Page 1 of Is it illegal to lie about the price you sold a house for?

A friend of mine is selling his house to his mate. He bought it for £105k and is selling it for £90k. His mate wants him to tell his lawyers he sold it for £65k, even though he is paying the full selling price.

Is that illegal? He is not getting round capital gains tax cos he is loosing on it. He is not using it as a right off as he is in full time employment. So is it illegal?

I don`t see how it would do him any good. If he made this agreement & it wasn`t in writing his mate could ask for the £25,000 back. I don`t see how it can be put in writing using a solicitor. Having said that, we don`t know the full facts so more info is needed.

Unless it`s a cash sale, the mortgage co & lawyers will know the price anyway.

Certainly not advisable course of action & can`t see whats to be gained by such a act, stamp duty doesn`t apply at either of those prices.



I consider myself an optimist, albeit an optimist with cynical tendencies and a dark side that Lucifer himself would find a little creepy. (Perhaps you've noticed.) You don't normally associate cynicism with an upbeat pov. But I have exactly that combination and will defend it.

Never has so little had to be explained by me to so many so often.

We once did a deal with buyers, so that it looked like they paid X for a house of ours.
Then they paid the extra direct to our bank.
This was to avoid them paying stamp duty, and was done with the full knowledge of our solicitors (perhaps unofficially, but they still knew about it).

Quote:
rehan says...
A friend of mine is selling his house to his mate. He bought it for £105k and is selling it for £90k. His mate wants him to tell his lawyers he sold it for £65k, even though he is paying the full selling price.

Is that illegal? He is not getting round capital gains tax cos he is loosing on it. He is not using it as a right off as he is in full time employment. So is it illegal?
It won`t be legal, as it`ll classed as money laundering.  Ultimately anything else like his mate getting divorced or something and trying to keep his assets low, will be some kind of fraud and would be classed as such.

Without knowing what he`s trying to defraud it`s hard to say under what act it would be.


There would be no "write off" if he was self employed either way, as again it would be a capital gains issue rather than a business expense.


Plus I`d say it`s your mate who`s leaving himself open. 

If he sold his house for £65,000 but has received £90,000, he`s the one with £25,000 undeclared income.


www.last.fm/user/1mills

Not if he`s an MP  [Google have marked freeimagehosting.net as a hoster of malware, therefore this link has been removed]

The `trick` that people do (or used to at least) is charge a lower price for the house and then charge a separate amount for fixtures and fittings. e.g charge 120k for house and then an additional 5k for furniture thus staying under stamp duty threshold but actually paying full price. This is what Mandelson got caught out on a few years back - don`t think he actually got done for it.