Chancellor raises stamp duty threshold to £175,000

Buyers of homes worth up to £175,000 will not have to pay stamp duty, Alistair Darling has announced, as he promised the country would "get through" the economic downturn.

In a surprise move to try to revive the housing market, the embattled Chancellor said that the £125,000 threshold at which buyers pay 1 per cent stamp duty will be raised from tomorrow and frozen at the new level for one year.

Announcing the freeze, Mr Darling said: "We are facing difficult times - we are in a situation where you are facing the combination of the credit crunch with high oil and food prices. We haven’t seen this since the 1930s."

The stamp duty freeze - which will save buyers a maximum of £1,750 - came as the first major move in the attempted autumn re-launch by Gordon Brown, who also announced a range of measures to try and help home owners who face having their properties repossessed because of the credit crisis.

Stamp duty is currently charged at 1 per cent on properties sold for between £175,000 and £250,000, with the tax jumping to 3 per cent above this level, before rising to 4 per cent on homes worth more than £500,000.

Segments taken from Telegraph.co.uk

02 September 2008

The information contained within this article was correct at the date of publishing and is not guaranteed to remain correct in the present day.

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