A petition calling for the abolition of stamp duty and council tax, and their replacement with a single annual property tax, has passed 100,000 signatures. That threshold triggers a formal obligation for parliament to consider debating the proposal. With Andy Burnham in Downing Street, and a new Prime Minister who has previously expressed support for property tax reform, the petition has landed at a politically significant moment.
The campaign group Fairer Share wants homeowners to pay an annual charge equivalent to 0.48% of their property’s value, replacing both council tax and stamp duty land tax in a single move. On a property worth £300,000, that amounts to £1,440 a year. On a property worth £1 million, it would be £4,800. On a £2 million property, £9,600.
The group claims that 77% of households would pay less under the new system, and that those who would pay more, primarily owners of high-value properties in areas like London and the South East, would have any increases capped until they sell.
The government responded to the petition earlier this year when it crossed 10,000 signatures. Its position, as stated then, was that council tax and stamp duty together raise £60 billion annually and are not earmarked for reform. The Autumn Budget announcement of a High Value Council Tax Surcharge for properties above £2 million was presented as the extent of the planned change.
Andrew Dixon, founder of Fairer Share, put it plainly: “Andy Burnham has spent years arguing that Britain’s property taxes are broken. Now, as Prime Minister, he has the opportunity, and the responsibility, to fix them.”
Whether Burnham acts on that prior position remains to be seen. A commons debate doesn’t require a vote, and it doesn’t commit the government to anything. But it does create a public platform for a discussion that the property industry has been pushing for years. The fact that this coincides with a new administration that campaigned, at least partly, on housing reform gives it more weight than previous petitions of this kind.
The critique of stamp duty is well established, and it’s one that resonates across the market. The tax penalises mobility. A retired couple in a four-bedroom house in Holt or Southwold who want to downsize to something more manageable face a six-figure stamp duty bill on the purchase of their next property. That cost is a genuine deterrent, and it keeps larger family homes off the market when families need them.
Stamp duty raises around £14 billion a year, according to the government’s own figures. It’s also, as one industry director noted, “an outdated and fundamentally unfair tax that penalises people simply for moving home, while placing the greatest financial burden on buyers in higher-value markets.” The high-value end of the Norfolk and Suffolk market feels this directly. A buyer purchasing a £1.5 million property in North Norfolk currently faces an SDLT bill of around £91,000 on top of the purchase price. That’s a serious additional cost, and it concentrates minds.
The arithmetic is interesting for the premium end of the market. Under the Fairer Share model, a property worth £1.5 million would generate an annual tax of £7,200. Compare that to the stamp duty bill on purchase of £91,000, and the annual levy looks relatively modest for a long-term hold. For buyers who intend to stay in a property for ten or more years, a proportional tax could actually represent a better deal than the current front-loaded system.
The complication is for owners of high-value properties who purchased when prices were lower and now find themselves sitting on significant paper gains without the income to service a rising annual tax. The Fairer Share proposal includes a deferral mechanism for cases like this, though the detail of how that would work in practice is not fully resolved.
Council tax was designed in 1991 and still uses valuations from that year. A farmhouse in the Broads that might have been worth £150,000 in 1991 and is now worth £900,000 pays council tax banded on that original valuation. The system’s relationship to actual property values collapsed long ago.
Fairer Share’s figures show council tax arrears have risen to £8.3 billion, with more than two million households struggling to keep up. The structural unfairness, owners of the most valuable homes paying proportionately far less than those in lower-value properties, is precisely why the surcharge announced in the Autumn Budget was targeted at properties above £2 million.
Parliament will schedule a debate. That debate will produce arguments from both sides. The government of the day will be under no obligation to change policy as a result. But political pressure builds gradually, and a new Prime Minister with a stated interest in this area represents a different calculation than the governments of the past decade, who consistently deferred the question.
For anyone buying or selling in Norfolk and Suffolk right now, nothing changes immediately. Stamp duty rates are what they are, and planning a transaction around anticipated tax reform is rarely wise. What this petition does is signal that the conversation is live in a way it hasn’t been for years.
If you want to understand how the current tax environment affects purchasing decisions and pricing at the premium end of the market, our property market reports are a good place to start. Reports covering Norwich, Aldeburgh, Wells-next-the-Sea and Burnham Market give the local data context that national coverage rarely provides. Property tax reform, if it comes, will not affect every location equally.
