Richard Curtis reviews a recent Upper Tribunal decision on whether a reduced rate of stamp duty land tax could apply if part of a property was not residential.
The past few years have seen a spate of court cases on stamp duty land tax (SDLT) – a subject that many practitioners may leave to solicitors as part of the legalities of property transactions. However, given that claims are being made to reduce an SDLT liability or to recover payments already made, this issue may figure more prominently in future workloads.
As a brief background, SDLT applies to land transactions from 1 December 2003 if there is an acquisition of a chargeable interest, whether or not evidenced in writing (FA 2003, s 48). Since the introduction of SDLT, Scotland and Wales have introduced their own regimes – land and buildings transaction tax (LBTT) and land transaction tax (LTT), respectively.
Perhaps not unexpectedly, given
