Thousands of pension savers could be owed combined £6bn due to overpaid stamp duty

Posted 16th August 2022 by ctatax-admin

Cornerstone Tax is the UK’s leading property tax advisers, specialising in Stamp Duty Land Tax. We’ve reclaimed over £15 million in overpaid SDLT in the last 12 months. Contact us for property tax advice, or to see if you are eligible to claim a refund from HMRC on overpaid Stamp Duty

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“Tax specialists Cornerstone Tax has said that transfers of commercial property into pension schemes may have triggered Stamp Duty Land Tax even though the transactions may have been exempt.

Tens of thousands of pension savers who were advised to pay stamp duty on commercial properties transferred into their personal pensions could be due a combined refund of £6bn.

Cornerstone Tax said it had uncovered the error with its chairman David Hannah addressing a meeting at the House of Lords last month and gaining former pensions minister Baroness Ros Altmann’s support.

Cornerstone said up to 75,000 people could have paid stamp duty when a commercial property was transferred into their Small Self-Administered Schemes (SSASs) and Self-Invested Personal Pensions (SIPPs), even though such transactions can be exempt.

Anyone who believes they qualify for a refund must claim within four years of the completion of the property transaction into their pension.

Cornerstone has received more than 50 refunds from HM Revenue and Customs on ­behalf of clients with such arrangements.

Read: Stamp Duty saving tips for Landlords

“If you are thinking that surely your pension provider or pension trustee would have told you about this, the issue is that they’re not stamp duty specialists or experts, they’re pension specialists,” Mr Hannah said.

“They’ll have relied on the ­solicitor that did the transaction and this is a particularly complex area, but once understood it’s fairly easy to apply.

“We find that most conveyancing solicitors don’t understand this area – there are 49 reliefs for stamp duty and most of them don’t understand any more than five or six of them.”

The errors were said to have been made when solicitors acting in transfers assumed that stamp duty must be paid on the transfer of property from multiple owners into SIPPs or SSASs even though it might not have been required.

This means business owners who moved their commercial properties into these pension schemes could be eligible for rebates in specific cases.”

Cornerstone Tax is the UK’s leading property tax advisers, specialising in Stamp Duty Land Tax. We’ve reclaimed over £15 million in overpaid SDLT in the last 12 months. Contact us for property tax advice, or to see if you are eligible to claim a refund from HMRC on overpaid Stamp Duty