The incidence of transaction taxes: evidence from a stamp duty holiday

Timothy Besley, Neil Meads and Paolo Surico

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: This paper exploits the 2008–09 stamp duty holiday in the United Kingdom to estimate the incidence of a transaction tax on housing. The average reduction in the after-tax sale price is found to be around £900 against the backdrop of an average tax reduction of about £1500. While we estimate an increase in transactions of properties affected by the tax holiday around 8%, most of this effect appears to have reversed rapidly after the policy was withdrawn, suggesting mostly a short-term retiming of transactions. The findings are calibrated to a simple bargaining model to show they imply that about sixty percent of the surplus generated by the holiday accrued to buyers.

Keywords: tax holiday; surplus incidence; surveyor's evaluation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H22 R32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-pub
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (56)

Published in Journal of Public Economics, November, 2014, 119, pp. 61-70. ISSN: 0047-2727

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http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/59637/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: The incidence of transaction taxes: Evidence from a stamp duty holiday (2014)
Working Paper: The Incidence of Transaction Taxes: Evidence from a Stamp Duty Holiday (2014)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:59637

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