Chancellor Rishi Sunak To Extend Stamp Duty Holiday To End of June

With lockdown set to ease, The Times newspaper claims that Chancellor Rishi Sunak will be announcing that the stamp duty holiday will run until the end of June when he unveils his budget plans next week.

The stamp duty holiday was due to end on March 31st and allows people to save up to £15,000 in tax and the Chancellor has been urged to extend the deadline as House-buyers have been frantically pushing sales through before the end of next month.

Rightmove has commented that if an extension was not granted around 100,000 property buyers could miss out on the saving as a result of delays caused by a the number of transaction trying to be pushed through before the March 31st deadline.

The online property portal also said that an extension could save buyers around £1.75bn in duty, allowing another 300,000 transactions to complete within the extended holiday period.

Under the scheme, the stamp duty threshold is raised from £125,000 to £500,000 for properties in England and Northern Ireland and increased to £250,000 in Scotland and Wales.

The Centre for Policy Studies has stated that house sales are at their highest level since 2007 following the boost to the housing market from the scheme.