Can the 3% surcharge be reclaimed where a new home is bought before the old one is sold?

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“We have an offer on a house, but the buyer will not accept our offer until we have our house under offer with a complete chain. Our present home is on the market but we have not had any offers as yet.

We are in a position where we could purchase the new home with a mortgage and then complete the sale of our old home in due course.

Could you please confirm that my understanding of the risks of undertaking this strategy are correct:

I will have to pay an additional 3% second home stamp duty up front and that this can be claimed back as long as we complete the sale of our home within three years.

Is it straightforward to reclaim the stamp duty?”

Source: BLG Member

 


You are correct.  Provided that your old home is sold within three years of the completion of the purchase of the new one you can claim a refund of the surcharge.

A refund can be claimed by making an amendment to the original return.  Repayments need to be claimed within three months of the sale of the previous main residence, or within one year of the filing date of the original return (which is 30 days after completion), whichever is later.

A repayment can also be claimed by completing a SDLT repayment request form. The form can be found here.

The form can be completed by either the main purchaser who paid the higher rates of SDLT, or an agent acting on their behalf. Certain pieces of information will be needed to complete the form: the SDLT UTRN from the property which the higher rates were paid on and the name of the purchaser of the property which has been sold. If the form is completed by an agent, and the repayment is to be made to the agent, then a signed letter of consent from the main purchaser will need to be attached to the form.

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.

For further guidance on SDLT please see Ann’s Stamp Duty Land Tax Q&As. This free resource covers a wide range of SDLT queries and you can filter the results to find a specific query.

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