Due to the ongoing political turmoil we are still waiting for an announcement on when the 2019 Budget will take place. Obviously with Brexit on the horizon I think we can assume that it is likely to be after 31st October when we will all have a better idea of the political and economic situation.
Update: It has been announced that the budget will be on 6th November 2019.
Extra Update: The 6th November budget has been cancelled!
There have been many people postulating on what changes to stamp duty may happen in the next budget – there is a lot of pressure on Boris Johnson and the current government to reverse the changes to stamp duty that were introduced by George Osborne in terms of the additional stamp duty payable on second properties.
There is also call for stamp duty to be abolished altogether on properties that cost less than £500,000.
Boris Johnson has not shown his hand on what he plans to do, if anything, as he is likely more ensconced in Brexit talks and other political matters at this time.
There has also been speculation that the onus of paying stamp duty would shift from buyers to sellers but Sajid Javid (the current Chancellor of the Exchequer) debunked that idea in a tweet in August (although we all know that things can change!)
More speculation about stamp duty this morning. To be clear, I never said to @thetimes I was planning to put it on sellers, and I wouldn’t support that. I know from @mhclg that we need bold measures on housing – but this isn’t one of them. https://t.co/9OVk3XiqMd
— Sajid Javid (@sajidjavid) August 18, 2019
So there are plenty of options that could be included in the budget and it could be argued that something needs to be done to lift the housing market, but we could also argue that the market is flat due to the uncertainty over Brexit and once that is finalised, perhaps the market will pick up again.
House buyers and sellers are quite possibly waiting for Brexit to be delivered in order to think about moving (which may also be affected by job uncertainty) so we will likely have to wait until November at least for some clarification.