A simple question folks …
Stamp Duty - who pays it ?
Unless this is a trick question, the purchaser pays stamp duty.
Use google for futher info.
while it is the buyer who actually signs the check, its the seller whom makes the economic payment of monies to the state.
Its a tax on selling on 2nd hand house, and this tax rests with the seller.
Damn !
You have lost me €10.
I bet that no one would get the right answer in under 2 hours.
Now baby_tooth, for a bonus point, how many are looking at your answer going ‘what ??’.
assumption: seller is not an owner occupier and buyer is not a first time buyer no?
The only assumption is : Stamp duty is payable.
The seller can most definately be an owner occupier.
Rhetorically speaking, cause you’re asking a question you already know the answer to. Like a teacher.
That depends on the elasticity of the market. Not very, at the moment. So the seller. Used to be the buyer. Economics, taxation, elasticity of supply and demand.
Suitable codified for you?
16.2
no, its always the seller…its a tax on the transfer of wealth, nothing more or less…
Look at it from the govts point of view and then compare it against new houses…see, the sellers must compete, and stampd duty tilts in favour of new builds…
i’m not talking about market swings, I mean literally who pays.
vendor may face CGT etc but the stamp is payable on the actual property deed that, when executing a sale, rests with the buyer and therefore they pay the stamp duty to the state.
is there some twist in this i’m not getting? (taking the question literally thus far) CGT is seller, Stamp duty is buyer
Dammit you lost me another €10 !
I bet no one would say more than 15.
Grrr
Although the purchaser nominally is the person who pays the Stamp Duty, in economic terms it is really the seller if you consider that the purchaser is willing to pay the purchase price + SD and other costs. So whereas say a house sells for €1million - the purchaser in economic terms is willing to pay circa €1.1million when all transaction costs are included. So in reality, at the very least in a buoyant market as we had until 2006, it is actually the seller who is baring the economic cost of SD in terms of an element of price foregone that the seller would have otherwise obtained in the absence of SD.
Its not necessarily the right though. Baby tooth is absolutely correct if the question is asked of a buoyant housing market. However, it would not be strictly correct in a depressed market where there are loads of choice.
taxation is a constant in many transactions and to imply that it is paid by the seller means that a non-FTB v.s. a FTB should have a discrepancy in offer prices by an amount equal to stamp in an efficient market which is not the case.
buyer pays a final price for a good, he doesn’t carre who he pays or how its broken down.
2 HOUSES for sale side by side, identical etc…one new, one 2nd hand.
The seller can only realise the same amount of the new house, less the stamp duty, hence its a tax on the seller…
see what i mean
sorry if repeating above, didn’t see the kn comments
Your argument is correct for a buoyant market, but not a depressed one with loads of choice.
Stamp duty is a scourge on the property market as a whole.
If a buyer negotiated a deal on a house for 300k and had to pay for example 15k stamp duty then the house cost the buyer 315k.
On selling it on the buyer works from their buy price which was 315k - not 300k.
As far as I am concerned - the person that writes the cheque for stamp duty is the person who pays. The buyer buying.
If a seller, who sold a house then goes on to buy another second hand house - they are paying stamp duty but have received the asking price for their house - inclusive of the stamp duty that they paid.
That it affects the seller at the other end - that is to say that the seller, if competing with a new home must reduce to under that asking price, making allowances for the stamp duty, means that this is a double taxation - at some point and in some cases the buyer and seller are paying… More fuel for the fire…
I’ve read this a few times, and while there is a certain cleverness to saying that stamp duty is a tax on the vendor, in the reality in which everyone else bar you two exist, it is the purchasor who pays the stamp duty.
A deed of transfer cannot be legally binding unless it has been stamped by the registry of deeds or been registered in the land registry. The vendor’s responsibility is only to sign the deed of transfer, he is not responsible for making sure that it is stamped. So you can have a situation where a deed isn’t stamped (fraud & tax evasion, and not recommended) and in such a situation the vendor has his money, but the purchasor doesn’t have a legally binding title deed. More importantly, it will be the purchasor and not the vendor who will be prosecuted should the revenue find out.
While it may be the seller who actually pays the money to the state it can be either the buyer or seller who actually pays it. Stamp duty is a tax on the transaction and the government does not care if the funds came from buyer or seller. Historically in Ireland it was the buyer in the vast majority of cases who paid the stamp duty but I could imagine a case where the seller would pay the SD as a goodwill gesture in trying to close a sale.