Stamp Duty

Abolish Stamp Duty on Quoted Shares

This article reflects the opinions of its author and not necessarily those of ShareSoc. Increased cost of capital means tax has negative impact on UK growth Is the UK stock market going to zero? Less than 8% of UK individuals own shares, compared to 40% in Sweden and 60% in USA[1]. This is evidence of the country’s failure to educate, and its failure to create a positive domestic investing climate.   Successive Governments have rowed back from the “Tell Sid” privatisation days where huge advertising budgets ...

0.5% Stamp Tax on UK shares – consultation response

Abolish Stamp Duty Tax or reduce it to 0.05%  In a short, 4-page response, to the HMRC Consultation, we re-emphasised the points we made in our 2020 consultation response. Our key points were:   This consultation is fundamentally flawed. It does not discuss the rate of taxation on UK shares, which is currently 0.5% and is hugely uncompetitive with the US, which is the largest securities market in the world.  Our analysis is that:    The original rationale for stamp duty (cost of wax seal ...

Taxation Policy

As part of ShareSoc's work, we lobby and represent individual investors, we submit responses to Government consultations and when required we campaign for change. For example, we responded to consultations on and blogged about stamp duty, inheritance tax and capital gains tax. A recent article in the Mail highlighted concerns about a possible wealth tax and we are formulating ShareSoc's position. Please contact us if you wish to join in this debate. The Sunday Times reported on 10 April the debate in the US about a wealth tax, noting "Conceptionally ...

Modernisation of Stamp Duty

HMRC have announced a “Call for Evidence” on the “Modernisation of Stamp Taxes on Shares Framework”. If you deal mainly in the shares of public companies you may not know much about this subject – I certainly don’t. But the consultation document is very enlightening – see link below. That’s if you can understand it because this tax seems to be like capital gains tax – horribly complicated as it has been built up over many years and with a large ...

Stamp Duty Review

The Office of Tax Simplification is currently undertaking a review of Stamp Duty. Stamp Duty is paid on share transactions, although there are numerous exceptions and ways to avoid paying it. Although this review seems to be primarily focussed on technical aspects and how to remove paper processes (still needed for off-market transfers for example), ShareSoc argues that the tax should be scrapped altogether. (more…)