay many times this amount.”

Not only do people not remember the lower levels of tax they paid ten years ago, but they think that stamp duty has increased at a slower rate than council tax. Even though 50 percent of people think that council taxes have risen the fastest, in fact on average it has less than doubled when stamp duty has increased by a factor of seven.

“This year, revenues are higher and there are certainly more homes than ever dragged into the tax net by house price inflation. The best reforms would be to raise the lower threshold to a sensible level to help first time buyers on to the ladder, and to introduce marginal bands for everyone. These are the changes we’d like to see made in the budget. But it is such an easy tax to collect and with the government finances looking precarious, the chances of change look remote to say the least."