While a rise in the stamp duty threshold is long overdue, once again the opportunity has been missed to reform the absurd way in which the tax operates on the whole of the consideration once the threshold has been passed (see [2005] Gazette, 24 March, 13).

If inheritance tax or income tax were structured on a similar basis there would be a massive protest.


The increase in the threshold will only encourage more attempts to allocate a fictitious figure to carpets, curtains and cookers.


What Gordon Brown (and his predecessors) should have done was to make the tax payable on the excess over £60,000 (or some higher figure).




John Lloyd, Mawdsleys, Southport