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It doesn’t - you just pay it up front rather than at the end when you dispose of it
I suspect this is because they want people to improve the housing stock and by not taxing at sale they incentivise improvement.
Howard-
I’m not sure I understand your point. The comparison I’m making is to some kind of yielding investment where you pay tax on the annual dividends, interest and so on.
Whether primary residences should be exempt from capital gains is a whole other can of worms! I think there is a justification given that people are usually recycling the proceeds of a house sale into another house - paying CGT would really fuck you up in that case.
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Plus stamp is clearly independent of length of hold period or change in value. So it penalises those that need to move frequently etc ec
NickCJ
We used to have this in the U.K. until the early 60’s. I forget what it was called but basically the estimated rental income from any property that you owned and lived in was added to your income for tax purposes.
It makes a lot of sense if you think about it - you get taxed on any other form of asset income (dividends, interest, etc), so why should housing get a special exemption?