Is this legal?

[bigbadbarry]

We are on the market at £259k, intending to sell at 250 to be attractively under the stamp duty hike. Only we find ourselves with several interested parties, none of whom (understandably) want to pay more than 250 - and why should they: they would have to pay £7500 rather than £2500 tax if they do. DH has come up with a scheme whereby we "sell" dishwasher and fridge to them privately as a way to get the best price for the house (and choose between buyers!) - I contend this can't be legal else people would sell their mansions for £250k with curtains of half a million. Anybody?

I think lots of people do it and have done it. Tbh.

you can sell fixtures and fittings separately, but you have to sell them at a reasonable (2nd hand) market value - so you couldn't put a price of £5k on the dishwasher but you could put a price of, say, £150.
Do you have enough removable fixtures and fittings to make this worthwhile?

Yes, it's legal, I'm sure of it, so long as it's a normal price range for the inside bits. I mean, it must be.

It is legal only in so far as the difference in price reflects the goods/fittings being sold ie. most people wouldn't pay more than a few hundred for any second hand appliances. If it is any more than that solicitors should not agree and HMRC can investigate tax avoidance.

plus the fitting fee -- if they bought any other second hand goods they'd have to pay a washing machine installation, dishwasher installation, boiler installation, fridge installation and so on and so forth. Kitchen installation, why not? some countries you just buy an empty shell of a house.

crumbs, curtains at john lewis are a fortune to get fitted

I like my kitchen. What if I were planning to take it with me to the new house but decided to leave it behind? It's easily removable -- you can take the whole lot out in under two hours.

Hmm ok - so we are looking at a couple of hundred quid, really...unless we redefine kitchen as being inessential! (I don't think you are allowed to remove things that are actually attached, unless you say so up front.)

Unless it is fully integrated fitting a wm, dw etc is hardly rocket science !

Well I can't do it. I always get someone to do it. Excuse me for being really stupid.

bigbad.. I should try for whatever you can.

One of the estate agents who valued our house last year (also around the £250k mark) actually suggested this as a way of getting more than £250k. But as someone else has said, you can't charge £10k for the odd pair of curtains.

A houseful of fitted curtains and blinds you could sell for a lot.

When we were looking at houses we went to one where they offered us the chance to 'buy' the cooker and stereo system (to be fair, it had speakers wired into several different rooms) for about £15k to get us under the threshold on the house.

You are totally allowed to remove ANYTHING from your house, that's why you specify it all on that funny form thingy. What's it called? Brain?

Anyway, the one we filled out when we sold our flat had stuff like 'radiators' and 'bathroom suite' on it. Obviously most people would leave these, but if you don't tick the box you can take it with you!

I actually did take three of my kitchen cupboards with me (posh Ikea ones) as well as oven, fridge and washing machine. Offered to sell them all for a pittance but was refused so took them out.

If you're selling a big house then by the time you tot up 'radiators', 'light fittings', 'curtains' as well as kitchen units, white goods, carpets etc you should have no problem totting up to 9k at genuine market rates for second hand.

You could get into a mess if at the last minute the buyers say that they want the house but not the dishwasher etc.

You run the risk of the tax man investigating your purchase to find out if additional money has changed hands as part of the deal. This would include excessive payments for fixtures and fittings (which are normally not liable for stamp duty) and the buyer paying off any of the vendor's debts or liabilities, including estate agent's fees. If they decide that additional money has changed hands then you'll be liable for the full stamp duty amount on the cost of the house plus the extra payments.

not that the taxman deserves a bean of it of course

It used to be ok but in 2003 the tax man produced a long form which has to be completed to stop things like this

Other option is for you to put the price up but pay 2% of additional stamp duty yourselves, so approx £5,000 - obviously they would need to offer more than £255,500 (disclaimer have not done maths!) to make it worth your while.

Vendors did this on our last house to get over the £250k hurdle, we paid £260k but only 1% of the stamp duty, they paid us back the rest.

Fixtures and fittings

We did £10,000 or more worth on our purchase and no one batted an eyelid.

Thanks everyone - we accepted an offer and had one accepted today, woohoo!