Galliard extends stamp duty holiday to October

Galliard Homes will subsidise a six-month extension to the stamp duty tax across its developments in London, including its Harbour Central collection at Canary Wharf. The extension will apply to all properties priced up to £500,000 that complete before October 1^st this year. For any properties priced above this, Galliard will pay the first £15,000. The move comes as the government is facing calls to completely scrap council tax and stamp duty and replace them with a flat-rate payment based on property value. Chancellor Rishi Sunak’s stamp duty holiday is set to end on March 31^st. The tax, which adds 3% to the price of houses under £500,000 and rises to 15% for properties over £1.5m, was suspended on July 8^th last year in a bid to keep the housing market moving. The chancellor is reportedly considering an extension to the holiday, and the House of Commons has confirmed there will be a debate on the issue after an online petition was signed by more than 100,000 home buyers and sellers. But now there are calls to scrap the tax altogether in favour of a single property levy, perhaps rolled into Council Tax. Many of the people who signed the petition fear that if conveyancing on their sales takes too long, they might fall outside the stamp duty holiday window and their chains will collapse. Charity Fairer Share is pushing for the Chancellor to scrap not only stamp duty but council tax as well, urging Mr Sunak to come up with a new, fairer tax for all property owners. They say one in four adults in the UK regularly goes into debt in order to pay their council tax.

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