The Tax With No Name

After a low-key Pre-Budget report the first batch of the long-awaited draft clauses defining the new version of stamp duty has been unveiled. The Government has taken a simple if somewhat quirky 300 year old tax and 'modernised' it. The new tax will be on transactions not documents. Ultimately the charge will be limited to transactions in UK land and buildings and in UK-registered shares and securities although the draft legislation only covers land and buildings. The reduction in the scope is welcome — in practice the tax collected on other assets has been tiny for many years and the change will remove the...