Just say someone was to buy a house in the 3% bracket and the owner of that house was to buy the buyers smaller 1% bracket house -effectively swapping houses – if they were to both reduce sale prices in order that both houses were in the 1% band, would that be considered evasion?? No other money changes hands. Just not sure if tax is payable on price paid or “market value”

so, effectively ‘swap+cash’?

Check with a tax adviser but I think it’s the amount of cash that changes hands that’s the taxable amount.

tax is payable on price paid

That’s it.

how ever houses have to be sold at fair market value.

i cant sell you my house for a pound if its valued at 200k.

the land registry transaction would scupper you surely.

Why would the seller of the more valuable property reduce the price – is it just over the threshold?

If it is just over the threshold then you may be ok but if it is a lot over the threshold then the transaction may be looked at quite closely.

I used to work in conveyancing and people would try a similar thing by
saying the fixtures and fittings (which are not taking into account for stamp duty) were £30k and the house only say £200k or whatever they needed to get under the threshold.

Never worked and HMRC would be all over them like a bad case of herpes.

Seek professional advice and get the advice in writing. If it all goes tits up you can take it up with the adviser…

Until 2003 it was based on price paid, so you’d only pay tax on the difference in value. Now you get to pay tax on the full value of both properties, so you’ll need to get an independent valuation done to back up whatever figures you come up with, as there’s an obvious incentive to understate both. See:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4259990.stm

I’ve no idea what happens when the difference in market price (i.e. the price you negotiate with the other party) doesn’t match the difference in the independent valuations…