George Osborne offers few sweeteners for property investors

If any investors thought they would escape the proposed 3% stamp duty on buy-to-let property, they were left disappointed by George Osborne’s latest announcement. Even the proposed exemption to the tax for larger landlords and institutional investors who owned more than 15 properties appears not to be go ahead. Investors in high value commercial property will also be subject to higher taxes as the stamp duty rates have now been graduated to mirror the stamp duty thresholds for residential property with the top rates at 5%.

Investors listening to the Budget as it was announced briefly got their hopes up when Osborne announced that capital gains tax (CGT) rates would be reduced but alas, these changes do not apply to residential property. There was a bit of good news for small business owners, however. Corporation tax rates will fall from 20% to 17% over the next four years and the personal allowance has been raised to £11,500. High rate tax payers have even more reason to be happy as the threshold has been raised from £42,385 to £45,000.

We had desperately hoped that Osborne would listen to reason and scrap his plans for this extra 3% stamp duty. It is unfairly singling out landlords – many of whom are simply trying to shore up their retirement income,” states Vidhur Mehra, finance director of Benham & Reeves Estate Agents, “Amateur property developers are not the enemy and given that the government has said that further investment is needed in the private rental sector, this won’t help.