Budget 2020 - Finally Some Respite for Landlords

Budget 2020 is over, and landlords can relax after Chancellor Rishi Sunak made a single tweak to property taxes. And that only impacts living overseas and buying homes in England. 

Sunak announced a new banding for Stamp Duty Land Tax for non-residents buying a home, adding a 2% surcharge to their bill. The measure takes effect from April 1, 2020, and applies to British ex-pats purchasing a home from abroad and foreign buyers.

“This will help to control house price inflation and to support UK residents to get onto and move up the housing ladder. The money raised from the surcharge will be used to help address rough sleeping,” said a Treasury spokesman.

Little else changed in Budget 2020, which the Chancellor used as a platform for announcing billions of pounds of spending. Besides hundreds of millions available to build more hospitals, schools, railways roads and flood defences, an emergency fund to deal with the economic fall-out of coronavirus has been set up.

“If Britain needs it, rest assured we will build it,” promised the Chancellor.

He also promised to spend to ‘level up’ disparity between London and the regions, including moving 22,000 civil servants out of the capital and investing more money for national assemblies in Scotland and Wales. 

A £30 billion package will suspend business rates, help with sick pay and give the National Health Service a boost to deal with the epidemic sweeping around the world.

“If the NHS needs more to deal with coronavirus, rest assured the money is there,” promised the Chancellor. 

"We are doing everything we can to keep this country and our people healthy and financially secure."

Other personal tax measures included freezing price rises on fuel and alcohol, but tobacco goes up 2%, putting 27p on a packet of cigarettes.