Part of 1. Questions to the First Minister – in the Senedd at 2:04 pm on 14 January 2020.
I thank the First Minister for his considered and thoughtful response. First Minister, when I first asked you about the fall in stamp duty commercial receipts following the introduction of land transaction tax, you said it was too early to draw any conclusions. We now have the definitive data in the 'Welsh taxes outlook' from the Office for Budget Responsibility, and they say that your pre-announcing rates and thresholds for LTT created challenges for their LTT forecasts, in particular with your 6 per cent supertax on commercial transactions over £1 million. They conclude that the final quarter's outturn for commercial stamp duty land tax paid to the UK Government in Q1 2018 was £20 million, or 25 per cent higher than they'd expected, as transactions were brought forward to avoid Welsh LTT. They also say that, in the first quarter of 2108, property transactions generally rose by 50 per cent relative to the first quarter of 2017, since forestalling was evident prior to the introduction of LTT. This included for higher value residential properties. Do you accept that pre-announcing those tax hikes was a mistake, as it brought forward property purchases, since people prefer to pay lower taxes to the UK Government than higher taxes to the Welsh Government?