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Article: A stamp duty holiday won't be much of a break
- Article from:
- The Scotsman
- Article date:
- August 7, 2008
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2008 The Scotsman. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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SUDDENLY, and from all sides, there are rumours that the
Westminster government is considering a moratorium on house-
purchase stamp duty, as a way of breathing life into the property
market and throwing a lifeline to first-time buyers.
True, Alistair Darling was coy about confirming the plan on the
Today programme, but that was par for the course. Such widespread
speculation only occurs when the Treasury itself is doing the
leaking. Mr Darling is flying a policy kite to see if it produces
positive headlines, as it has. In which case we can expect some sort
of holiday on stamp duty come the autumn government relaunch and
Cabinet reshuffle.
I'm not against reforming stamp duty but let's ...