From obscurity to instant fame, is a rapid journey that most wannabe celebrities would die for. Who would have thought that within less than a week, Conveyancers and the four-letter abbreviation SDLT would be as famous as The Village People and YMCA?
We all know by now that Angela Rayner underpaid the SDLT on her Hove property by £40,000, and a lot has been written about how that my have come about. Leaving that to one side for now, what this issue has done is raised the profile of conveyancers, conveyancing, and SDLT. But how have conveyancing and conveyancers come out of this debacle? In a good light, a bad light, or an indifferent light? I’m not sure, but one thing is certain though, and that is most people will be more aware of what SDLT is and how complex calculating it can be, and that must be a positive.
One SDLT expert recently said that “Angela Rayner was warned by her lawyer to seek specialist tax advice and didn’t.” Another said, “perhaps more buyer clients, in choosing their conveyancer for non-vanilla circumstances, will now be asking whether the conveyancer will be able to advise on the SDLT.”
But what are non-vanilla circumstances, and how would a conveyancer establish that the circumstances are non-vanilla? Presumably by asking a number of relevant questions of their buyer client at a very early stage?
When providing an estimate for legal fees and disbursements a figure for SDLT will often need to be included. In fact, I have just completed on online fee calculator for a well know conveyancing firm and it calculated the SDLT at £22,500.00. It didn’t say estimated SDLT, it simply said Stamp Duty £22,500.000. I was asked very few searching questions when completing the online form, therefore that figure could very easily be incorrect. Food for thought!
A well know property lawyer included this sage advice in a recent blog of theirs:
Probe, don’t just process. Asking searching questions about beneficial ownership and trusts is part of the job.
Know when to bring in tax experts. Conveyancers must flag the need for advice; clients must be transparent about their circumstances.
Can you safely say, as one BLG member did on our online forum:
“I’ve Just had a quick look at our SDLT questionnaire, and it covers off this exact (Angela Rayner) scenario as a question, so it would have rung alarm bells to seek specialist advice once the fee earner had reviewed it.”
When the higher rate of SDLT was first introduced in 2016 the Bold Legal Group, working collaboratively, put together a detailed SDLT checklist. Now, I don’t know what SDLT related questions Ms Rayner’s conveyancers put to her if any, but I would like to think that had Angela Rayner instructed a BLG member firm to act for her in the purchase of her Hove property, and if they were using our (or even another) checklist, she might still be Deputy Prime Minister.
You may already have your own checklist, or you may have access to the questionnaire in the appendix to Law Society SDLT handbook. Whatever your position, I believe that one thing is certain, you should have a reliable SDLT checklist to hand.
If anyone would like a copy of our checklist, please email me: rh@boldgroup.co.uk
Rob Hailstone is CEO of Bold Legal Group
