The Labour Party has been accused of depriving taxpayers of hundreds of thousands of pounds in stamp duty in the sale of its London headquarters, despite the Chancellor’s clampdown on stamp duty avoidance schemes in his mini-budget last week.
The Independent on Sunday has learnt that Labour sold its Westminster headquarters this year using a specially created company. The device, which Labour insists is a normal commercial transaction, cost the Treasury about £210,000 in lost stamp duty.
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3 Comments
We seem to have been posting in parallel – but there is a twist to this story.
http://www.liberalreview.com/content/2006/12/another-thing-tories-and-labour-have-in-common
I’m posting on a train! Wifi on a train! And it works! I’m so very excited…
A land law student writes:
We’ve just been taught that the Land Registration Act 2002 requires registration of the property with 2 months otherwise the transaction is void.
If the Independent report is correct that the sale took place at the end of August but the Land Registry still shows the owner as the Labour party then an interesting question springs to mind (this would be an issue for the purchaser rather than the Labour party admitedly and there might be some technical reasons I’m not aware of why these provisions don’t apply)