Property Industry - 2020 Budget

I was reading an article in the Financial Times earlier this month about the fall in stamp duty land tax receipts. For the first time since 2008-09, the height of the financial crash, we have seen a year-on-year drop falling from £9.07bn to £8.32bn, a reduction of £745m.

As all things these days Brexit is being blamed, plus the changes made to the stamp duty regime as well as a slowing of the UK housing market. There have been calls from the property sector for the government to cut stamp duty in order to boost activity in the housing market and potentially cushion the economic pain of a no-deal Brexit. I can’t see this happening though as stamp duty is a significant source of tax revenues, roughly equivalent to 2 per cent of the Treasury’s total take.

The government announced their spending round to parliament last month with a 4.1% above inflation increase in 2020-21, announcing more money for public services, more money for schools, more money for NHS, social care, policing, prisons... the list goes on. All great plans however, the money for these needs to come from somewhere.

With the Chancellor’s budget speech in a few weeks’ time, on the 6th November, it will be interesting to see what changes the government announce in order to raise the finances to facilitate these spending round increases. They have targeted the property sector in previous years, and it wouldn’t surprise me if this was part of their plans for this budget too. Hopefully they will see sense and look to reduce business rates and sort out the arrears debacle. Whatever their plans are, you can be sure that we’ll provide a concise summary of these for you on the 7th November.

If you would like to receive the summary of these plans, please register your details here and we will be sure to get these to you.

If you have any further questions, please get in touch with Andrew at andrew.coney@raffingers.co.uk  or feel free to call us on 020 8551 7200.