Out of the Red Box thinking

We are delighted to say that some of our ideas have been taken up this year by the Chancellor and incorporated into what will sadly probably be his last Budget speech. We have been working again on the difficult question of Stamp Duty Land Tax (vulgarly known as Stamp Duty) and we've come up with a winner.

As you will know now from the reports of the Budget, as from tomorrow, you won't pay any Stamp Duty if you pay £250,000 or less and are a "first-time buyer". That's defined as someone who:

• is buying his or her first home (which must be used as such), and if they are both buying both of them must be buying their first home;
• and cannot have owned a property anywhere in the world.

That's great news of course. A few people have commented, cruelly in our view, that there is no way of telling whether someone is a first-time buyer or not.

We have an answer to this irritating cavil. We propose that people who are not first-time buyers should also be exempted from Stamp Duty, and then there will be no incentive for them to pretend that they are first-time buyers. Clever, eh?