Overview

• The proposed levy would apply to owner-occupier home sales over £500,000 and is expected to affect about a fifth of transactions, compared with roughly 60% under current stamp duty rules.
• Treasury officials are modelling implementation options, fiscal yields and distributional impacts for a centrally set, sale-based tax to stabilise property-related revenue.
• Ministers have been briefed on the ongoing studies but have not endorsed any specific rate or implementation timeline ahead of Chancellor Reeves’s autumn budget.
• A separate local property tax is under consideration to replace council tax in the medium term and bolster strained local authority budgets.
• Officials are drawing on research from the Onward thinktank, including Tim Leunig’s dual national-and-local levy blueprint, to inform policy design.