Having just got off the telephone from a buyer seriously considering using a Stamp Duty Land Tax savings scheme, we continue to be surprised by the tactics firms are using to convince people to use them.
In this particular case, the client was told that "a leading political party used such a scheme to save money on buying the Dickens & Jones building in London", so they must be OK. Now, we don't want to cast any aspersions here, but are they serious?
The other problem as clients are now finding out is that many lenders will simply not lend to anyone that is using such a tax savings scheme. The rationale is quite simple - lenders are concerned that the revenue will come after them (and there is no time limit on that) for the outstanding SDLT tax that they didn't pay. This means that the client may potentially be out of pocket and may not be able to keep up the payments on the mortgage. Hence, they wouldn't want to lend to such people.
Simple really, but clients can be influenced by the very attractive proposition so we continue to urge caution.
Oh and yes, our client did decide to instruct us for their purchase because, in their words, the other method "wasn't worth the risk"
