Tax hike for foreigners buying British homes
FOREIGNERS buying property will be hit with higher stamp duty.
Anyone who has spent fewer than six of the past 12 months in the UK will be forced to pay more duty, beginning at one per cent, for a home in England or Northern Ireland.
The new rates will raise about £120million a year in an attempt to help combat rough sleeping.
The Government says foreign buyers push up house prices beyond the reach of Britons. An estimated 13 per cent of new London homes were bought by non-UK residents between 2014 and 2016, York University found.
Also, a King’s College London study estimated a rise of one per cent in the volume of homes sold to overseas buyers had put up house prices by 2.1 per cent.
Prime Minister Theresa May pledged to make foreign homeowners pay more into the public purse at last year’s Tory party conference.
She said: “For too many people the dream of home ownership has become all too distant.”
The stamp duty proposals were in the Chancellor’s October Budget and details will be unveiled this week.
Overall stamp duty receipts fell 8.5 per cent in 2018 – a drop of almost £1billion. Critics say that shows former Chancellor George Osborne’s 2014 reforms to shift more of the tax burden on to expensive homes has backfired.
As much as £100million of the shortfall was caused by a seizure at the top of the property market, usually favoured by foreign buyers.
Property investment firm London Central Portfolio chief Naomi Heaton said: “This move seems imprudent in light of the UK’s need to build on global investment as it exits the EU.”