A variety of straightforward commercial lease transactions can fail to qualify for the usual SDLT reliefs merely because the lessor or lessee is acting through a nominee, Simon Yeo (KPMG) explains
One of the key problems of targeted anti-avoidance legislation is that it frequently inflicts collateral damage; while it punishes the naughty the innocent can also feel the lash. The provisions on bare trusts and nominees in the stamp duty land tax (SDLT) legislation are successful in tackling the avoidance HMRC had in mind but they do so by fundamentally inverting the natural order. So far as the grant of leases is concerned nominees and bare trustees are treated as the lessor or lessee while the beneficial lessee and lessor are ignored. Perhaps not surprisingly this produces unnatural results throughout...
