PROPERTY: shadow Paymaster-General voices solicitors' frustration over 'stealth tax'

The shadow Paymaster-General is claiming substantial support from solicitors in a campaign designed to highlight problems surrounding the government's introduction of stamp duty land tax.

The new tax - introduced last month - requires solicitors to fill out returns for conveyances and leases, and increases the amount of duty leaseholders pay.

Shadow Paymaster-General Mark Prisk - the Tory MP for Hertford, who claims the duty is a 'stealth tax' - told a debate in Parliament last week: 'I have been inundated by a raft of letters from solicitors and those dealing with conveyancing, who are intensely frustrated by the whole process.'

Mr Prisk quoted one letter from Andrew Almond, of Wirral-based Halsall & Co, who said 'the method of imposition of such a bureaucratic tax has reached the point of sheer lunacy.'

Mr Prisk told the Gazette he had received 30 similar letters.

He added: 'The tax was introduced on the promise of e-conveyancing, but has introduced new layers of onerous paperwork and inefficient bureaucracy, It has added greatly to the burdens on business, which has been left completely in the dark about what is happening.'

Denis Cameron, chairman of the Law Society's land law and conveyancing committee, said he would meet Treasury officials this week to update them on problems associated with the new tax.

He said practitioners were bound to be unhappy with the way the new tax was 'rushed in'.

Mr Cameron added: 'We are working as hard as we can to make it workable but we cannot alter government decisions.'

Michael Orton-Jones, a consultant in Shoosmiths' Northampton office and member of the both the Law Society's tax law committee and financial services and investment business working party, said: 'This has not been properly implemented by the government as the electronic forms [required for the returns] are not yet ready.

The tax also inhibits people from buying and selling property, and although the impact on commerce remains to be seen, it is not exactly going to encourage business.'

Jeremy Fleming