Doing Due Diligence on Land Transactions

It's trite to say that the SDLT legislation is enormously complicated. And far from the legislation becoming clearer as it supposedly beds down in some areas it is becoming more difficult to understand and apply. (This is a reflection of the number of anti-avoidance provisions welded on by successive regulations and Finance Acts the ambiguity in the drafting thereof and the fact that HMRC guidance although voluminous in amount is unhelpfully contained in numerous sources outside the SDLT Manual.) So someone charged with checking out the substance of SDLT claims made by a vendor in a land transaction involving...