A long stamp duty holiday, no online sales tax and some relief for business rates.
There were limited announcements for the real estate sector. The chancellor addressed the potential decrease in house sales over the next two years by maintaining the SDLT cuts introduced in the mini-Budget. If the alternative was that they were otherwise going to be scrapped, this is welcome. Think of it as a long stamp duty holiday.
Elsewhere it was a story of what was not announced. We still do not know whether overseas sovereign investors will be brought into the scope of UK tax on their investments in UK real estate. Similarly, we still have not had a response to the SDLT consultation on mixed-use acquisitions or multiple dwellings relief. Allowances for capital investment also received little airtime. The super-deduction will be removed from April 2023, without any other new tax measure to incentivise capital investment. Whilst it looks as if tax incentives will be offered for new investment zones, as nothing was said on the tax aspects, those zones will be refocused to a limited number of high potential clusters.
Finally, the chancellor confirmed that the online sales tax has been quietly dropped. Some retailers may be disappointed by this because the government had earmarked any tax raised by the online sales tax to allow reductions in business rates for physical shops, going some way to redress the imbalance between bricks and mortar retailers and online retailers. So what comfort was given to physical retailers on business rates at the Autumn Statement? Generally, they fared well in the package of business rates measures, with an increase in their relief to 75% for 2023/24 (maximum £110,000 per business). Within the total retail sector, rates are estimated to fall by 20%, but will rise 27% for the large distribution warehouse sector to reflect the growth in the online sales sector.
Home >Articles > Autumn Statement 2022: impact on the real estate sector
Autumn Statement 2022: impact on the real estate sector
A long stamp duty holiday, no online sales tax and some relief for business rates.
There were limited announcements for the real estate sector. The chancellor addressed the potential decrease in house sales over the next two years by maintaining the SDLT cuts introduced in the mini-Budget. If the alternative was that they were otherwise going to be scrapped, this is welcome. Think of it as a long stamp duty holiday.
Elsewhere it was a story of what was not announced. We still do not know whether overseas sovereign investors will be brought into the scope of UK tax on their investments in UK real estate. Similarly, we still have not had a response to the SDLT consultation on mixed-use acquisitions or multiple dwellings relief. Allowances for capital investment also received little airtime. The super-deduction will be removed from April 2023, without any other new tax measure to incentivise capital investment. Whilst it looks as if tax incentives will be offered for new investment zones, as nothing was said on the tax aspects, those zones will be refocused to a limited number of high potential clusters.
Finally, the chancellor confirmed that the online sales tax has been quietly dropped. Some retailers may be disappointed by this because the government had earmarked any tax raised by the online sales tax to allow reductions in business rates for physical shops, going some way to redress the imbalance between bricks and mortar retailers and online retailers. So what comfort was given to physical retailers on business rates at the Autumn Statement? Generally, they fared well in the package of business rates measures, with an increase in their relief to 75% for 2023/24 (maximum £110,000 per business). Within the total retail sector, rates are estimated to fall by 20%, but will rise 27% for the large distribution warehouse sector to reflect the growth in the online sales sector.
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