Nobody likes taxes other than politicians, but the tax you pay when you buy a home can seem particularly harsh. For a relatively small number of people in Scotland the tax they pay on buying a property costs them a small fortune.

According to the latest government statistics for Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT) – the Scottish version of stamp duty - 1,720 homebuyers paid 83.5% of all tax paying £37.9m out of a total of £45.4m collected.

The 10% tax rate begins for all properties sold for £325,001 or more and each homebuyer over this threshold paid an average of £22,034. For properties sold for more than £750,000 just 130 people paid £85,384 each on average contributing £11.1m which equates to nearly a quarter (24.4%) of all tax raised.

We need to level up UK’s stamp duty schemes - David Alexander