Responsiveness of commercial transactions to Stamp Duty Land Tax
This report evaluates the impact of Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) on commercial transactions.
Applies to England and Northern Ireland
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This paper evaluates the impact of Stamp Duty Land Tax (SDLT) on commercial transactions. It uses the change in tax, as a result of the policy at Budget 2016 which moved commercial SDLT from a slab basis to a slice basis, to estimate the responsiveness of commercial transactions to a change in SDLT.
Our preferred regression estimates that a 1% change in the Effective Tax Rate (tax paid ÷ value of transaction) leads to a 11.7% change in commercial transactions. This is higher than the equivalent semi-elasticities for residential property of 5% to 7% and much higher than the previous commercial semi-elasticities of 5.4%.