Feedback: 30 July 2020

SDLT and partnership interests

I have just read the latest issue and noticed a couple of the queries related to stamp duty land tax (SDLT) – ‘Landowners’ and ‘Coffee shop dilemma’ (16 July 2020, pages 24 and 25). Both replies to the first query say that SDLT is not payable if there is no consideration which is ‘generally’ true, but not when the land is transferred out of a partnership.

In these, circumstances FA 2003, Sch 15 (‘Stamp duty land tax: partnerships’) applies and the transfer is taxed at market value but subject to the sum of the lower proportions (SLP) rule. As it happens, the SLP rule would give a zero liability because the transferors and the transferee are connected; however, if the transferee had been (say) a cousin, SDLT would have been charged at 100% of market value even if the cousin did not give consideration.  A cousin is not connected in the same way as a son is connected.

While the general no consideration rule applies to most transactions it does not apply to transfers out of a partnership, transfers to a connected company and exchanges of interest.

Stephen Griffiths, Griffiths Allen.

More on pensions

My article ‘Pension problems’ (Taxation, 16 July 2020, page 20) mentioned that many women had been underpaid their state pension because it had not been uplifted to 60% of their husband’s pension when he reached retirement age. Several readers have questioned whether the uplift to 60% only applied to women who had elected to pay the married women’s reduced rate of National Insurance contributions.

‘No, there’s no direct link between women who paid the married woman’s stamp and those who can claim the 60% rate.

'Obviously, there will be a big overlap between those who had very poor National Insurance records and can benefit from the 60% concession and those who paid the reduced stamp, but there’s no direct connection’.