genou wrote:Lootman wrote:It is a technicality in the sense that the taxman typically takes no notice of transfers of value between spouses, gifts or not.
[expletive deleted].
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/sdlt-transf ... r-property
Summarising, stamp duty is only theoretically due if the value of the gift is more than the stamp duty threshold AND you forgot to pay off the mortgage, if only temporarily, in order to get around this technicality.
Stamp duty is usually only collected in practice when the land registry is notified of a change of title. In the case of a private transfer using a Declaration of Trust then there is no such trigger. And so how often the parties involved decide to make that counter-intuitive leap of logic and volunteer to pay up would be an interesting statistic to know. On the two occasions I have performed a non-cash transfer the matter quite simply never arose.
Here is a fun example. A and B own a house 50/50. They want to spend £600,000 on completely remodelling their home. A has that money, but B has nothing to contribute.
So they decide to use A's money. And in return they set up a Declaration of Trust whereby A gets the first £600,000 of any future sales proceeds, with only the rest being split 50/50. That document is just kept private in a drawer, and in fact it may never be invoked for a number of possible reasons. It may later be changed, superceded or destroyed before ever being actioned upon.
Odds of any stamp duty ever being determined or paid?