Stamp Duty - SBP Article

[techman]

This is from yesterday's SBP.

‘Before, people used to buy the site and arrange construction themselves, and you would have been able to pay stamp duty only on the site.But for residential properties, Revenue now stamps both the contract for the site and the contract for the building. This means you pay stamp duty on both transactions.”

Surely, this does not apply if you buy a site and build direct labour. In that case, you would only pay SD on the site cost.

Am I right?

 

[Vanilla]

You are right. Stamp duty is only calculated on the overall transaction ( including build cost) where there is a related contract to build with the site contract to purchase ( or in otherwords where buying the site is conditional on entering into a building agreement with a certain builder to build your house).

Which can have a detrimental effect for FTB building their own home- ie they would likely qualify for exemption from stamp duty if classed as a residential transaction ( where the overall is taken into account) but not on the purchase of a stand alone site. And the stamp duty on such sites can be quite high. So a little unfair IMO for FTBs.