Stamp Duty Research Articles

Commissioner of Stamp Duties (Queensland) v Livingston (1964): Rights of Estate Beneficiaries and Trust Beneficiaries Compared

The paper concerns a 1964 decision of the Privy Council, Commissioner of Stamp Duties (Queensland) v Livingston. It analyses the rights of estate beneficiaries and creditors against a deceased person's personal representatives and third parties during the administration of the deceased person's estate. It compares their rights with the rights of trust beneficiaries against trustees and third parties.

An Empirical Analysis of the Impact of Real Estate Tax System on Housing Price in Hong Kong

This paper selects Hong Kong from 1999 to 2015 as the sample period, sets the variable to the private residential retail price index HP and the real estate related tax revenue HT, selects the multi-log logistic regression model method, empirically analyzes the profits tax, stamp duty, the impact of general rates and property taxes on the retail price index of private housing in Hong Kong. The results show that the real estate tax on the retention link has only a limited impact on the price of private housing. The promotion of property tax is more obvious, and the general difference is less affected. The real estate tax on the transaction link has a significant impact on housing prices. Profits tax has a significant positive effect, and stamp duty also has a driving effect, but the effect is weak. Increasing the tax on the transaction link will stimulate the housing price to rise further. According to the empirical results, this paper believes that the Hong Kong government should further clarify the role of real estate tax, give full play to the government’s functions in the real estate market, simplify the real estate tax system, and improve the property tax package, in order to play a role in the real estate tax to suppress housing prices.

Tax, Medicines and the Law: From Quackery to Pharmacy by Chantal Stebbings

Reviewed by: Tax, Medicines and the Law: From Quackery to Pharmacy by Chantal Stebbings Patrick Wallis Chantal Stebbings. Tax, Medicines and the Law: From Quackery to Pharmacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018. xvi + 240 pp. $110.00 (978-1-107-02545-5). From 1783 to 1941, proprietary medicines in Britain were subject to Stamp Duty. Dues of several pence per bottle or box were paid to the government via the manufacturer, with payment proven by a stamp that was glued to the container. This long-running tax was a minor contribution to the state’s expanding needs, supplying just 1 percent of total stamp duty yield by 1807, but proved remarkably durable, still quietly and productively raising more than one million pounds a year by the 1920s. It was also, as Chantal Stebbings argues, a remarkably bad tax from a legal and administrative perspective: bad in how it was written, and—consequently—bad in the implementation. Indeed, the commissioners responsible for the Stamp Duty were pushed to act unconstitutionally to interpret the law in a way that broadly fitted a changing medical and economic landscape, but trampled over the actual wording of the statute. Stebbings’s study traces the administrative and medical history of this tax from its genesis in the fiscal nightmare of the late eighteenth century, in which ministers were rapidly innovating to extract revenues from as rich an array of sources as they could (this was the era of taxes on windows, wigs and dogs) to its demise in the 1940s, when the task of defining a tax that could accommodate the competing interests of retail chemists, large retailers such as Woolworths, tax authorities, and medical opinion finally became impossible. The central problems of the tax lay in the trickiness of defining a proprietary medicine—the tax was never intended to fall on treatments produced and supplied on a doctor’s prescription—and identifying who benefited from an exemption for “known, admitted and approved” medicines. That no satisfactory solution to these challenges was achieved underlines clearly the ambiguous place that proprietary medicines and their producers had within health care. Ambiguity is the enemy of fiscal bureaucracy, however, and the consequence was a series of illegal administrative adjustments and refinements that were largely decided in the private meeting rooms of the revenue authorities. [End Page 274] The close reading of the social and political life of a tax that Stebbings presents here will surely make an important contribution to the history of law. Her close reading of the administrative implementation of the tax is particularly impressive, and I for one was left with a surprising amount of respect for the care and thought the civil servants involved paid to the equity and social consequences of their actions. Based on a single case, it is hard to judge quite how representative or exceptional this kind of administrative reinterpretation was, or how troubling it was in practice. I was left less convinced by some of the arguments set out for the history of medicine, however. For her account of proprietary medicines, Stebbings leans heavily on the views of contemporary critics of the trade. These are loud and compelling, to be sure, but they steamroller over the variety of proprietary medicines and obscure their close relationship to orthodox medicine. The durability of many of the most popular medicines, and their frequent indistinguishability from prescribed remedies, means that we should not accept the argument that they are all hoaxes on the ignorant and thus just objects for eradication from the marketplace. Yet this is often the subtext, even the text, of the analysis presented here. The implications of the tax for the professionalization of chemists and druggists, the regulation of pharmacy, and the development of analytical chemistry seem relatively limited—and here Stebbings deserves credit for acknowledging that her topic did not necessarily make the biggest waves. Nonetheless, there is much of importance in her study for historians interested in understanding the development of pharmacy, branding and marketing of drugs, and changing political attitudes to medical and pharmaceutical regulation. Patrick Wallis London School of Economics & Political Science Copyright © 2019 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Capital Controls and Macro-Prudential Housing Policies in Small Open Economies

We evaluate the effects of capital controls and macro-prudential policies in small open economies with a housing sector that is open to foreign ownership. The work is motivated by concerns that foreign investments also respond to housing investment opportunities resulting in potential house price inflation and issues about housing affordability. Our dynamic stochastic general equilibrium model features housing as an internationally traded investment. We also consider macro-prudential policies that are combinations of monetary and fiscal instruments. We investigate whether foreign investments in the housing markets are de-stabilising and whether there are appropriate policy responses to mitigate the negative effects of foreign direct investments in housing. Our simulations suggest: 1) foreign investments in domestic housing are in general welfare-improving and do not de-stabilise house price inflation, 2) coordination between interest rate and time-varying instruments enhances social welfare and is consistent with economic stabilisation, and 3) an active stamp duty on foreign buyers helps to mitigate the welfare loss of savers through a redistribution of the tax revenue received.

Why 'spicy measures' fail to cool down Hong Kong's housing market

A notable feature of Hong Kong's current housing market is that despite various restrictive policies on home buyers, housing prices maintain unrelenting increases. This paper explores why the so-called 'spicy measures', a series of stamp duties and charges on non-local and local home buyers, fail to prevent housing price escalations in Hong Kong. Based on granger causality test of monthly data from 2008 to 2016, we unravel this puzzle from two aspects: overflow of liquidity and low interest rate environment. Granger causality test results reveal that the impact of low interest rate is short-termed, while the impact of excess monetary supply is long-lasting. The findings challenge the prevalent view that Hong Kong government has little to do with housing market exuberance, as spicy measures increased the transaction costs of home buyers according to the Coase theorem. The major policy implication is that charging tax may be ineffective to cool down housing prices if market demand is robust. The paper sheds light on understanding the housing price dynamics with varying market demand over time, an academic void not adequately filled in so far.

Opłaty konsularne jako źródło dochodów budżetu państwa w Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej

The study presents the legal status, and principles for the calculation and collection of consular fees which constitute a source of state revenue in Poland. Consular fees are a special type of public charges charged for the performance of official activities by a consul. The legal basis for the calculation and collection of these fees is primarily the provisions of the Consular Law and executive acts issued thereto. Occasional regulations on consular fees have also been included in other legal acts, i.e. the Maritime Code, the Act on the Polish Card, the Passport Act, and the Stamp Duty Act. The hypothesis that the proceeds from consular fees are of marginal importance among the state budget revenue has been verified and confirmed.

The stamp duty land tax time bomb

Justin Cumberlege of law firm Cripps looks at the stamp duty land tax regulations to help practice managers avoid any unpleasant surprises

Social Remedy For Deviance Among Senior High School Students In Medan (A Sociological Study)

Social deviance conducted by students becomes a problem in education. The act of deviance is committed in the form of violations of the existing rules in the school. This behavior affects the disruption of teaching and learning process activities even also affects other students and teachers as well. There are many cases of misbehavior and indiscipline that these students have done, and in fact the behavior is done repeatedly. This paper examines the causes of deviant behavior and finds out how the process of social remedy conducted in a senior high school with pseudonym ‘Y’ (SMA Negeri Y) as a solution implemented by schools to overcome this problem. The data found shows the reason the students do the deviance is due to the influence of the surrounding environment which is the peer pressure, so they can be seen as trendy or ‘hip’. Other reasons include uninteresting teaching methods which results in ennui on students in learning the courses. The conducted social remedy is expected to be a solution of behavioral deviance that students commit, even for repeated deviant behavior. The stages of social remedy are: (1) the first stage, advices from the teachers are given to the students who conduct the deviance (2) the second stage, write and issue the disciplinary letter for parents (DL) (3) the third stage, the students write a letter of agreement in front of their parents (4) the fourth stage, a letter of agreement with stamp duty is made, witnessed by the parents and signed by the parents and the students (5) the fifth stage, further action is handled by the principal and the principal decides whether the students should be scolded or expelled

A Simple Assessment of Housing Retrofit Policies for the UK: What Should Succeed the Energy Company Obligation?

Despite the need for large-scale retrofit of UK housing to meet emissions reduction targets, progress to date has been slow and domestic energy efficiency policies have struggled to accelerate housing retrofit processes. There is a need for housing retrofit policies that overcome key barriers within the retrofit sector while maintaining economic viability for customers, funding organizations, and effectively addressing UK emission reductions and fuel poverty targets. In this study, we use a simple assessment framework to assess three policies (the Variable Council Tax, the Variable Stamp Duty Land Tax, and Green Mortgage) proposed to replace the UK’s current major domestic retrofit programme known as the Energy Company Obligation (ECO). We show that the Variable Council Tax and Green Mortgage proposals have the greatest potential for overcoming the main barriers to retrofit policies while maintaining economic viability and contributing to high-level UK targets. We also show that, while none of the assessed schemes are capable of overcoming all retrofit barriers on their own, a mix of all three policies could address most barriers and provide key benefits such as wide coverage of property markets, operation on existing financial infrastructures, and application of a “carrot-and-stick” approach to incentivize retrofit. Lastly, we indicate that the specific support and protection of fuel-poor households cannot be achieved by a mix of these policies and a complementary scheme focused on fuel-poor households is required.

Time on market (TOM): The impact of new residential stamp duty

This paper is the pioneer research considering impacts of new residential stamp duty on TOM. This paper covers space and time information of property transaction via spatial–temporal model, which overcomes the deficits of previous studies by only capturing temporal information. A spatial model selection scheme is adopted in this paper which largely reduces the subjective model selection bias. The results of this paper enable to test and support the important housing theory: when the new residential stamp duty is executed, buyers’ options are limited then TOM is reduced. The reduced TOM implied that buyers intend to suffer high transaction tax of the property on the condition that new residential stamp duty is enforced. They believe that performance of property asset still outperforms the other investment vehicles in Hong Kong. The results of this paper provide valuable information on policy making.

An Estimated DSGE Model to Analyze Housing Market Policies in Hong Kong SAR

During the last decade, Hong Kong SAR has experienced a large increase in house prices and credit, prompting the authorities to respond with several rounds of tightening macroprudential rules and increasing stamp duty taxes. This paper provides a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model for Hong Kong SAR and analyzes the effectiveness of these measures, and finds that they have helped reduce house price appreciation and household leverage. A baseline small open economy real business cycle model is extended by including a housing sector, financial frictions, foreign demand for the domestic housing stock, and is estimated using Bayesian methods and data for Hong Kong SAR between 1996 and 2017. The paper finds that, without these policies, house prices would have been 10.5 percent higher, and the household credit-GDP ratio 14 percent higher.

A critical overview of the transparency and competitiveness of the London stock exchange

This paper explores the operational activities of the London Stock Exchange in the 21st century to provide an overview of its operational transparency and competitiveness; the competition among its market participants and how it competes with other developed stock exchanges around the world. Evidence was found that suggests the manifestation of both competitive and uncompetitive practices in the London Stock Exchange. The presence of the key elements that enhance the competitiveness of the market, such as continued technology transformation, strategies that promote globalisation and regulatory flexibilities was observed. Simultaneously, signs of non-competitiveness such as high membership and annual fees, transaction costs and stamp duties were also observed.

Private Estate Housing Productivity in Greater Port Harcourt, Nigeria

The housing deficit in Nigeria is reportedly of the order of 17 million units. The private sector remains the major supplier as in some other developing countries. However, productivity in Nigeria is hampered by many factors, including high cost of building materials, difficulty in obtaining title to land, a weak mortgage financing sector, and delay in obtaining building permit. In the study area, Greater Port Harcourt City, there is paucity of information on various aspects of housing, including supply, demand, nature of housing provided, satisfaction levels and relationship between housing and stage in the family life cycle. Therefore, the objectives of the research were to: (1) Ascertain the state of private residential housing estate development in GPHC; (2) ascertain the sources of private residential housing and the relative importance of private vis-a-vis public residential housing delivery; (3) critically examine the number, type and quality of housing provided in private residential estates and their functionality from the point of view of beneficiaries; and (4) ascertain bottlenecks to private residential estate housing delivery. This study was undertaken as a cross-sectional survey of (1) a probability sample of all persons residing in privately built estates and (2) all individuals or corporate firms who have supplied at least 4 building units and above constructed between 1978 and 2014 in Greater Port Harcourt City (GPHC). The research design used was the “passive-observational” method. The number of questionnaires administered to estate residents was 400 while the number administered to estate developers was 76. The study relied on two sources of information – primary and secondary. Primary sources comprised (a) a largely pre-coded questionnaire, administered face-to-face by trained interviewers, (b) Individual Depth Interviews (IDIs) of key informants, (c) direct observation, (c) measurement, and (d) photography. Secondary sources included: (a) unpublished and published material in past theses, books, journals, maps, etc; and (b) the Internet. Data analysis utilised mainly univariate and multivariate statistical analytical techniques. Analysis was carried out with the aid of the microcomputer – adapted Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), version 16. The results showed that 1,761 housing units — mostly in Obio/Akpor LGA (80%) — were built by the private sector as opposed to 3,453 units by government. Housing types were single-family bungalow (28.3%), multi-family block of flats (26.8%), single-family storey building (18.8%), “wagon” rooming house (4.3%) and “courtyard” rooming house (1.8%). Four predictor variables — Access to Land, Mortgage Financing, Building Permit, and Title to Land could explain 85% of the variation in the dependent variable, Private Housing Productivity, with Title to Land being the most important. The study concluded, among others, that (a) the pace of private sector housing development in Greater Port Harcourt City was far short of what is needed to satisfy demand, given a population of the order of 2,000,000 growing at 5.8% per annum. Recommendations of the study include (a) Stamp Duty Subsidy such as “instruments, payable on documents such as Lease / Tenancy Agreements, Sale Purchase, Agreements, Transfer and Mortgages. (b)Government should formulate policies and implement techniques that promote liveability in Greater Port Harcourt City. (c) Making land available for estate developers or regulating the price of land can be implemented.

An Estimated DSGE Model to Analyze Housing Market Policies in Hong Kong SAR

During the last decade, Hong Kong SAR has experienced a large increase in house prices and credit, prompting the authorities to respond with several rounds of tightening macroprudential rules and increasing stamp duty taxes. This paper provides a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium (DSGE) model for Hong Kong SAR and analyzes the effectiveness of these measures, and finds that they have helped reduce house price appreciation and household leverage. A baseline small open economy real business cycle model is extended by including a housing sector, financial frictions, foreign demand for the domestic housing stock, and is estimated using Bayesian methods and data for Hong Kong SAR between 1996 and 2017. The paper finds that, without these policies, house prices would have been 10.5 percent higher, and the household credit-GDP ratio 14 percent higher.

Copyright and the Political Economy of News in Britain, 1836–1911

This article explores nineteenth-century efforts to obtain legal protection for news in relation to shifts in the media landscape in Britain. It shows how the campaign to repeal the stamp duty led a handful of London publishers to lobby for a special copyright in news. These efforts failed but not without sparking debates in Parliament and the press about how best to guarantee public access to quality journalism. Later in the century, lawsuits brought by the Times clarified the scope of protection for news articles, including reports of public speeches, but efforts to protect news and information as such continued to face opposition. The article concludes with the Copyright Act of 1911, which explicitly recognized copyright in newspaper articles but not for the underlying factual details of news that some publishers had fought for.

Autumn Budget 2017: An IEA Briefing

The Chancellor should resist calls to ramp up spending and focus instead on reducing the burden of tax and regulation. The economy has weathered the initial shock of Brexit much better than most had expected. Unemployment has continued to fall and inflation should peak soon, easing the pressure on real incomes. There is no need for a fiscal boost. What’s more, the public finances remain in poor shape. There is room for some small increases in spending on priority areas, partly funded by savings on contributions to the EU. Even on current plans, it will be at least a quarter of a century since the government last balanced the books. This Budget will have to consider more pessimistic assumptions about future productivity, made by the Office for Budget Responsibility. As it happens, the OBR may be chucking in the towel just as productivity is about to recover. But if the OBR is right, an extended period of lower growth will reduce the fiscal wiggle room. The Chancellor should ignore the temptation to address intergenerational inequality with tax breaks for younger people or a temporary cut in stamp duty for first-time buyers. Instead, the playing field should be levelled by tackling underlying problems that mainly affect the young, including the lack of housing supply, and by withdrawing subsidies which mainly benefit the elderly regardless of need. The Chancellor should resist calls to boost productivity with a splurge of public investment. Rather, he should focus on measures that free up the economy without spending enormous amounts of other people’s money, such as liberalising planning laws to facilitate housebuilding and devolving more fiscal powers to the regions. While there may be little margin for additional tax cuts, he should announce a fundamental review of taxes on property – including stamp duty – with the aim of dramatically simplifying the system. On Brexit, the Chancellor should emphasise the opportunities rather than just dwell on the risks. These opportunities include the scope to reduce trade barriers with the rest of the world and review regulations at home.

URGENSI TANDA TANGAN DAN MATERAI DALAM MEMBERIKAN KEPASTIAN HUKUM TERHADAP KONTRAK WARALABA (FRANCHISE)

This article explanes about urgency of signatures and stamp duty in giving legal certainty to the franchise contract. This theme departs from the rise of business model franchise today in Indonesia. This business is considered to minimize the risk of failure, as well as to provide various facilities. This research is a descriptive analytical research. In franchise contract are still many things that can happen in the future that might be detrimental to the parties. Therefore we need the legal umbrella to shade and protect with the aim to create a sense of fairness and legal certainty for the parties, not just for profit (profit oriented), but there is accountability for the impact of the overall business operations. To provide legal certainty every contract franchise must be in writing and include the signature and the stamp in order to obtain a force of law and can be evidence, so the purpose of legal certainty can be realized.

Analysis of Principles and Practice of APLUC in Anambra State, Nigeria

Land taxation is any levy that is land -based. Land based taxes abound in Anambra State and they include: Companies income and Personal income Tax, Value Added Tax, Capital Gains Tax, Capital Transfer Tax, Stamp Duties and recently the Land Use Charges. In an ideal situation, land –taxes actas tool to manage land use, urban density and expansion, discourage speculative transactions and encourage sustainable development. This study analyzed Anambra State land –based taxes with a view to ascertaining the principles and objectives behind them. The paper identified various land – based taxes and in order to determine the principle and practice behind them. The study adopted a survey design to generate data from respondents(landlord and tenants).To examine the principles and practice of land based taxes in Anambra State, questionnaires were administered on Estate surveyors and Tax Assessors. They were entreated to give their views on property rate practice and Land use charge law in Anambra State. A percentage of their responses to the questions were taken to measure the weight of their views. They opined that for a land based tax to be progressive, equity and fairness should be emphasized as the major objective and not just revenue as seen in the land –based taxation in Anambra State. They were also of the view that increased land values which an owner enjoys are not due to his efforts but that of government as supported by public funds and a good tax system should amongst all seek to redistribute this wealth by upholding the principle of equity and fairness, together with other principles.

Goods & Services Tax (GST)–Impact Analysis & Road Ahead

Until 30th June'2017, people of India were perpetually surrounded by a gamut of indirect taxes (seven main heads in all) namely, service tax, value added tax, securities transaction tax (STT), entertainment tax, excise duty, customs duty & stamp duty. Through a significant initiative taken by the Government of India, a common indirect tax by the name of Goods & Services Tax (GST) has been implemented across India, with effect from 1st July'2017. Objective being, to bring about uniformity in taxation by merging all these taxes, which in turn will assist in reducing the hassles of compliances associated&help in improving tax governance in India.

Swiss Supreme Court Confirms Form-over-Substance Approach in Stamp Duty Matters

Swiss Supreme Court Confirms Form-over-Substance Approach in Stamp Duty Matters