The Lemon Fool

We rent our primary home in the UK, however own a holiday property in Europe.

Am I right in thinking, that based on current regulations, if we were to buy a property in the UK we would need to pay the additional stamp duty as it would be deemed a second property?

Could I just transfer ownership or gift the holiday home (to my child for example) in order to remove the additional duty?

FYI, you might be interested in a recent thread I started on a related question, and some of the issues that were raised by attempts to finesse the extra stamp duty on a second home:

viewtopic.php?f=49&t=14251

That said, if the gift to a child is a genuine one, then I do not see why that would not work, as long as you no longer derive any benefit from that holiday home.

The other idea, as I raised in the cited thread, is that each of the two homes could be held solely in the name of just one spouse.

Thanks for the link, seems like it generated quite a bit of discussion!

Indig0 wrote:Thanks for the link, seems like it generated quite a bit of discussion!

I almost think there might be a business opportunity for people who do not own a property to "lend" their entitlement to a lower stamp duty rate to those who already own a home and are buying another. So for a fee I offer to buy a property and then later gift or bequeath it to you.

In any event I do wonder how much gifting back and forth of properties is going on because the government has chosen to make stamp duty so personalised, discriminatory and arbitrary.