Does ownership of a second property abroad count for the purposes of the 3% surcharge?
3% Additional Rate
“We are prospective home buyers in UK and have started a transaction to purchase a house. We live in the UK and have been renting for last 5 years – so not sure if this is classified as the primary residence.
Me and my spouse both have bought a flat jointly in India for investment purpose (not expensive value like £30,000)- which remains empty. No one lives there and we have purely bought it as an investment.
Now as per rules, it looks like since we own more than one property when we finish the home purchase transaction in UK we are paying the higher stamp duty (£26,560 instead of £12,850) when we complete our transaction. We just wanted some advice on our situation, will we qualify for any relief – by requesting HMRC?
I do understand that if we sell our other property within 3 years – we will be eligible for relief, but wanted advice on situation where if we own both houses – considering that we live in the UK and the rental house is our primary accommodation – is there any relief for our situation?”
Source: Andrew
Although you and your wife already own a dwelling in India provided that your individual interests in that dwelling do not have a market value of £40,000 or more on the day that you complete your UK purchase you will not be liable for the 3% SDLT surcharge.
At the time of publication this response was correct however as tax legislation and practice change from time-to-time you should take specific advice before taking any action.
Please refer to Ann’s free resource if you have any further stamp duty land tax questions. This resource covers a wide range of queries and using the available tags you can filter the results to find a specific query.
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