The British Property Federation has expressed doubt that the government will introduce a stamp duty holiday to help the property market.
The government is unlikely to exempt house sales from stamp duty in order to boost the mortgage market, according to the British Property Federation (BPF).
Stamp duty is a tax that is paid to the government when a property transaction takes place above a specified threshold. The government raised this bar in September last year when it announced that residential properties valued below £175,000 would be exempt from the tax.
However, the move was a temporary one, with the threshold set to fall back to its previous value of £125,000 on September 2nd 2009.
Peter Cosmetatos, director of finance and investments at the BPF, said that his organisation would not be lobbying for a stamp duty holiday, even though it could help get the property market moving. "I don't think there is the slightest prospect that the government would do it, so it would be a waste of time to ask for it," he explained.
"The figure that I remember seeing was that the government was getting only about half of what it hoped it would be getting [from stamp duty], but it is still hundreds of millions a month," he added. "Giving that up at the moment, as the government's coffers are pretty bare, is really not going to be on the table I think."
