Stamp Duty Land Tax – 'The New Law' Author: Reg Nock Publisher: Jordans Price: £55

Stamp Duty Land Tax – The New Law, published by Jordans in their New Law series, is written by Reg Nock of 24 Old Buildings, an acknowledged authority on the previous stamp duty regime.

Although fundamentally different from stamp duty, any successful guide to the new system for the majority of practitioners can only be made in the context of this previous familiar one. Accordingly, it should be of considerable comfort to practitioners in the brave new world of self-assessed stamp duty land tax (SDLT) that such an acknowledged authority has provided a thorough analysis of the fundamentals of the new regime.

The book itself is divided into 27 highly focused chapters, of which the first 14 deal with the substantive new law and the remainder with the new compliance regime. Since about two-thirds of the Finance Act 2003 is concerned with compliance, this emphasis is not surprising.

The initial chapters examine the fundamentals of the new tax in a highly logical and user-friendly fashion; so, for instance, practitioners are made aware immediately of the implementation date of the new regime but also of its significant retrospective operation.

Practitioners should also welcome the frank assessment that "stamp duty land tax is essentially a package of anti-avoidance measures hurriedly put together in order to attack certain basic techniques utilised for the mitigation of stamp duty". The author rightly recognises that an awareness of the techniques being attacked should provide assistance in background understanding of the new legislation and provides a neat summary of them.

His detailed step-by-step examination of the essential criteria for the imposition of SDLT helps to make clear the special definitions implicit within the non-plain English drafting of the legislation.

The two-stage process for computation, comprising the SDLT rate structures and the amount of chargeable consideration to which the relevant rate is to be applied, is dealt with in an admirably clear format. The full spectrum of transactions ranging from the wholly residential or non-residential to those involving both residential and non-residential are covered together with the interaction of the discrete nil rate bands for each of premiums and rentals. The new definition of a 'linked transaction' is then examined in this context of computation rates, while being reexamined in later chapters separately in the context of leases and of land options, an approach which busy practitioners will appreciate.

Subsequent chapters look in detail at the effect of the new regime on a series of topics highly relevant to practitioners both in the residential and commercial real estate sectors. Building agreements and the issues arising where a land contract and building agreement are entered into more or less simultaneously are given special attention. Helpfully, the text reflects the latest understanding of the revenue's position.

The section devoted to corporate reorganisations and intra group transactions is particularly valuable (this area, unlike others, remains largely as enacted by the original Finance Act 2003). Equally though, a separate 'residential' section examines the impact on both routine residential conveyancing transactions and on residential site assembly and building operations.

Sadly, what could have been an exceptionally clear guide to the treatment of leases under the new regime is undermined by a failure to reflect the latest legislative changes to this area, introduced in the Finance Act 2004 (the law is stated as at February 2004 and even then the text reflects significant revision to accommodate the late but fundamental changes made in November 2003).

Compliance under the new regime is onerous and is given the attention that practitioners will require. Again, the latest legislative changes are not reflected but in this area the changes are modest and generally comprise a lessening of 'red tape' notification requirements.

With the heavy use that has been made already of the extensive powers to amend the primary legislation and with further changes expected in the Chancellor's pre budget statement, the new regime is far from stable. Certainly practitioners are continuing to make heavy use of the Revenue's Code of Practice 10 procedure for pre transaction rulings on the application of SDLT in relation to specific transactions.

In consequence, any attempt to publish on a definitive basis, will, for some time to come, aim at a moving target and this publication is to be welcomed on that basis.

Elizabeth Thompson is a lawyer in Berwin Leighton Paisner's real estate group.